Ledgers and newsletters - a placement report
Visitors to the Trust Archives often ask the archives team how we started our careers in archives. Our experiences vary, but currently the main route into a career as an archivist is via a postgraduate qualification. As well as contributing to course lectures and welcoming groups from the UCL Archives MA course, each year we also offer a placement for one of the current students to gain practical experience of cataloguing and research.
This year, we have been delighted to host Symona Turkson — huge thanks are due to her for her work over the fortnight. In this guest post, Symona looks back at her time in the archives and the collections she has catalogued. You can explore the new catalogue descriptions using the links below.
As part of my MA Archives course, I recently completed a 2-week work placement at Barts Health Archives where I was able to gain an insight into the role of an Archivist and learn more about the Trust’s collections. An interesting aspect I learned about the archives’ collection was how it is not just home to collections of the hospitals in the current Barts Health group but included a variety of other collections such as the German Hospital in Dalston, nursing schools and medical colleges. When working with the collection I was able to gain more historical context as to why all these different collections were all housed together. Another surprise was the range in record types, as I had never really considered other than medical records what other records would exist in a hospital archive.
My main tasks involved cataloguing accrued materials for the St Bartholomew’s Hospital archives collection. The first set of materials were ward magazines from the 1980s to early 1990s of parents, patients and staff contributions about their life on the Kenton ward, a children’s ward at Bart's that closed mid-1990s. My favourite record types to work with are ephemeral materials, so I really enjoyed cataloguing items that were so rich from the patient’s point of view and discovering ward outings that were very of the time. I often got lost in the patients and parents stories and loved the sense of community they all shared on the Kenton Ward. The new catalogue listings can be browsed online in series SBHB/CH/1.
The second set of material to catalogue were early 20th century rental accounts for properties owned by St Bartholomew's Hospital which differed massively from the ward magazine. These records were a lot older, so I was able to learn about preservation management issues and detect degradation of records through 'red rot'. There were some challenges along the way such as finding the right balance between breadth and depth for my cataloguing descriptions, making decisions that contributed towards the archive hierarchy, and navigating new collections management system. They are now catalogued within series SBHB/HC/5). But the team were very supportive and reassuring of my work that it made the process feel like solving the pieces of a puzzle rather than tackling the impossible.
Some other highlights included discussions with the Archivists about their outreach and engagement activities, the shift and increase of accessibility needs for users within the archival field, and their own memories as trainee Archivists. My time at Barts Health Archives was an engaging and invaluable experience, which has definitely solidified my career choice in archives. Very grateful to the Archivists Kate, Ginny and Medha for their support, and guidance throughout!