March 2012 | The National Archives blog

Posts from March 2012

Fri Mar

2012

Girls on file…

Posted by Jenni Orme in Records and research

March is Women’s History Month. Just in time, I’d like to share a file I was introduced to last year by our Education department.

The suffrage movement is a common theme when talking about achievements of women in the past, and we certainly hold a wealth of information here, from the force feeding of women on hunger strike, to 1911 census forms when women refused to provide their details to a government they had no say in electing. Although there are so many achievements of women to choose from, this wealth means there is always something more to talk about!

This file, MEPO 3/203, came to my attention while carrying out some research with colleagues on the last Maharajah of the Punjab, Duleep Singh and his family in preparation for last year’s Diversity Week.

However, it wasn’t a member of the Duleep Singh family that caught my eye during our research.

Image source: http://historysheroes.e2bn.org/hero/achievements/3521

Princess Sophia selling 'The Suffragette' (Image source: http://historysheroes.e2bn.org/)

We looked at a file relating to the Maharajah’s daughter, Princess Sophia Duleep Singh and her involvement with the Suffragettes. This particular file contains police reports on ‘Black Friday’, 18 November 1910, when Suffragettes clashed violently with police in response to the apparent stalling of the Bill in Parliament which would have granted suffrage to women of the upper classes. One particular statement, given by disabled protestor Miss May Billinghust, describes the brutality and humiliation the protestors reported:

Thu Mar

2012

Innovating at The National Archives

Posted by Oliver Morley in Technology and innovation

Colossus electronic digital computer, 1943 (Catalogue ref: FO 850/234)

I hope by now that you’re starting to get the idea that The National Archives is a bit of a dark horse when it comes to innovating in technology. We have, as far as I can tell, won more technology awards for more separate projects than anyone in the public sector except for the NHS, and we’re a little smaller. This culminated in a Queen’s Award for Enterprise and Innovation last year for our digital preservation technologies across all sectors and a public sector digital award for legislation.gov.uk. It doesn’t stop there – we also innovate in education, and the physical preservation of our collection, saving a lot of energy in the process.

So I thought it might be interesting to describe my view on our approach. I’ll look at technology, cost, and culture.

Thu Mar

2012

Could you help out with PhD research into online user participation in archives?

Posted by Alexandra Eveleigh in Records and research

Regular readers of this blog will have seen Ruth Roberts’ post last week about The National Archives’ research strategy. One current research priority is to find out more about The National Archives’ users, particularly in online contexts.

I am one of the research students currently being sponsored by The National Archives, and I’m hoping that you can help me out with this work.

My research focuses on participatory culture in archives, specifically on the kinds of online contribution initiatives we’ve seen piloted by The National Archives over the last four or five years: wikis, social tagging and commenting, and collaborative online volunteering or ‘crowdsourcing’. If you are a user of The National Archives’ website (whether or not you visit The National Archives in person) and have an opinion about participatory archives, I’d be pleased to hear from you.

http://ccit300-f06.wikispaces.com/Online+communities

The research will be carried out in two parts. The first is a very brief online survey. It would really help me if readers of this blog and visitors to The National Archives’ website could fill this in. There are just 7 simple tick box or yes/no questions, plus a couple of opportunities for you to submit comments. It should take you no more than a couple of minutes to complete.

You can complete the survey anonymously, but it also asks you to leave your name and a contact email address if you would be willing to take part in a follow-up interview.

Wed Mar

2012

#hackon12: We came, we saw, we didn’t sleep much

Posted by Jo Pugh in Technology and innovation

A few weeks ago when I talked about the purpose of hack days I promised I would report back after we had actually held one here at the Archives.

Last weekend, a large group of enthusiastic attendees joined us here at Kew for Hack on the Record. I think it might be the first hack day held actually inside a UK government department but I’d be happy to be proved wrong.

Approximately 12 hours in - only 12 to go!

Tue Mar

2012

Discover more than 300,000 naturalisation records

Posted by Mark Pearsall in Records and research

Naturalisation certificates (The National Archives series HO 334 and HO 409)

You can search naturalisations from 1870 to 1980 online now that the naturalisation catalogue enhancement project has recently been completed. All those who successfully applied for British nationality in the United Kingdom and some who applied in British colonies overseas from 1870 to 1980 can now be searched for by name on The National Archives catalogue. Descriptions at item level (some 300,000) have been added to the catalogue in the Home Office record series HO 334, which are duplicate copies of the naturalisation certificates issued to the individuals concerned. This means you no longer have to come to The National Archives to consult the old Home Office printed indexes in series HO 409 to identify people who naturalised. As well as searching by name these records can also be searched by nationality and place of residence (county or town), which is recorded from 1878.

Ernst Freud’s naturalisation certificate BZ 1216 of 30 August 1939 (HO 334/228/1216)

Mon Mar

2012

A light bulb moment – and a lost government ‘first’ is found

Posted by Linda Stewart in Technology and innovation

The previous blog from the UK Government Web Archive, brought to you by my colleague Claire Newing, took you back to the nostalgic 1990s. I’ll be mostly continuing Claire’s story, but, apart from a slight digression to 1858, looking at a more recent era of government technology.

