Tag: Archives

Archives

Moving the RCS Archives

Posted on

Louise King: Archivist, The Royal College of Surgeons of England

In June 2017 the archives of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (the College/ RCS) moved to the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA)…well, most of them did…and they haven’t moved forever…it’s a long story but I will try to keep it brief!

In May 2015, I attended my first meeting to discuss how we would move the archive collections out of the building, where to, for how long, and how we would prepare them for this upheaval. Over the next two years I attended a lot of meetings, counted a lot of things relating to archives and was grateful to a lot of very hardworking individuals. Don’t get me wrong, the work on the archives didn’t suddenly start that day in 2015, it had been going on since the start of the century when the College appointed its first professional archivist, but the prospect of a move makes you think about things differently.

As well as the archives, the library and the museums needed to move the majority of their collections out too, but my focus was the archives. The reason for the move was that, by 2015, the College was made up of parts that had mostly gone up since the 1950s (the only 19th century parts were the portico, the Library and the entrance hall) and was no longer fit for the College’s activities and staff in the 21st century.

Preparation:
Our small team already carried out the processing, including basic repackaging when required, and promotion of the archives. Our archive collections (a mix of the College’s own papers and those relating to the history of surgery) were housed in a number of rooms in the basement (of course!) of the College. They weren’t perfect but they were adequate. With the prospect of the College being largely knocked down and rebuilt, and relying on other people to work with our collections, we now had to look at the collections and what we did with a different eye.  We had to consider questions such as: are the collections packaged well enough to protect them during journeys in a van and are the box labels correct and clear if you aren’t familiar with our collections? Every archive has labels that have been amended but not printed off again, yet, but when other people will be handling the boxes for you, suddenly these potentially confusing labels appeared to be on every other box!

Conservator Kostas Tsafaridis showing the Archives team how to make phase boxes

In May 2015 we were a team of just 1.5 people (with occasional volunteers) but to prepare for the move we took on someone to backfill the daily tasks for me and a cataloguer. The meetings I attended were largely to discuss the logistics not only of our own move, but to ensure that we didn’t clash with the library or museums as well as the rest of College. We also had to make the arrangements for the off-site storage with our new partners.

We decided that using barcodes on the archive boxes would be beneficial both during the move and for tracking future movements. Tablets and scanners were bought, each pair of barcodes were put on a short and a long side of each box. We then scanned the barcodes into an Excel spreadsheet because we were unable to scan straight into Adlib.

Harrow Green unloading the first cages of archive boxes at LMA

We used Harrow Green for the moves of the archives and of the library. For the archives we just used them on moving days but the library also used them to help with packing up the books (wrapping in tissue, moving to temporary locations). We all agreed how fantastic the team working on our project were!

The Move:
The moving days were possibly the easiest part of the whole project. Most of the archives were moved during one warm week in June. Three days were spent shuttling between the College (near Holborn) and the LMA (Clerkenwell) and one day going out to TNA at Kew. Archives staff were at each end to oversee the Harrow Green staff loading boxes into cages, onto and then off the vans before going onto their new shelves.

Archivists Sophie Gibbs and Fahema Begum with trollies ready to relocate

They felt like long days! Harrow Green like to start early, to get as many van loads done as they safely can in a day, so we took it in turns to be in early and rotated the other posts.

The shelves at LMA were already barcoded and we have put barcodes on the shelves we are using at TNA, so once boxes were unloaded, the barcode on their new shelf was scanned into the spreadsheet.

Post-move:
You’d think that the rest of the summer would have been quiet and an anti-climax. I was now an archivist separated from the bulk of her archives (without the means to provide access) and the rest of the College was gradually being packed up. But that meant that people started finding “things” for the archives so we had to start a new series of “uncatalogued” boxes (which we then moved along with the office contents in September). We also needed that time to input the new locations into the catalogue. All too soon, we were moving out of our office at the College, the Library was no longer “ours” as the whole building was handed over to the contractors, and we moved our last boxes over to LMA.

The Library just before it was handed over to the contractors in September 2017

The last of the (archives, library and museums) project staff left in August. The Archives team is back to 1.5 people working in both Holborn and at LMA.. The current situation takes a lot of explaining to some people but our researchers are gradually venturing to Clerkenwell where LMA staff retrieve the boxes and invigilate the Archives Study Area. The arrangements all seem to be working well so far.

The Future:
The architects are hard at work on the plans. Knowing that we will only have a fraction of the on-site storage that we used to, we are making plans for long-term off-site storage and retrievals. While the Library and the front of the College won’t be changing much, their use will be. This means that we are now planning a search room from scratch. It will be smaller (we used to have the whole Library) but will be easier to invigilate and provide services for researchers. The College is due to re-open in 2020.

If anyone reading this is planning a move, particularly of cross-domain collections, do get in contact as we would be happy to share our experiences and lessons learned.

Archives

McCarthy Award for History of Medicine Research

Posted on

Eligibility

This award is open to all researchers in the history of medicine, or related social and cultural history fields. Researchers can be based in the United Kingdom or overseas. Please be aware that for overseas finalists, travel expenses to the event will only be paid from their point of entry into the United Kingdom.

