Reflection On Volunteering At Westminster Archives

While volunteering at Westminster Archives I was involved with a project conserving and cataloguing a collection of lantern slides. I joined the project midway through, and my first task was to check the lantern slides against the image library card catalogue to see if any were duplicates of images already held in the collection. This was an early lesson in the realities of archive acquisition! My next task was to catalogue the lantern slides onto CALM. As I was working with images, which had varying levels of written detail, this meant using context and research to work out what was in some of the images. For example, for two slides featuring locomotives, it could be deduced from the slides they were grouped with and the date that the locomotives

I prioritised longer projects, such a cataloguing Main Papers, and used smaller tasks as a way to ensure I did not make mistakes due to the routine nature of the tasks. I learned how to use a range of CALM features, such as creating, amending and cloning records at file and item level, importing tables from Word and using the search features to check information on documents. During the two weeks I became more confident in my own judgement and ability. For example, creating the summaries for the Lloyd-George papers required me to decide what details to include. Receiving feedback on my projects throughout the placement helped me develop my initiative and improve my knowledge. I also used Adobe Bridge to quality assure two digitised documents, learning how to spot issues with naming, colouring, metadata or any missing images in the sequence, and then recording problems on Excel using the correct terminology. One aspect of the placement I enjoyed was gaining an insight into the VOTE100 project and the events being run for the Magna Carta anniversary. I scheduled tweets in Excel about the election of women MPs and assisted with the escorting of tours around the archive. I want to gain more experience in engaging the public with archives, as I believe everyone should be able to use archives to learn and

My main project involved cataloguing and organising information in Excel about a collection of CDROMS with old webpages stored on them. This involved separating the failed and successful rips but still recording the failed rips to provide feedback on the batch ripping of CDs. As the content was downloads of past websites I had to use my initiative in describing the content, as there was little structure in place for this material. It also required me to quickly pick up the technical language to describe the type of web content included on the CD. At the end of my placement I handed over the project to a member of staff, which required me to concisely explain the project and the processes being used in the spreadsheet to record the