October 2012
A monthly newsletter from Archive, Records Management and Museum Services (ARMMS) and the Centre for Archive and Information Studies (CAIS) at the University of Dundee.This is the latest edition of the ARMMS and CAIS newsletter, eARMMS, that we also post here. Let us know if you would like an email copy each month.
In this edition:
- New Staff Member
- Doors Open Day 2012
- The Airlie Morning Post
- 8th Annual Culture Day
- Outreach Activities
- Dundee Science Festival
- Human Race Events
- CAIS Update
- Carnoustie Golf Club
- Scottish Council on Archives Portal Project
- The Recordkeeper’s Bookshelf
- Postgraduate Students Visit Archives
- Freedom of Information – Changes to Publication Schemes
- CAIS visit to Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)
- Sad News
1. New Staff Member
This month CAIS was delighted to welcome our new Programme Administrator, Daria Wall, who has joined the CAIS team in place of Angela. Daria is an experienced administrator, and was previously with the School of Humanities, where she was Postgraduate Officer.
2. Doors Open Day 2012
On Saturday 22nd Archive Services held two well attended tours as part of Dundee’s Doors Open Day 2012 events. Keren showed the visitors round our repositories, while Kenneth gave a short talk on the archives before introducing the visitors to some highlights from the University Archives. We were also able to advise visitors on the availability of sources that would help their own research. We were very grateful that everyone who attended took the trouble to say how much they enjoyed the event, and we look forward to participating in Doors Open Day again in 2013. Remember that the University Archives are open to all every day but Thursday and you can also explore our collections on our online catalogue at www.dundee.ac.uk/archives
3. The Airlie Morning Post
Archive Services is delighted to have received copies of a rare student newspaper that was produced by the residents of Airlie Hall and that offers a unique insight into student life in a hall of residence during the 1960s. The Airlie Morning Post was written, printed and distributed by the students themselves during the 1967-68 session. One of the founder members, Alan Craxford, was able to make copies of the originals recently and apart from sending them to Archive Services has also made the pages available on the web, along with reminiscences about the newspaper: http://www.craxford-family.co.uk/themetartan/tartantamp.php.
4. 8th Annual Culture Day
The University of Dundee's Culture and Arts Forum (CAF) held its 8th Annual Culture Day on 3rdOctober. The theme of this year’s event was "Health, Well-being and the Arts" and a range of talks was given by staff from across the University. Matthew, who also chaired the event, opened proceedings with a talk on the art collections of Dundee Dentists. Kenneth represented Archive Services and gave a paper on early female medical students at the University of Dundee. Other participants included Brian Hoyle (English), talking about Carry On and Doctor films and Billy Kenefick and Derek Patrick (History) on Image and Reality and the Scottish Soldier. Matthew is Convener of CAF and Caroline is Secretary to the group.
5. Outreach Activities
On 26th September Kenneth visited the Monfieth Local History Society to give a talk on the Archives. Kenneth’s talk gave a flavour of our holdings and he then took questions from the audience who were keen to find out more. Several of the society's members are hoping to visit the archives in the future to pursue leads in their own research. On 24th October Kenneth also gave a talk at the School of Medicine’s International Student Welcome Evening to c.60 staff and students on the History of the Medical School in Dundee. Both staff and students were very interested to find out about some of their illustrious predecessors such as Margaret Fairlie, Scotland’s first female professor, and our late Chancellor, Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Sir James Black.
6. Dundee Science Festival
Museum Services organised various events as part of this year's Science Festival. On Tues 6 November at 6pm, the Tayside Medical History Museum at Ninewells hosted a special event entitled Think Global, Act Local: Dundee's International Role in Improving Child Health. In two stimulating and inspiring talks, Stephen Greene (Professor of Child and Adolescent Health) and Dr Anil Mehta (Reader in Molecular Medicine) focused on Diabetes and Cystic Fibrosis, showing how local expertise is leading international collaborative initiatives to transform the modern management of these important conditions. See http://www.dundeesciencefestival.org/event.full.php?id=118 for details. On Mon 12 and Tues 13 November, award-winning comedian and Radio 4 star Helen Keen returned to the D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum for a third year with a new show, The World of Tomorrow. With her usual esoteric mix of stand-up comedy, science fiction and shadow puppetry, Helen transported you into the exciting, inventive and tin-foily world of The Future (by at least an hour).