Application and Selection Procedure

Research must be unpublished and must have been undertaken in the last 3 years. Research which has been submitted for publication will be considered, but details should be given of when and where it has been submitted, and if it has been accepted for publication. Abstracts must be based on original research in the field.

The deadline for submissions is 31 August 2018.

Abstracts must be submitted in either PDF or Word format along with a completed application form and curriculum vitae. The abstract must not exceed 1000 words in length. The curriculum vitae must not exceed two sides of A4.

Applicants, if chosen, must be willing to present their research on Friday 19 October 2018. This is a public event, to encourage engagement with the history of medicine in Scotland.

The Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh will publish the winning paper. The winner will also be asked to submit a guest blog post on their research for publication on the College’s heritage blog.

The award can only be awarded to an individual once.

Further Information

Any enquiries can be directed to Iain Milne (link sends e-mail) 0131 247 3625

Guest Post

Cataloguing North Cambs Hospital

Posted on

In this post, Tiff Kirby, archives assistant at the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Archives, discusses her experience cataloguing the North Cambridgeshire Hospital records.

North Cambridgeshire Hospital, known as North Cambs, has served the people of Wisbech and North Cambridgeshire for a hundred and forty-four years. It was the initiative of philanthropist Margaret Trafford Southwell, who gave £8000 for the construction of the hospital, and £2000 as an endowment. It functioned as a voluntary hospital, paid for through subscriptions, until it became a General Hospital with the advent of the NHS. The records held at Cambridgeshire Archives span the period from before its construction to the 1990s, and they were catalogued in 2017.

During the record survey, it was evident that stickers surviving on the spine of some of the records, specifically volumes and substantial files, were evidence of a filing system. Unfortunately not enough of these stickers survived to reconstruct this system. To preserve it in an accessible way, the number on the sticker was included in the catalogue description so that this relationship between records was evident. In 1962 a survey of the hospital records was carried out by the then County Archivist. This showed that minutes and reports were kept in the secretary’s office, and patient registers and cash books kept in a nearby cupboard. This appeared to show sequences that, where possible, were followed while cataloguing. But these two systems conflicted. For example, in the 1962 survey, minutes of the Hospital Committee came before any other record, but in the sticker number sequence the first volume of the minutes was numbered 141. Files and other material held in four large boxes showed no apparent order, by chronology, subject, function or department, so original records of the endowment and construction of the hospital were held in a box with records of a time capsule excavation and application for trust status in the 1990s. The structure of the catalogue was based on function, but incorporated elements of original order and sequences wherever possible.

The collection includes the complete minutes of the Hospital Committee for the period North Cambs was a voluntary hospital. The Deed of Trust includes the constitution and provision for four Trustees, who were part of the management committee, along with 8 additional members who had subscribed a guinea a year for at least three years. The Committee met every Tuesday at midday. Details in the records include the purchase of a new chloroform inhaler at the beginning of the twentieth century, preparations for war such as blacking out and the purchase of gas masks, and controversy and opposition to the loss of the Hospital’s independent voluntary status with the advent of the National Health Service.

To develop services and expand capacity for increasing numbers of patients, North Cambs worked in partnership with other hospitals. Between 1925 and 1962 it worked with Addenbrooke’s hospital for the training of nurses, and from 1933 the provision of specialist services with a weekly Orthopaedic clinic by H.B. Roderick of Addenbrookes. 1946 – 9 saw the assistance of Addenbrooke’s to provide Medical and ENT Outpatient sessions. Lack of space post-war led to collaboration with the Clarkson hospital in Wisbech, which supplied two post-operative wards, enabling North Cambs to increase the number of surgeries.

From its opening in 1873 to the introduction of the NHS, North Cambs was governed by the Committee formed at the foundation of the hospital. From 1949 it was developed into a General Hospital providing a full range of specialist services, and was part of Peterborough Area Hospital Management Committee. In 1953 Peterborough Hospitals separated from North Cambridgeshire, and the hospital came under North Cambridgeshire Hospital Management Committee. In 1974 the Regional Hospital Boards were abolished and North Cambs came under West Norfolk and Wisbech Health Authority. From 1982 to 1990 the hospital came under the West Norfolk and Wisbech Health Authority Unit Management Team. In 2002 the Regional Health Authorities were replaced with Strategic Health Authorities. Today North Cambs is administered under Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust.

News

Retreat hospital archive available online

Posted on
The Borthwick Institute are pleased to announce that The Retreat hospital archive has been digitised (with funding from the Wellcome Collection) and is now available online.
The Retreat Archive relates to the one of the most important institutions in the care and treatment of mental health patients. The Retreat in York was founded by the Society of Friends and opened in 1796. The archive itself is unusually complete and includes administrative, financial, staff, estate and patient records and consists of bound volumes, loose papers, maps, photographs, artefacts from the museum and a small number of paintings.
Over 650,000 digital images have been captured by the project team – amounting to about 80% of the catalogued archive (note that material relating to patients dating from 1920 to the present day was excluded from the digitisation project).
There is a wealth of material in the archive that can be used for research. To get a flavour of some of the interesting things that staff have encountered whilst working on the project read some of our blog posts:
Or dive into The Retreat catalogue and follow the links that are available to the digital content hosted by the Wellcome Collection.