My first week!

I'm a week into my new internship. Last week I worked Monday to Thursday, learned a huge amount, which I'm still processing, fluctuated between scared and excited/intrigued, and crashed out at the end of the week... This week looks to be no different, but what's for certain is that I'm very lucky to have this internship; it's extremely interesting work that will allow me experience of many and varied duties (and should be enjoyable too!). I'll explain the bare bones of what I'm doing, and fill in any gaps later.

Special Collections in Leeds University Brotherton Library is a major literary archive for West Yorkshire, holding many prominent collections including a large WW1 and 2 collection, Ripon Cathedral library, and the papers of major literary figures with a Yorkshire connection, such as the Bronte family, Arthur Ransome, Melvyn Bragg and Tony Harrison (to name just a few)... There are also some quite random specialist collections, such as a large antique cookery book collection, and it's a repository for some local organisations too. I volunteered there for two months last summer, mostly packing and stacking and helping the conservator here and there, and enjoyed it so much that I continued to volunteer when I returned to the university to study in the autumn. This led to my being selected for this internship.

Many works of art (mostly paintings, drawings and prints) exist within the archival collections and these need to be identified and their details filled in or expanded upon in the library catalogue. Some are upstairs in Special Collections, in a back room known as the L-shaped room; some are being held in the uni art gallery store, under appropriate conditions for preservation; and I'm sure there are many others sneakily hiding in archival boxes in the stacks, but I'll be addressing those later if ever! Also, some will need deframing and restoration/preservation work, and I'll be identifying where this is necessary and helping with it where needed. So really my job will involve both archiving and conservation skills, and hopefully give me a good basic grounding in both.

Where to begin with what I've learned so far? Last week I had various meetings both with my line manager and with other people, either to go through admin stuff, risk assessment etc, or receive training. I got shown round the stacks, so that I finally know everything we have and where it is (or could work it out at least!!). I can now find my way around the art gallery store, in the basement of the Parkinson Building, including locking up procedures and the scary burglar alarm. I had training in the rather complicated software KE EMu, which is used in the archives and art gallery for cataloguing - I had to start using it after an hour's tutorial, aaagh! - but somehow I managed! Just to make things complicated, the art gallery and the archives each use EMu in a slightly different way, and I had to learn both, because I will have to make either kind of record depending on where the art objects are kept. I've learnt how to make or add to art gallery records, but the Special Collections records from the L-shaped room stuff are yet to come.

Then, I spent this morning with the conservator, learning about how to report on the condition of an art object. She is incredibly skilled and can pick out all different kinds of damage and diagnose what caused it! I'll tell you more about what's involved with this at a later time.

So now I'm starting to go through the artworks that belong to Special Collections but are being kept in the gallery store. I've had a look at some of them and already found some treasures, which, again, I'll describe in a later post! I hope all this has made sense to anybody reading this. I'll sign off now, as I need to get some sleep in time for tomorrow!