Gloucestershire Archives
2020 – What a Year!
2020 has been a historic year, which will be remembered for generations to come. The most affecting event was, of course, the covid-19 pandemic, when we all had to make changes to the way we live and work.
But other events dominated the local, national and international news headlines: the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, the Black Lives Matter protests and the climate change demonstrations.
When I tell people that I work for Gloucestershire Archives, they think that it is merely a collection of dry and dusty documents going back hundreds of years. What people tend to forget, is that an archives collection is an organic thing – it grows, it reflects what’s happening today (as well as what happened centuries ago) and it is our responsibility to ensure that our collections – kept for posterity – reflect and represent what is going on right now.
Archivists are, in a sense, collectors of stories. And there have been countless stories to be told, and heard, in 2020. In particular, we have tried to encourage people from all walks of life, and all ages, to document their lived experience of the covid-19 pandemic – with diaries, blogs and other records of how they coped. We haven’t seen anything like this covid-19 pandemic, affecting the whole world, since the global Spanish flu outbreak just after World War 1, at its peak in the UK in 1918-1920.
The difference between 1918 and 2020, of course, is that we have better medicines and preparations for a range of vaccines; better technology, including a more established mass media; social media; mobile phone apps and a range of services (including the NHS) that just didn’t exist in 1918.
Back in the summer, I read a novel, set in Dublin, about the Spanish flu epidemic. It was, ironically, published during the long, summer lockdown. Historically, it was interesting to see how people a century ago were affected by a pandemic; the novelist had done meticulous research into the social, economic and political context of the period, sometimes using archives collections to get the detail that she used to such great effect in the novel. I was so moved by the novel, that I emailed the novelist (something I have never before done), and we had an interesting exchange about the impact of history, and about “history in the making”.
History in the making is a curious and little considered concept – at least, it was to me, when I started working at Gloucestershire Archives. Our collections are many and varied, but the ones that always intrigue me – and leave me wanting to know more – are the first-hand accounts, by ordinary people, about how they coped; with war, floods, disasters and, yes, covid-19.
I’m aware of a small community project, in a Gloucestershire town, where volunteers have (as part of their allowable daily exercise) been walking the streets, during the long, first lockdown, photographing notices in shop and café windows. Some of these were perfunctory – “Sorry, we’re closed, due to coronavirus”. Others were more optimistic: “We’re all in this together! We look forward to welcoming you back when it is safe to do so”. And yet others were really rather solicitous: “We are currently closed – we will be back – meanwhile, please take care and stay safe.” Some had hand-coloured rainbows, or emoji’s of clapping hands, representing people’s appreciation of the NHS and the clap for carers. What do these photographs tell us? I suppose they tell us that we each have our own way of coping. But it is also details like this that paint a picture – for the researchers in many years to come – of what the mood was like, what people in the street saw and experienced. It is also this level of detail – gleaned from research in several archives – which the novelist I mentioned used to such effect in her fictional account of how Dublin’s citizens dealt with their very own pandemic a hundred years ago.
2020 has, indeed, been a year we will never forget. In a professional sense, it has served to remind me of the need for archives collections, and the importance of what we do day to day.
Sally Middleton - Community Heritage Development Manager – Gloucestershire Archives
Take a peak here at some of the work that takes place at Gloucestershire Archives
News from the Archives
We want your memories. We’ve had some submissions to our lockdown archive but would love more, be it a diary, written account, recording, photo or however you want to record these exceptional times.
Click here for more details about how to submit your memories
The collections team are taking the opportunity of lockdown (again!) to do strong-room based work. We are stock-checking boxes and locations and also moving frequently used records from far flung strong-rooms in Moons into the three new strong-rooms which are much nearer the research room.
We’ve been able to recruit two graduate trainee archivists: Malcolm Cohn, who started with us in September, and Laura Cassidy who started early December. It’s not the easiest time to start a new job but we hope the experience they gain with us will help them pursue their chosen career in the archive sector. We are also hosting a "Bridging the Digital Gap” trainee for 15 months, and have recruited Natasha Young to this role. This post is funded by the National Archives and is an initiative to diversity the workforce in various ways.
We’ve accepted a quote from Greenfields to create our wildlife pond. Greenfields did the hoggin path and volunteer shelter so we know it will be done to a high standard. The work will happen in Spring 2021.
The procurement exercise to replace CALM, our specialist software, was completed in December and the contract was awarded to Metadatis Ltd who will supply our new archive management system. We’re excited about this as we hope the new system will have a more intuitive public “interface” for the online catalogue.
We’ve made a start at putting our training for community archives online, via the “How to preserve your family archive- the COVID-19 lockdown blogs”, a series which we’ve been posting since April. These will then be used to create content for a web -based resource and also a downloadable booklet. If anyone has any feedback on the blogs, please do get in touch via archives@gloucestershire.gov.uk. Your comments are invaluable.