In the early days of websites some folk were never wholly convinced of the value of archiving publications that could be obtained from elsewhere. Archivists like to deal in stable, certain things called records; you know where you are with a nicely labelled and dated government file, or even a fragment of medieval parchment, unchanged for centuries. Hence a whole debate went on around whether or not a website was a record; maybe it was a medium for documents that were records – or maybe it wasn’t. Happily The National Archives didn’t wait for the outcome; we went ahead and captured government websites anyway. Meanwhile, as the record debate raged, a further complication appeared: the web became an interactive medium with technologies bundled together as Web 2.0: blogs, wikis, crowd sourcing – web users could interact with the content, adding their own thoughts to pristine web pages. In the event, Web 2.0 brought with it a demonstration of the long term value of archiving website material, although it didn’t seem like it at the time.

If a website was a government record, well, here were people, members of the public from anywhere on the planet, actually changing that record. And anyway, how could something as informal as a blog be a record?

Nonetheless, in a small way at first, government began to blog. It seems commonplace now, but it was only five or six years back that the first Ministerial blog was posted by David Miliband as Minister of Communities and Local Government at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

It was long thought that the ODPM blog was lost to posterity, as David Miliband was shortly afterwards posted to Defra, taking his blog with him. But researching in the UK Government Web Archive for today’s post, I found that a Defra crawl has picked up the links back to ODPM, and by clicking on the ‘posts by category ’ tabs it looks as if all, or nearly all, of the lost first ministerial blog is there.

Fri Mar

2012

Thinking about the box

Posted by Sarah VanSnick in Behind the scenes

Think for a minute about your last visit to a museum.

Now, can you picture what one of the display cases looked like?

I’m guessing you probably can’t. I imagine most people never even consider the box displaying their favourite piece of the past. And that’s good, because it means someone’s done a good job. The idea is for the objects displayed to be the centre of attention and for the display case to fade into the background; to not be memorable.

I have to admit to spending a fair amount of time actually looking at display cases when I visit museums these days. I’m always interested to see how others are displaying objects, and the technology and materials they are using. It’s just like back in the days when I used to sell window blinds; whenever I walked into a room the blinds were always the first thing I noticed!

The Collection Care Department manages many aspects of The National Archives’ on site museum including the display cases. It’s not as simple as just setting up the document, locking the case, walking away and forgetting about it for a few months. We spend a good amount of time behind the scenes maintaining our cases. For some display cases, this means we have to do regular maintenance work on machines that control the relative humidity, an important agent of deterioration. Other display cases use a passive means to buffer changes in relative humidity. These contain materials like silica gel that require regular changing and recharging to be effective. Then we need to monitor the microenvironment we’ve created to ensure the cases continue to provide suitable environmental conditions for the different types of records we’ve got on display. We also test the cases to make sure they are airtight to protect the documents on display from pollutants such as dust.

Thu Mar

2012

Bringing documents to your living room

Posted by Caroline Heil in Records and research

The book ‘She-Wolves: England’s Early Queens,’ has been made into a three-part television series and the final episode was shown on BBC 4 last night. The series takes a look at the reign of seven queens of medieval and Tudor England and their struggle in a male-dominated monarchy.

In her book, Dr Helen Castor includes an illustration of the rear side of the Great Seal of Philip and Mary I, an original copy of which can be found attached to document DL 10/422. In this final episode Dr Helen Castor made a visit to The National Archives to take a look at this seal as it depicts Mary I in a more authoritative position than Philip.

The term ‘Great Seal’ is given to seals used by monarchs to authorise official documents, which were held in the custody of the Chancellor. A new great seal was made for each reign, with old seals ceremonially broken up once the reign had ended. This particular seal is 454 years old and is available to view at our reading rooms in Kew for any visitor with a valid readers ticket.

DL 10/422, a Great Seal of Philip and Mary I attached to a document annexing lands to the Duchy of Lancaster

Wed Mar

2012

The big questions…

Posted by Ruth Roberts in Records and research

As you’ve probably picked up from the themes of the blogs over the last few weeks, the work of The National Archives is extremely varied. In the Research Team we are keen to support new thinking across a range of topics from history and conservation to new technologies and digital preservation.

The Research Team consists of two people – myself and the Head of Research, Dr Valerie Johnson. In autumn last year Valerie and I started thinking about the organisation’s research strategy for 2012/13. We decided to ask the Executive Team’s help in shaping some strategic research priorities to feed into our new strategy. With no constraints or instructions from the Research Team, the Directors were asked to simply come up with the four key questions that they wanted answered within the year. The kind of questions that were keeping them awake at night. They came up with the following:

What is the nature of the digital archival record?
How has digital changed the needs, expectations and nature of research and user behaviour?
How can we develop and exploit digital information extraction tools to help support digital selection and digital sensitivity review?
Can we develop Open Data models to provide better-quality, authentic and trusted data for use and re-use?

Mon Mar

2012

Is there a buzz at the archives?

Posted by Christine Berry in Behind the scenes

Pollen covered honey bee

Lots of sunshine and warmer weather means there is a buzz in the air, as spring finally arrives. The honey bees (Apis mellifera), here at The National Archives can now be seen collecting pollen and nectar from our bee friendly plants. I took the photo on the right last week on a sunny afternoon and the willow was alive with honey bees and bumble bees too.

Honeybees on the frames

In May 2010 honey bees were first introduced as part of the Biodiversity project at The National Archives, the idea was based on a number of suggestions from staff. Back then we started from scratch, this included assembling the hives and introducing honey bees that would suit the environment in which they were to be kept. This meant that they needed to be socially acceptable bees, you may laugh but this is true! So we selected Buckfast Abbey Honey bees, bred by Brother Adam at Buckfast Abbey in Devon to become very gentle honeybees – although like all honey bees they will still sting, they are bred to have a low sting instinct.

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