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Physical Conservation – Archival enclosures

admin — Sun, 27 Jul 2014 14:47:06 +0000

The team spent weeks earlier this year measuring every single volume and artefact, recording their sizes, collating the data, and ordering archival enclosures for each item. On May 26th Peter van Reenen from Jansen Beuns Wijsmuller, the Netherlands supplier of conservation enclosures, visited the project and provided valuable information for further conservation care in the future.

The conservation materials have now arrived from in the Netherlands and their introduction into the Collection will be carefully managed over the next few months.

A workshop, co-hosted with DK Conservators on 10th August will kick start this process:

Outsiders Within Conservation workshop invitation

documents:

OW Conservation workshop invitation.pdf

Phase 2 & 3

admin — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 01:39:18 +0000

In July 2013 we began the next phases of the project. These focus on:

Physical conservation of the archive (placing each volume into conservation packaging and marking the packaging with inventory numbers)
A care and conservation management plan for the collection
Updating the website for interaction and registration
updating the database for records management
A handbook to the collections and for use of the archive
A brochure for the Church
A piece of research (the first using the materials in the archive) that begins to reveal some of the wealth of possible understandings contained in the volumes
Planning for test digitising, and a small test of the method
4 workshops: Conservation handling, using the database for records management and planning, archival procedures and management of access, and the final workshop will be public

As part of this phase a few people will receive training in care and handling of the documents according to the protocols selected.

Technology

Our first workshop with Church council and congregants

admin — Sun, 20 Apr 2014 01:38:15 +0000

On 25 January 2014 our first workshop with Church council and congregants set out where we have been, where we are and where we are going. We established ethical and principled approaches for care of the collection, and formulated guidelines for gaining access to the archives that are acceptable to the Church. We discussed and agreed in principle some preliminary research topics that would most benefit the Church.

As the archive is temporarily not accessible for research, it was confirmed that the Church remains clearly committed to finding ways to assist people with requests for family history information.

The Church has raised funds towards part of this phase of the project. This confirmation of its enthusiams and commitment to supporting our work is much appreciated. The developing passion for the stories and history of their Church was expressed.

Life