Category Archives: Work Experience

Geraldine – My time in the Archive

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I began my work experience at West Lothian Archives and Records Centre on Wednesday 4th of July and for two months I have loved every minute of it! Having no previous experience in archives, the staff was quick to enlighten me and give me a wide range of tasks that gave me a better understanding of what it is like working in an archive.

 

I initially transcribed 19th century log books from schools in the local area to see if there were any major developments or changes to the area that the school’s Headmaster would note down. It was fun to read about the nuances of the school’s daily life that were so different to my own school experience. There were outbreaks of measles and whooping cough and children “absent without leave” from the school as they went to help in the harvest, which all paled my “struggles” of homework and maths. I later transcribed World War Two log books from my local village and was fascinated to hear about the various changes that everyone – pupils, teachers and school officers – faced together. When reading about the air raids or a teacher being called up for military service after it was noted he was married three weeks beforehand, you get a real sense of what it was like for the everyday person during that difficult time as well as the community spirit of the people mentioned.

 

I also catalogued Community Council minutes and agendas of West Lothian from the late 1970’s to the mid 2000’s. This was more of a challenge for me as I had to fill in the details of the archives onto a database, but I had plenty of help and once I got the hang of it I was able to progress through them. The de-stapling of the minutes and keeping track of all the catalogue numbers was a challenge I embraced. Like the school log books, the feeling of a community is felt in their collaboration of making their town or village theirs by taking an interest in the issues and problems of their area.

 

Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in West Lothian Archives and I’m still amazed by what treasures they have in the building. Though some are grander than others, like the school log books and the Community Council Minutes, they are all a part of a community and I would like to thank the staff at the Centre for making me a part of theirs!

Olympic Torch Relay 2012

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My name is Fiona Sinclair. I went to West Lothian Archives and Records Centre for my Work Experience. It was a very fun and enjoyable week that I will never forget. On Monday the 11th of June when I arrived at the Archive and Records Centre, I was given a tour of the archives by Stephen and Elizabeth. I was quickly shocked at how many boxes of documents, minutes and photographs that there were as I didn’t expect it to be so big.

 

When I started work I began digitising photographs of sport so that we could add them to the display board that we were preparing for the Olympic Torch Relay, which would be travelling through Broxburn. As well as digitising the photographs I also had the chance to experience cataloguing the photographs into their correct boxes. This took quite a long time as there were a lot photographs and Stephen and I had to find the correct box for each individual image to go into. Time passed very quickly as some of the images were very amusing. I really enjoyed the experience of cataloguing and digitising the photographs.

 

On my work placement I also had the very exciting experience of going to watch the Olympic Torch Relay. I felt very excited as I had never witnessed anything like it before. When we first arrived in Broxburn we went to the Church where our display boards were on show to the public. After we had shown the display, Emma, Jennifer and I fought our way through the crowds until we had a view of the Olympic Torch travelling through the street!

 

Overall I greatly enjoyed my Work Experience placement and I am very glad that I chose to go to the Archives and Records Centre! However it saddens me that next week I will have to return to school instead of going back to do another week of work experience which I would happily do again!

Volunteer!

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Would you like to help West Lothian Council Archives in its work of preserving and enabling access to its historic collections?  Anyone with spare-time and an interest in history or considering a career in the archives profession can volunteer in the Archives and Records Centre.

Volunteering provides an opportunity to work within a small friendly team, to use existing skills and learn new ones.  It offers a unique perspective of archives and allows you to get up close and personal with historical documents and photographs.

Volunteers can assist in a variety of projects such as cleaning, sorting, listing and re-housing records, or help in the digitisation of some of the thousands of photographs and negatives held in the archives.  Recent volunteers have been listing estate papers and the records of the Soroptimist Club of West Lothian; assisted with putting together exhibitions and promotional material for Livingston 50; and digitising negatives from the Bob Wallace collection and hundreds of LDC photographs.

The Archives has been awarded funding from the National Cataloguing Grants Programme for Archives to catalogue our Livingston collections. The funding award recognises these collections as being of national and international significance and the project coincides with the 50th anniversary of the new town.  Entitled “Livingston New Town, from Plan to Community, 1962-2012”, the project will involve cataloguing and preserving the records of Livingston Development Corporation; local Community Councils; Craigsfarm Community Centre; the Livingston Players; Tam Dalyell, MP; and the Reverend Dr. James Maitland.  The project archivist will begin work on the 18 month project in July and there will be opportunities for volunteers to work on a number of different tasks and types of record.  If you are interested in helping in this exciting project then please contact us by the end of July.

We also offer week-long work placements to local school pupils throughout the year, through the West Lothian work experience programme.  The pupils are shown all aspects of the work carried out at ARC and are given small pieces of digitisation, preservation and indexing work to complete.  We also encourage them (and our volunteers) to write blogs about their experience!

