Tag Archives: Archive

11.1 – In the Action on Hearing Loss Library (with BSL)

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For the next three days I’ll be in London. Today, I’m in the Action on Hearing Loss (UCL) library which is hidden inside an Ear Hospital near King’s Cross Station. It has loads of Deaf history material, which I can use for the St Saviour’s project.

Historians used to spend a lot more time in archives than they do now – the use of digital cameras means that I can now take photos of all of the records (that aren’t still under copyright) and then look at them back home.

Depending on how I get on here today, I’ll be at the London Metropolitan Archive tomorrow.

7.1 – Rotating… rotating

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In the old days (and still in some places where the resources are particularly fragile – or the archivist still enforces 20th century rules) you used to go into archives equipped with a pad, a pencil, and a mountain of boiled sweets… and spend the day scribbling until your wrist went dead, your eyes fell out, and your fingers fell off.

No more.

Most document collection now is done with a camera, which allows you to spend a lot less time in the archive, and a lot more time back home reading the material.

To make sure that you get the best possible photo of a document, you generally fit it to the camera screen shape – and since most photos that you take in an archive are of a single page, that means that most photos you come back with are on their side.

The first step is always to rotate them all so that you can read them. Which is easy if you are on your own, and you always hold the camera one way around.

Having returned from the archives with well over 700 photos of books, manuscripts, microfiche and other written material – I’m remembering how long it takes to rotate them all, and discovering that a shared camera means that I have to keep changing my rotation direction.

Almost done, then it’ll be time to folder them up and give them a structure.

 

5.5 – Back from the archives

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Project week 5, day 5.

We spent the first three days of the week in a variety of archives in London, looking for information on St Saviour’s, and reading about what happened (particularly in the set up of the church).

Monday – we were at the UCL Action on Hearing Loss library, where (amongst other things) they have the chaplains’ newsletters from the church, the Deaf and Dumb Times (mouthpiece of the early BDDA), and some journals by one of the church vicars (Gilby) which detail his experiences of the church.

Tuesday – we visited the site of St Saviour’s in Oxford street. And then went on to another church (this time a Baptist one) that was built around the same time. Although St Saviour’s isn’t there any more, the pavement still shows the original shape of the plot.

Tuesday afternoon was spent in the London Metropolitan Archives looking at the annual reports of the Royal Association for the Deaf (RAD) which was the overarching organisation that administered St Saviour’s.

Wednesday – we went on to Acton, where the church that replaced the original St Saviour’s is built. St Saviour’s Acton is up for sale by the RAD, and it was good to see it, and to see what’s inside it, before it goes. I was honoured to be able to interview an elderly Deaf man there who was born in 1910 (yes, really – he’s 104) and had living memory of the original St Saviour’s even if it was only for a couple of years (1921/22).

We’ve come back with nearly 700 photos of archival data, which is quite enough to be working through for a bit. John and I were able to spend the evenings talking through our findings, and we’re already beginning to think about the structure of what we’ve seen.

I’ll post up information from those findings, and more info on the project and the project team next week.