Alison Fraser

After 35 years as county archivist, and then principal archivist, in Orkney Alison Fraser retired on 7 October 2010. The position in Orkney was Alison’s second archivist post after graduating from Glasgow University, the first being registrar of the Western survey of the National Register of Archives (Scotland) based in Glasgow. Alison has been at the forefront of every advance in Orkney Archives over the years, not least the design and move into a new building in December 2003. The staff of Orkney Library & Archive have all enjoyed working with Alison and wish her a long and happy retirement. Her knowledge of the collection will be greatly missed by them and users alike.

Orkney Islands Council Director of Education and Leisure Services Leslie Manson said: “The archive is well known throughout Scotland and I thank Alison for her dedication and enthusiasm which has helped the service secure this reputation. The council’s vacancy management policy precludes the filling of posts which don’t absolutely need to be filled right away. The future of the post will be considered alongside all management posts as part of the budget exercise and no decisions have yet been made. We shall be putting in place temporary measures to ensure that the library and archive service continues to address users needs as well as possible”.

Best wishes

David Mackie
Photographic Archivist
Orkney Library & Archive
44 Junction Road
Kirkwall
Orkney
KW15 1AG

Lothian Lives - Showcasing Local Council Archives

* Did you know that Edinburgh’s citizens were gripped by terror in the wake of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, and that the authorities began recording the movement of Edinburgh’s so-called “aliens”?

* Did you know that aliens visited West Lothian again in the 1970’s, during the highest period of extra-terrestrial sightings in the UK’s history?

* Did you know that the Midlothian Archives hold a Dalkeith Doctor’s travel diary written in the last phases of the British Raj?

* Did you know that one of the heroes of the 1854 ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ lived in Dunbar, East Lothian?

The Lothian Lives project is a joint initiative of the City of Edinburgh, East Lothian, Midlothian and West Lothian council archives. The project is part of a U.K. wide archives awareness campaign and aims to shine a light on the rich holdings of local council archive collections. Funded by the Scottish Council on Archives, the project is the first time council archives in Edinburgh and the Lothians have worked together to bring Scottish archives to life using the web.

For more information on the above stories and to discover lots more visit us at www.lothianlives.org.uk


Kind regards,
Frances

Frances Woodrow Archivist
Library & Museum HQ Dunbar Road Haddington EH41 3PJ
01620 828229

Business Archives Strategy consulation

Dear colleagues,

The Scottish Council on Archives is pleased to announce the public consultation phase in the development of a National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland.

Lead by the Business Archives Council of Scotland and the Ballast Trust with the support of the National Archives of Scotland, the strategy shares the same goals as its counterpart, a National Strategy for Business Archives (England & Wales), but addresses the challenges of business records within a Scottish context.

We invite archivists and informational professional, users, business persons, lawyers, liquidators and anyone else with a connection to or interest in business records to respond to the consultation. Naturally, we want to hear from those in Scotland but we are also keen to hear from those elsewhere in the UK and abroad, recognising the fact that business doesn't recognise national or international borders.

The draft strategy and response forms can be accessed at:
http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/archives/bacs/nationalstrategyforbusinessarchives/

You may wish to follow the progress of the strategy via the blog:
http://businessarchivesscotland.blogspot.com/

The deadline response date for the strategy is Friday 28 May 2010.

Best wishes,

Becky Penneck

Events and Administration

Scottish Council on Archives
0131 535 1362
www.scoarch.org.uk

Results of Career Survey

Are you interested in how your career progression and salary banding compares with others in the record-keeping profession?

A survey undertaken earlier this year in relation to the profile of the record-keeping profession in Scotland, identified differences between the salary levels and experience of archivists and record managers. Records management roles typically required more on the job experience and commanded a higher salary, whereas archives roles were more often filled by staff earning in the lowest pay scale.

The variations of salary scales in the local authority, higher education and business sectors showed that roles in universities and businesses were generally better paid than those in local authorities. There was not enough data from the survey to allow for meaningful analysis of pay banding and experience levels within the sectors.

The questionnaire addressed job vacancies advertised in the last 12 months, finding that these were evenly split between those which required a professional qualification in archives and records management and those that did not.

Read the report or download it here

Susan Fisher
SoAS Careers Officer

Society of Archivists (Scotland) Regional Meeting, September 2009

The recent Society of Archivists Regional Meeting in the Borders looked at how archivists can use the new technology of Web 2.0 and blogs. For those of us at conference this followed on nicely from some of the talks there.

Kiara King from Glasgow University Archives gave us an overview of the tools that are available and an overview of two of the blogs she is involved in the Ballast Trust Blog and the GUAS Business Archives Blog. Kiara’s excellent presentation can be found here.

I spoke about our own work at the Scottish Borders Archive turning Victorian family diaries into daily blogs. The diary of Sir George Henry Scott Douglas has been available since April. It follows him on his Mediterranean voyage where he encounters pirates and as a tourist tries a new food, the kebab! His sister Charlotte’s diaries are publishing in weekly installments which give an insight into her love life and the mystery of her ‘dreadful secret’!

One thing that we all took away from the meeting is that Web 2.0 is a useful tool and there are many different ways to employ these technologies. If you want to see examples of how other archives are doing this take a look here.

Juline Baird
Assistant Archivist
Scottish Borders Council

The Society of Archivists Conference 2009: A personal reminiscence.

The annual Society of Archivists Conference was held from the 1^st-4^th September in the comfort of the Marriott Hotel in Bristol. As always such an event provided an opportunity for archivists and records managers from around the United Kingdom (and beyond) to come together for 4 days of intellectual stimulation, to meet old friends and make some new acquaintances whilst partaking of some good food (and no doubt the odd drink).

