Apprentices at the Archives

Happy Apprenticeship Week! We’re excited to have three fantastic apprentices working across Dorset History Centre and the Records Management department.

Anna, Kate, and Lillian are undertaking the Archives and Records Management course, Level 7. Level 7 apprenticeships are equivalent to a master’s degree or Postgraduate Certificate. It will run for three years alongside their current roles and is being managed by The National Archives. This is the first year the course is running, and the team are excited to be part of the first cohort! Let’s meet the apprentices…

Lillian

I joined the Records Management Team in August 2023 from another service in the Council so that I could undertake this apprenticeship. To have the opportunity to gain this level of qualification whilst still working is amazing, and something I never expected to be available to me. This is the first year this apprenticeship has been run, and it’s still in the early stages, however I’ve already learnt a lot that is relevant to my day-to-day work, such as the records continuum.

Through our taught sessions, this apprenticeship has given us the opportunity to get to know others in the South West completing this course. Once every two months we also get to visit the archive someone in our group is based in, which is a great opportunity to see how others work and learn about their collections.

I’m getting a lot of support from my line manager, Shannon, and our Data and Information Manager, Kate, as well as the team at DHC. There are aspects of the course that will focus on archives, rather than records management, so I’ve been able to see their processes and get more information about their work.

Anna

I have been working at DHC for over seven years! I started in 2016 with a level 3 apprenticeship in Cultural Heritage, working on the Bankes of Kingston Lacy and Corfe Castle collection, D-BKL. Since 2018 I have been working as part of the public services team, helping visitors access original records.

During my first apprenticeship I was able to experience both museums and archives. Whilst museums are fantastic organisations that I will always love to visit, something about archives really resonated with me. This new course is a fantastic opportunity to gain new skills and knowledge in the sector I love. I had to sign up!

We have been learning about terminology, processes, and procedures recently, and I have been able to apply them to my work during the recent Collections Weeks. Kate, Lillian and I took part in accessioning and cataloguing recent donations to DHC – that means organising the material into series and creating entries on our catalogue.

Kate

I joined the public services team at DHC in 2022, having previously worked at Dorchester Library. I considered studying for a master’s degree in archives and records management when I left university in 2014, but at the time decided it was too much of a financial commitment. This apprenticeship is an unexpected but great opportunity to be able to gain an equivalent qualification while continuing to work.

As apprentices, we spend 20% of our time on off-the-job learning, which includes online taught sessions, in-person taught sessions at other archives and records management organisations, and self-directed study. Every few months, we complete a written assignment based on our learning and our experiences at work.

The other 80% of our time is spent doing on-the-job learning. Even though the course has only been running since last October, we’ve already had the opportunity to work on different projects and with different members of staff than we normally would in our day-to-day roles, and I’m sure this will continue over the next couple of years!

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Look out for more tales from the Apprentices in the coming months as they get to grips with their studies!

 

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