See a summary of all the blogs here.
Our learning & outreach team have been planning some work with The Shire (city centre project for care-leavers) and mental health nurses at the University of Gloucestershire, and have created some new online resources for schools.
The “Never Better” project, based on mental health records in our collections, was shortlisted for a national award from CHWA (Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance), a nationwide charity promoting arts and culture in relation to positive health and wellbeing. Well done to Plymouth Music Zone who were the eventual winners.
Looking ahead, we are drawing up a comprehensive 3 year programme of events and activities. As part of this, we’d like to work in partnership to deliver monthly talks - probably virtual for the next few months - on themed topics. Please contact kate.maisey@gloucestershire.gov.uk if you, or your local history group, would be interested in discussing this further.
Read more about the themes here.
As ever, please watch our website for up to date information.
Kate Maisey, January 2021
Zoom Boom!
We’ve sometimes had to look hard to find the silver lining this year, but as always our volunteers have come up trumps and helped us stay productive - and sane. ‘If you want something done, ask a busy person’ as the saying goes: many volunteers have been beavering away on tasks they can do for us from home, and balancing this with all the other extraordinary things they do in their lives.
We started our catch-up meetings for volunteers on Zoom in May during the first lockdown, and we are now on our third ‘round’. The catch-ups mainly have a social purpose, allowing people to get together for a chat/moan/laugh/all of the above. Even in the gloomiest of times, this excellent tribe have brought cheer and enthusiasm to us on a weekly basis. They’ve also solved a few puzzles for us along the way. We’ve come to look forward to Wednesday afternoons as a highlight in our week.
We currently have around 15 volunteers who regularly meet up, but there is room for more and we’d love you to join. They take place on Wednesday afternoons, starting at 2pm and are usually about an hour long. You don’t have to commit to coming every week, or to staying for the whole hour: the idea is to dip in and out as you choose.
If you’d like to join, but are unsure about Zoom, we can probably help. Please call us on 01452 425295 during office hours or email us at archives@gloucestershire.gov.uk.
Archive staff enable home working: Gloucestershire County Council and Gloucester City Council
Congratulations to Gloucestershire Archives scan and send team whose work at the beginning of lockdown was featured in the Local Government Association’s case study series in November.
Archive staff in Gloucestershire worked quickly, using their specialist professional archive skills to set up a system which enabled the scanning and sending of physical post to staff working from home. At the very beginning of lockdown, archives staff were asked by the silver command group within the County Council to set up a ‘scan and send’ postal service. The service which is now embedded in business as usual enables Gloucestershire County Council and Gloucester City Council colleagues to continue to work from home.
“Thanks again for all you’re doing – we’d grind to a halt without your efforts.” Staff member, Gloucestershire County Council
Read the full article here
How to preserve your family or community archive:
The Collection Care Covid-19 lockdown blogs. Blog CC #18
- Do you have a personal, organisational, local or subject related archive?
- Have you been following our training blogs?
- Since April 2020, we’ve posted over 20 blogs to help you care for, manage and develop your collection. We hope you’ve found them helpful. Here’s a quick re-cap of what we’ve covered:
A summary of all the blogs -
So what next?
Although this series of blogs is at an end, we will develop the content into an online resource and a downloadable booklet.
We plan to set up a Gloucestershire forum network for people within the county who are looking after archive collections. This could encourage the exchange of information and ideas and provide mutual support. If you’d like to be part of this group or have suggestions about how it could best be done, please let us know.
We also want to bring our community archive “trainees” together from time to time, whether virtually, or-looking ahead- in person, to celebrate achievement and share progress. This would include anyone who’s attended our training sessions in person, or who has found our online support, such as these blogs, useful. Watch out for more on this on our website, the Heritage Hub newsletter, and social media.
Finally, we’d like to encourage you to continue your archiving journey with us by:
- Joining our Heritage Hub community: sign up for our newsletter and follow us on social media.
- Providing feedback on our blogs; flagging up areas where you need more help and new topics which you’d like us to cover. The more feedback we get, the better and more relevant we can make our support.
- Looking out for new on-line, or even on-site, Heritage Hub training and support. We’ll advertise new opportunities via our newsletter, website and social media.
- Sharing what you’ve been doing with your collection by writing something for our blog or the Heritage Hub newsletter or our blog. It doesn’t have to be long or wordy – a picture can speak a thousand words!
This work forms part of our For the Record project, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. For further information please see https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/for-the-record/
You can contact us by emailing archives@gloucestershire.gov.uk
Kate Maisey - Archives Development Manager kate.maisey@Gloucestershire.gov.uk
What gains, if any, have there been from the covid-19 pandemic?