Andrew Motion kicked off proceedings on Tuesday morning with the presentation that, for this observer, stole the week. Discussing the Poetry Archive, Motion gave us the full weight of his intellect, experience, depth of reading, and the occasional tease that he may burst into impressions of some of his favourite poets. At the core of his paper was the understanding that the full sense of a poems meaning can emerge through hearing the poet give voice to his own poems. As Robert Frost said “the ear is the best reader” and it benefits the listener to hear the interpretation of the poet, the pauses and the line endings. The Poetry Archive is currently receiving around 175,000 visitors per month and this archivist will soon be joining the crowd – hearing Robert Browning forgetting one of his own poems provided the biggest laugh of the week from me! Motion should also be congratulated for inducing something I never thought I would come across during an archives presentation – bringing a fellow member to tears. Jenny Moran informed Motion and the audience that the sound of a Cornish poet presenting his poems two weeks before he died had made her well up.

Following Motion was Randall Jimmerson from Western Washington University and his paper ‘Archivists and the Call of Justice’. To his credit Jimmerson acknowledged his forebears in his paper – for example, the call for justice is a notion heavily associated with the South African archivist Verne Harris whose writing on this subject is unlikely to be bettered. Jimmerson identified three key areas – accountability, openness and social justice – which the archivist should promote through the work we do in order to further a drive for a better society. Undoubtedly this was a stimulating and thought-provoking presentation although this author must concede that he has spent the past 3 years attempting to produce a thesis that somewhat argues against the thoughts offered by Jimmerson. Although I believe that, in general, most archivists wish to reach the same end-point regarding the documentation of all aspects of society it seems to me that Jimmerson’s advocacy of, for example, personal morality over professional ethics would lead us into a minefield (involving issues of trust, ideology, the fiduciary role of the archive) rather than removing the professional straitjacket. Such issues were raised by Patricia Whatley in her paper on Thursday. Is there a clear answer here? Probably not, although these two papers certainly aided me in dissecting the issues.

Some mentions should be made of the following papers:

Janet McBain issued a cautionary warning that Digital Preservation is not a substitute for the celluloid itself. Digital storage was also found to be 11 times more expensive than traditional storage of film cans. I apologise to Janet but, as with Motion and his sound recordings, what will live long in the memory was her choice of film. We were shown the 4^th Marquis of Bute’s wedding in 1905. The highlight was surely the Pipe Band in a rowing boat following the happy couple as they were transported to the steamer for their honeymoon. McBain also explained why social networking sites were not necessarily advantageous to the role and functioning of the archive. Mentioning YouTube and film McBain raised the following issues: (1) Provenance – Film is broken up into clips and given a new title through which they take on a new life. Is this the commodification of our heritage?; (2) The moral rights of the individuals documented; (3) Ripping and re-use – there is easy access to corrupt the original; (4) Is their value in the new user? McBain raised the cheap and offensive comments that are sometimes attached to pieces of archival film on YouTube.

Steve Bailey presented one of the more out-of-the-box presentations of the week by using the example of Amazon to explain how records management decisions should be made from analysing user behaviour. I sense that many practitioners will take a lot of persuading that this is a suitable means through which to make RM decisions (in itself no bad thing) but questions of legislation, regulation, and business requirements instantly made me sceptical. I look forward to Steve’s continuing work in this area to see how it can be developed over the following years.

Tim Padfield spent an hour taking the audience through every conceivable facet of copyright in the digital environment; George Oates presented a riveting take on how collections could be awoken from their conceptual slumber in the archival repository to take on a new life in environments such as Flickr (in some respects this functioned as a counterpoint to McBain); and Susan Healy and Richard Blake provided an overview of the review of the Records Management Code of Practice. This is a Code which, in my limited experience, has aided RM practitioners immensely in ensuring compliance with regulatory and legislative procedures and it was interesting to see how they are planning to alter and tweak it.

A mention should also go to the Pump Rooms at Bath where we followed in the footsteps of the Romans (I may have had an illicit touch of the water – very warm!). A Gala Dinner with accompanying pianist made for a very pleasant meal and atmosphere which I enjoyed in the company of many of my fellow HATII graduates who can be seen in the photograph above. (From left to right: Stephanie Archibald (guest of Craig Gauld); Craig Gauld (Shetland Archives); Gemma Tougher (GUAS); Emma Yan (GUAS); Laura Brouard (Lothian Health Services Archive); Juline Baird (Borders); Chris (Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies)). Other conference photos can be found at http://soaconference2009.wordpress.com/

Craig Gauld

Shetland Archives/SoAS Publicity Officer

Strathclyde University Archives has moved!

The University Archives has moved from its cramped quarters in the McCance Building to join forces with the University Library’s Special Collections Department in a light and spacious area on level 5 of the University Library. The new combined department, called Archives and Special Collections, comprises the archives of the University and its antecedent institutions from 1796, other important archive collections and the Library’s collections of rare books. The new facility, which was formally opened by the Principal, Professor Jim McDonald, on 29th May, now offers users the chance to consult the archives and rare books together in a bright and comfortable reading room. New facilities include plenty of laptop places and tables for group or individual research.

Our new address is:

Archives and Special Collections
Andersonian Library
University of Strathclyde
101 St James' Road
Glasgow G4 0NS
Tel: 0141 548 2497
Email: archives@strath.ac.uk
URL: http://www.strath.ac.uk/archives

All visitors are welcome!


Victoria Peters
Strathclyde University Archivist