7. Human Race Events
The events programme for the exhibition Human Race: Inside the History of Sports Medicine continues. Lectures included a talk on Dundee's orthopaedic pioneer Prof Ian Smillie by Bill Hadden on 31 October and on the ground-breaking experimental physiologist, John Scott Haldane, by Peter Taylor on 9 November. The exhibition has been created by the Scotland & Medicine Partnership and is funded by the Olympics Legacy Trust as an official part of the Cultural Olympiad. It is showed across two venues - the Lamb Gallery and the Institute of Sport & Exercise - until 10 November. See http://www.dundee.ac.uk/museum/exhibitions/medical/humanrace/ for details.
8. CAIS Update
A number of students recently completed single modules or short courses. They included students studying an aspect of professional practice for their professional development. Others were continuing to gather credits for their degrees. As well as masters degrees CAIS also offers short non-accredited courses in family and local history. Our 'Beyond the Internet' short online courses, which began on 17 September, have now ended and 35 certificates of completion have been sent to those who took part. A selection of CAIS courses are available three times a year. Further details are on our web site at http://www.dundee.ac.uk/CAIS
9. Carnoustie Golf Club
For some months now, Jennifer has been cataloguing the Carnoustie Golf Club records (MS 329). These include records of the club itself as well as research notes made by Bill Coupar whilst he was writing a book on the impact Carnoustie golfers had on the world. Coupar died before he was able to complete the book but the masses of research notes he compiled along with photographs, correspondence and original artefacts such as club tickets are now fully listed and numbered and can now be made available for the public to use. The last job Jennifer has to do is to input the collection list onto CALM so that readers can search the descriptions online and see what is available.
10. Scottish Council on Archives Portal Project
Caroline has been involved in a Scottish Council on Archives project to develop an online portal for Scotland’s archive catalogues. The aim is to provide a site where item level descriptions of archives will link to details of the creators of the archives and to the repositories that hold them. Funding is being sought to build in educational and interactive resources to the site. More details on the Scottish Council on Archives activities is available at http://www.scottisharchives.org.uk/
11. The Recordkeeper's Bookshelf
CAIS is currently developing a series of online resources called 'The Recordkeeper's Bookshelf' in a project funded by the International Council on Archives. Covering the core recordkeeping functions and issues such as appraisal, electronic records and description, the series will provide an introduction to debates and literature relating to the topics. Caroline is currently writing the module on appraisal. Other topics include the life cycle and continuum and preservation and disaster management..
12. Postgraduate Students Visit Archives
The School of Humanities postgraduate students visited the archives for an induction recently. We discussed the different reasons for keeping archives, their cultural and evidential role and the decisions that archivists have to take when deciding what records to keep. The students were given several archival items and asked to discuss their provenance, the impact their content, context and structure on their role as evidence and their informational content.
13. Freedom of Information – Changes to Publication Schemes
Alan attended a recent event in Perth held by the Office of the Scottish Information Commissioner on changes to the way that Publication Schemes are implemented in Scottish public authorities. A Publication Scheme is a resource that is required by the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 which explains what information a public body normally places into the public domain in areas such as institutional governance and financial management. A generic model scheme has been developed to replace the original publication schemes for the whole Scottish public sector with the aim of promoting consistency in the information routinely published by public bodies. The Secretaries' Group of Universities Scotland has approved the adoption of the Commissioner's new generic model and Alan is a member of a small sub-group of the Scottish HE Information Practitioners Group which is developing the framework for its implementation in Scottish universities (based on his contribution to the development of the previous sectoral scheme and the University of Dundee's leading role in a consultation response on Publication Schemes on behalf of the sector in 2010).
14. CAIS visit to Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)
On 1st November Pat and Caroline accompanied CAIS students on a visit to PRONI’s impressive new building at the developing waterfront of Belfast. The visit started with short presentations by Stephen Scarth, Head of Public Services on PRONI’s marketing strategy, Graham Jackson on access and Iain Fleming on digital preservation. It was interesting to hear of the role of the Public Record office in preserving and managing access to records relating to the Troubles. Glynn Kelso gave us a guided tour of the building which included a visit to the conservation studio where Rose Kelly explained the role of conservators at PRONI and the visit ended in the large purpose built stores managed by Alan Robertson.
15. Sad news
Pat, Caroline and Alan pay tribute to our colleague and friend, Marion Hoy, former Archivist at Records and Information Professionals Australasia, who passed away recently after a long illness in Newcastle, New South Wales. She was a good friend and an unfailingly cheerful colleague at International Council on Archives Section on Archival Education meetings, of which she was Secretary. We will miss her and we send our condolences to her husband and children.
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