Today we were introduced to our projects. After talking with Dawn about her work at Kiplin Hall in the last 10 years (she is actually the first curator at Kiplin, and for a few months was the only staff member employed by the Trustees, so just imagine the amount of work she has done), she took us around to our different project areas.
We are divided into three groups of two: Anjuli and Haley are working on a historic preservation project involving a Victorian era conservatory previously erected on the grounds. Bits and pieces of it were unearthed recently as the gardener tried to turn the area into an Arts and Crafts era Garden. Now that has been put on hold until more work can be done on the conservatory. Sarah and Virginia are working on accessioning the books into the collection; all of the extremely valuable books were unfortunately auctioned off by Sotheby’s some time ago, but even so many fine 18th and 19th century manuscripts remain.
Rebecca and I are continuing the work on the Archives begun by previous students (some six or eight years ago). After consulting their extensive finding aid and some of the records recently sent over by their trustee manager, we came up with a multi-prong plan. First, there are several mistakes (mistake may be too harsh a word) within the finding aid, and several things are misfiled, or would be better suited somewhere else. The previous archivists did not leave any room for expansion, and as the current records end in 1990, this is a problem. We will also be reworking the organization of the current Archives. Of course, we are merely tweaking what has already been tweaked, so I can’t help but think that in 6 years some other group of students will come through with a better idea than ours. This idea of taking modern notions to rework the past is turning out to be a modern theme in our course. Remember the wall paintings from yesterday that were uncovered during the restoration of St. Agatha’s by Sir Gilbert Scott during the Victorian era? Well, take a look back at the scene from Genesis and notice the outlining of the figures in a darker color. The outlines were actually added by Scott, and at the time he believed he was restoring the paintings to their original form, but at the same time these restorations reflected the times in which he lived. Please pop over to our class blog and see if Anjuli has written about this idea.
Also, there is neither an Archival or Record Retention policy in place, so we will be leaving many procedural recommendations for Dawn, if not an entire policy to work from. For some reason the accreditation for museums in England do not require either of these policies (which is something I will continue to investigate). We will also try to Archive from 1990 until at least 2005, so that in future years there will not be such an overwhelming amount.
Tonight we are attending a Garden Party in Richmond hosted by Richard Almond, the Medieval Historian from yesterday. So I will leave you with pictures of the sheep outside our cottage, as I only got around to taking one today.
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