16
Wed May

Guest blog: … ask me one on Sport!

Posted by in Archives sector

I’ve turned over my blog spot this week to my colleague Cathy Williams, who brings news of an exciting launch.

The Olympic Record siteCathy writes: As much as I want you to read my first ever blogpost – and believe me, it’s been a painful process so I really would like you to – I would much rather you were off exploring our new site for The Olympic Record. It celebrates the history of the UK’s involvement with the Games and is launched today as part of The National Archives’ The Record, a four-year initiative to ensure a memory of the Olympics, the Paralympics and the Cultural Olympiad.

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14
Mon May

A desert island from my shelf

1
Posted by in Records, Technology
Desert Island by ronsaunders47

Desert Island (by Flickr user ronsaunders47 - CC-BY-SA)

When you work in an archive, a certain amount of shelving is, of course, unavoidable, and as a word, I always feel ‘shelving’ has quite a pleasant ring to it. But while it’s euphonious, it’s not positive in every context. It can imply something interrupted, put to one side, and it’s just life that this is what happens, in a world of competing priorities, to some projects that seemed like good ideas at the time.

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11

The assassination of Spencer Perceval

3
Posted by in Records, Research

The only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated was Spencer Perceval, and The National Archives has marked the 200th anniversary of this event, which occurred on 11 May 1812, by digitising two key documents about the murder.

Plan of the House of Commons Lobby showing the details of the assassination

TS 11/224 (Former Ref: 947 Part 2)

Among the papers of the Treasury Solicitor is a fascinating plan showing the House of Commons lobby which is where the assassination occurred. It shows all the ‘key players’ at 17:15 on 11 May 1812 by means of a coded system – circle no 1 is Spencer Perceval, having just entered the lobby, and circle No 2 is the assassin, John Bellingham, a merchant from Liverpool with an obsessive grievance against the government. This plan, which is part of the trial papers for John Bellingham, looks strangely ‘modern’ in a sense. Dotted lines show the routes that the assassin took immediately after shooting Perceval at point-blank range: Bellingham returned to the bench where he had been lying in wait earlier, making no attempt to escape. Continue reading »

10
Thu May

Scratching the surface

Posted by in Records
View of Lanercost Priory, Cumbria

View of Lanercost Priory, Cumbria

I recently enjoyed a weekend away with some friends in Carlisle, in the north-west of England. One of the places that we visited was Lanercost Priory, about 13 miles (21 km) east of the city. Once an important medieval religious community, the priory was dissolved under King Henry VIII. Part of the building has been restored for use as a parish church and the ruins of the rest are preserved by English Heritage as a historic monument.

No graffiti, please

No graffiti, please

I was particularly struck by a sign on one of the walls warning visitors not to write on or scratch the stonework. The Ministry of Works, which put up the sign, was a government department that used to be responsible for both modern government buildings and historic buildings in the government’s care [1]. Continue reading »

9
Wed May

Reconstructing a digital world: the ZX Spectrum

3
Posted by in Digital preservation, Technology

The theme of my next couple of blog posts will be about reconstructing the world we currently live in. Over the bank holiday weekend I attended an event that gave me new insight into a, for me, little-known digital world and gave me lots to think about in my work in digital preservation.

It has been 30 years since the release of the ZX Spectrum. To celebrate the impact this device has had on the UK in that time Imperica, the online magazine, held an event entitled Horizons. The theme, apart from reflecting on the ‘Spectrum at 30’, was very much binary, reflecting the past, and, exploring the future of computing.

ZX Spectrum +3

The past. My first computer, still alive and kicking today.

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8
Tue May

Spiders on the web: Archiving UK Government websites

Posted by in Technology, Web archiving

The UK Government Web Archive is one of the world’s largest and most used. Not only do we take regular snapshots of websites to guard against contemporary government information being permanently lost, we also use the collection to help our colleagues across government in their efforts to keep historical information truly accessible through the principle of Web Continuity.

Central to this is having an effective and consistent method for capturing this content.

Met Office Website 2012 Ash Cloud Continue reading »

3
Thu May

Dastardly Digital Dilemmas: 2) Shaping our tools

2
Posted by in Information management

We're often faced with issues of missing context

I consider myself to be a sane and rational human being. Friends and colleagues may disagree. However, like most of us, I am a follower of the path of least resistance. I do not seek to make life more difficult for me than it needs to be.

For those of you asking what that has to do with managing records, the answer is ‘everything’. Continue reading »

30
Mon Apr

The Beatles – Big in Japan

Posted by in Records

It’s strange and surprising what can influence record research. Last week I turned on the radio, and subsequently have had a lyric stuck in my head (‘Half of what I say is meaningless,’ as sung by John Lennon in The Beatles’ ‘Julia’). For no other reason, I decided to delve into one of the records The National Archives has relating to the most famous band the world has ever seen.

The Beatles in Japan - cover of despatch in FO 371/187127

The Beatles in Japan - cover of despatch in FO 371/187127

A search on our new catalogue, Discovery, provides a number of results for The Beatles, but one in particular catches the eye: the Foreign Office record referring to the band’s 1966 trip to Tokyo (FO 371/187127).[1]

The band arrived in Japan at the end of June 1966 on the back of a storm. Alongside the wild Beatlemania which had spread across the globe in previous years, a tropical storm delayed their arrival in Tokyo for several hours.  The ‘Beatles typhoon’, as it was nicknamed, provides a neat metaphor for the band’s days in the city, as they arrived to perform five concerts in five days at the Budokan Arena.

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