(A question that Gloucestershire Archives’ staff were asked to respond to by one of our volunteers)
This question is an odd one, at first glance, as the answer would appear to be, “Nothing!” But it deserves further consideration…
As some of you know, throughout the 2 national lockdowns, in 2020, Gloucestershire Archives’ staff have hosted weekly Zoom calls for any of our volunteers who wished to participate, and these were extended up to Christmas. One of our valued volunteers posed the question above, during one of the Zooms, and it was passed to me to attempt an answer!
I emailed several staff, and received very interesting responses from them, which I then shared at the next Zoom call with our volunteers, including the person who initially asked the question.
Despite the challenges posed to our service, by Covid-19, all those I talked to agreed that there had been lots of positives emerging from this difficult time for so many. We would like to share their responses with you, in this article.
The first is about the people – our staff, and customers (all comments from staff are either paraphrased or given verbatim where possible):
- The team are unified in the approach we are forced to take due to Covid-19. So, although all of us could do without the checking and quarantining and table assigning etc, there is a positive sense of us all coming together to do it, to get it right so everyone remains safe.
- Consequently, the team have been supporting each other when faced with a difficult situation, keeping spirits high, and focussing on solutions. I am really pleased and proud of their efforts.
- Also, fair to say that all of the archives’ staff have been working together more as a complete service. The whole office is determined that Covid-19 won’t stop us archiving! You only need to look at the lockdown activities pages to see how the service responded back in March, and since. We responded quickly, and remained positive and productive. www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/lockdown-resources-and-activities/
- The scanning project some of our staff were deployed to [opening, scanning and emailing post to GCC staff working from home], to keep GCC running during lockdown, involved re-deploying archives’ staff and they did us proud! The team was even featured in an online case study of good practice by the Local Government Association. (read article here)
- Our future plans, re-accreditation application, 3 and 10 year visions, work with an external marketing agency, establishing the new outreach team are all in motion. Covid-19 gave us time to fully assess ourselves, adjust, amend and plan for the future. Exciting times are ahead.
- Our customers have been so complimentary about our Covid-secure service. Their kind words have really bolstered us up.
- Their patience at having to make appointments; be assigned a locker and table; having to stick to document number restrictions; the need to wear masks; the need to deposit reference books in bins; the requirement to order carefully due to quarantine measures has been hugely appreciated by the Customer Services Team…so another positive would be that staff and customers have bonded over this challenging situation.
The second cluster of comments is all about processes (especially online), and day to day work behind the scenes, including lots of new opportunities:
- It has been easier to attend training, and meetings, as these have been largely online – with no travelling, or car parking, and a better use of staff time.
- Similarly, virtual [online] recruitment interviews have been beneficial to the interviewees, and for the managers who recruited new staff during lockdown (e.g. no travel expenses for candidates).
- The increased focus on online offering allowed a creative response and a new appreciation of possibilities (for example, for digitisation).
- We have had the opportunity to purge shared drives, personal drives and emails, especially during the first lockdown, saving valuable space on the servers, and is a task that cannot easily be done when it’s “business as usual”.
- The lockdowns have highlighted the importance of what we call “the Hubness of the Hub”, as a community, and our role in this ( eg organising volunteers Zoom meetings)
- It has given us the impetus to put our Hub training online (although to be fair, this was always in our For the Record plan)
- We have also been able to do stock-checking, especially during the two lockdowns.
- Covid-19 has been a good opportunity to collect digital material from our corporate bodies and learn new skills regarding the archiving of website snippets, for example.
- We have had an opportunity to get on with 3 and 10 year forward planning, our re-accreditation application, policy reviews, and these have put us in the best possible position when we get to end of For the Record, and the changed post-Covid world, to deliver the best possible service we can in the future.
- We have enjoyed new opportunities in engaging with new audiences on-line. It makes delivering an education service to Gloucestershire schools more achievable, as we can produce a particular resource once only, then share it again and again.
- The Gloucester History Festival films – e.g. family history films – show what can be achieved when circumstances demand that we do things differently [the History Festival was largely online in 2020].
- We have been able to use the space in the Dunrossil Centre for sorting a mammoth map series (Dowty), as we have had no room bookings.
- We have been able to tackle data inputting and data cleansing backlogs.
- We have had the opportunity to move materials into new strongrooms without having to shut the public service.
- We have raised Gloucestershire Archives’ profile within the County and City Councils, and beyond, particularly through the scanning project.
So the question what gains (if any) have there been from the Covid-19 pandemic? Is, after all, a really quite interesting one, with a great deal to share and reflect on!
Sally Middleton – Gloucestershire Archives.