Hello! My name’s Eimear and I started working at the Dorset History Centre at the beginning of 2021 as a Digital Archives Trainee. I’ve been here thanks to The National Archives Bridging the Digital Gap Programme which aims to increase digital skills in the archives sector but sadly my fifteen-month traineeship has come to an end. I’ve had such a lovely time working at Dorset History Centre and would like to thank everyone for making me feel so welcome!
Before I started at the History Centre, whenever I thought of archives, my mind instantly went to something very old and beautiful like a hand painted map from the 1600’s or something but the archives I’ve been working with are very different. Most archives created in the last twenty years or so are found on hard drives rather than on paper, and these digital records require very different care. We are now collecting things like PDFs, Word documents, Jpegs and mp3s and it’s been my job is to help ensure we can still access these files in 100 years.
Digital records are surprisingly fragile; for example, if you think of the photographs you took in the 1990’s, the photos taken on a film camera are probably still very accessible, safely stored in a photo album in your attic but if you took any photographs on a digital camera in the mid 2000s, it would be much more difficult to access those images. I think this is the greatest challenge in digital preservation, how digital technology is always changing and advancing but that’s also what makes it so exciting. Digital Preservation aims to offer the same security and preservation assurances we provide for our paper and parchment archives.
My traineeship has involved learning about many other areas of expertise at the Dorset History Centre including conservation, Community Engagement, and public service. I love how the team is always looking for new and creative ways to engage and inspire people with the archives.
My main takeaway from the traineeship will be discovering how exciting archives are and that there really is something for everyone if you look closely. I’ve always had an interest in typography and so for my final blog I thought it would be fun to look at some of the beautiful typography in the collections and there is no shortage of beautiful type at DHC! I explored the physical and digital repositories for interesting typography and created a collage to share with you! I love that the collections here span such a huge timeframe and I find it interesting to compare handwritten letters from the with digital letters and discover how styles and technologies evolve over the centuries. The archives are waiting for you to explore, you never know what you might find!
Technology is racing away at such a pace that I think the storage systems will need updating annually but I daresay you have already put an automatic updating system in place. It is a bit like deciphering the hieroglyphics of a time gone by,
Well done Eimar, I guess most people never consider that digital archives could be more fragile than paper ones! Sounds like you had an interesting and productive traineeship. All the best for the future.
I would not recommend an attic as an ideal location for storing photograph albums – far too much temperature variation! A better option would be in a bedroom cupboard/wardrobe.