During this visit to the archive at Lee Mills I wanted to understand the process in which they archive the pieces on a digital database. I wanted to experience this side of archiving for the end article as I thought it would be important to include in our group experience of archiving and understanding of the importance of archiving.
Paper cards in date order that correspond to the digital database
The Data base is done in two parts firstly the items are catalogued on separate paper cards organised by number into years starting from 1991 to the present time. The cards then correspond to the digital excel database which has been typed in to the system. The details and information that is recorded on each item includes; date of when the item was made, the knit/crochet structure, condition, colour, yarn, date donated/bought and the donor. The system is a very effective system and it has taken the volunteers a long time to record the information into this database and keep it correct.
Assisting With Checking The Information In The Database:
Within my experience with helping Angharad spot check the archives in the database I was given the task of finding the correct paper visions of the pieces and cross checking them with the digital database. This task allowed me to experience archiving first hand and allowed me to share with the group the process that Lee Mills use. Together as a group we’ve decided to include this as part of our overall experience of archiving at Lee Mills within our final article. We thought this would be a good section to have in the article as it’s one of the most important tasks the volunteers have to keep a solid copy and up to date record of the collection.
Improving The Digital Database:
Another important issue we discussed today as part of looking at the digital database was how they wanted to develop more of an online imagery based catalogue of the collection. This was brought up after discussing the problems of just having written descriptions of the items as you can’t always identify the archives just from reading the description. Another important point Angharad made was that when museums or other guild members wanted to look or borrow a particular item or collection within the archive it was difficult to locate so they thought having an imagery based catalogue this would improve this problem.
- Overall we felt as a group today we gathered and narrowed our ideas down and we felt that included our experience and knowledge of the digital database will be a topic we will include in our final article.
Next week we have decided we need to have a team meeting to discuss how we will format the article and bring our own individual experiences of the archive together.
-Abbey Price
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