Last week at the archive...

One thing we could say about the archive work, it's varied. Last Monday saw us putting the finishing touches to our exhibition. On Tuesday we discovered some wonderful old papers. On Wednesday, we finally began Phase 2 cataloguing. Thursday, the 1st day of August, was a catch-up day, and next week we'll be back to the cataloguing.

Working on the exhibition images

On a normal catch up day I'll be picking up a few of the 'dropped plates' from the archive - those tasks which need to be done to keep things ticking over but which sometimes get sidelined. Last week it was oral history interview proof reading, chasing up some almost overdue transcriptions, replying to blog comments and emails, and some supplementary research.

Wonderful old documents to discover!

Phase 2 cataloguing

The research is for a conference in September, hosted by the Centre for History and Culture at the university, and taking place in the centre of Bath. Some of the PhD students will be giving a 'Poster Presentation' of their work, and my offering is about the 18th century development of Newton Park. During my research stint last week, I found a few snippets from newspapers of the time, describing the building work of 1761 and 1762.

November 1762

January 1762

Last week's blogpost was about Graduations, and yet again, a couple of comments from alumni have set us off on a new trail of information. We now have added details about other graduation ceremonies, to add to the archive. Thanks for the comments!

During the past year or so, I've also been involved, along with Dr Roberta Anderson, in the writing of a book about our institutional history, and this is now going through the editing and proof reading stage. It was fascinating to write, and even more fun to source all the images. This task was a reminder of just how rich and varied our story is, and what a lot of great images we have here in the archive. Much of this material is what we've collected or been given in the last year, since the archive started to take off, and its tempting to wonder how much more we''ll have by this time next year, or in a few year's time.

Keep it coming, everyone. We'd love to hear your stories too!

TTFN

Kate