We consider all requests for voluntary placements or work experience, we provide basic training, and work with volunteers to develop an interesting and varied programme of work.  If you are interested in volunteering some of your time please feel free to contact or visit the Archives and Records Centre.

Capturing History: Livingston 50

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My name is Caitlin, I went to the West Lothian Archives and Records centre for my work experience, and it proved to be a very enjoyable week. When I arrived on Monday morning I was taken for a quick tour of the archives, and I was amazed to see how many boxes of documents there are! I was also delighted by the moving shelves in the archives, what can I say; I’m easily amused!

I then began work digitising photographs of Livingston from the ‘60s and ‘70s in preparation for them to be uploaded to flickr, a photo sharing website, for Livingston’s 50th birthday next year. You may think that it’s just a little early to start uploading pictures for an anniversary next year, but there are 6000 photographs in the Livingston development corporation collection, each with their own description written in three log books and even with a week of working on this task I barely scratched the surface.

Some of the photographs that I was digitising proved to be very interesting; there were many aerial shots of Livingston revealing lots about the town that I didn’t know, and it was fascinating to see as I went thought the pictures, the progression from plans for buildings, to construction, to the buildings as they are today. As well as enlightening aerial shots, there were a number of photographs that I liked, not only because of the insight they gave into what this area was like forty or fifty years ago, but because they were excellent photographs. In particular a photograph of three little girls with their hands on their hips in a v formation on steps, looking down on another little girl made me laugh when I first saw it, and a black and white photograph of a helicopter put a smile on my face.

On the whole I greatly enjoyed my time working at the archives, and I’ll be sad when, on Monday morning, I have to go to school and not come back here.

Have a look at some of the images I digitised, go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/westlopics/

 

My Work Experience: By Matthew Scott

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On the 11th October 2010 I embarked on work experience to West Lothian’s Archive and Record Centre. In all honesty I was expecting to find myself in a dark gloomy building with cobwebs covering the walls however I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a brightly lit room. The archive itself is impressive, I imagined it to be well organised and I was right. When I think about it, this archive contains information which dates back to more than a hundred years ago for the whole of West Lothian. That is going to take a lot of arranging and credit should go to the people behind the scenes who make it happen. You know who you are!

One of my first tasks was to repackage and mark old photographs taken by photographer Bob Wallace. There was a whole box of the small photos he had taken in West Lothian over the course of his career. This was a huge project as it takes a long time to carry out this process which I can vouch for. The length of time it took though had no effect on me because I knew I was unravelling history and keeping it safe from destruction.

Another of my tasks was to update the old school records onto a database. I was specifically looking at Crofthead Primary school in the year 1893-1894. I was challenged at times in trying to read the writing in the old fragile book but that’s part of the job. I also took a look at the poor records and some of the entries which were recorded in these books are a real tragedy. This gave an idea of how different the standard of life people led was back then. As my Grandad told me what his mother had told him, ‘The good old days, they were anything but’.

The workers at West Lothian’s Archive and Records Centre are committed to doing their job and enjoy it as well. They have been great in helping me out and explaining to me what their role is within the council. In being here I have been giving an experience of what the work environment is like. This can only help as I begin to paint of picture of what I would like to do for a living. Thanks again to Archives and Records Centre for taking me on.

My Work Experience: By John Matthew Noble

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From Monday to Friday this week I was working at the Archives and Records Centre of West Lothian as part of my work experience placement. My working hours were 10am to 4pm, with lunch being 12:30-1:30.

Initially, I wasn’t sure what to expect from my placement here, as I hadn’t heard of the Archives beforehand.

My mother said it would likely provide an interesting week of work, and so I booked for the week beginning the 25th of October. Everyone there was (and is) very nice people and we got on extremely well.

On Monday the 25th I spent some of the morning meeting the staff, and the rest of the morning repackaging and marking photo negatives taken by newspaper photographer Bob Wallace. After lunch I proceeded to talk with staff member Rhona about the poor law index. After that a researcher came in to look at some documents, and so I went back to my morning’s task for the rest of the afternoon.

On Tuesday the 26th I returned to meet Stephen, who I was working with that day. In the morning, we were indexing school admission registers (transferring them from written page to computer screen). In the afternoon, we were placing building documents from acidic boxes to acid free boxes, to preserve them.

On Wednesday the 27th it was my 16th birthday, but I was happy to spend it at work rather than school! The morning was spent again repackaging (and marking) the negatives, whilst that afternoon I was Indexing.

On Thursday the 28th I did as yesterday.

On Friday the 29th I used the morning to write this blog, and then in the afternoon I will be back to repackaging and marking negatives.

All in all, this week has been excellent.

I really enjoyed working here with the staff, and would gladly return for another week, or two, or three, or four…

I thank Emma, who has helped me a lot this week.

I thank Elizabeth, who is good for a chat.

I thank Rhona, who taught me what a Parish is.

I thank Stephen, for being the other male presence.

I thank last my Mum, who got me to book this placement.