The Beginning of an Archive

Today I started sorting through my slides, grouping them into their original collections and trying to make sense of how I might organise my archive. A lot of the private (amateur / vernacular) slides are already numbered, either by hand or stamped by a machine, and nearly all of the commercial slides have very considered catalogue numbers. I have started by simply grouping the slides by the information that appears on their frames – most of them can be easily identifiable by their colour, typography (or hand writing), placement of information and in some cases the processing company’s name. If none of these give any clues, then the content of the photograph itself can sometimes help – photographs by the same photographer often have a similar feel to them; I have one group, for example, where no information is written on them, but they are all slightly underexposed, and all come in the same blue plastic frames.

The two columns on the left are all amateur slides, the rest are commercial slides. You can tell by the amount of printed matter on the frames:

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Below is my small collection of Pana-Vue slides. I’ve found it difficult to find any information about the company, but from what I gather Pana-Vue were one of the biggest producers of commercial slides in the 1970s, mass producing slides of American attractions and nature reserves. Their alpha-numeric catalogue numbers alone (which are complicated and difficult to decipher) would suggest they produced many thousands of individual images.

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To get an idea of just how many they (may) have produced, visit DisneyPix, which has an incomplete collection of 420 slides of Disney World. I have a handful of these in my collection along with those of other locations such as Michigan, Canada, Hawaii, and San Francisco – if you consider there over 420 Disney World slides, imagine how many there are including all the other locations they photographed.

Published on December 3, 2009 in Archiving / Cataloguing. 0 Comments

Case In Point

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As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure. Thus, photography develops in tandem with one of the most characteristic of modern activities; tourism. For the first time in history, large numbers of people regularly travel out of their habitual environments for short periods of time. It seems positively unnatural to travel for pleasure without taking a camera along. Photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, that the program was carried out, that fun was had. Photographs document sequences of consumption carried on outside the view of family, friends, neighbors. But dependence on the camera, as the device that makes real what one is experiencing, doesn’t fade when people travel more. Taking photographs fills the same need for the cosmopolitans accumulating photograph-trophies of their boat trip up the Albert Nile or their fourteen days in China as it does for lower-middle-class vacationers taking snapshots of the Eiffel Tower or Niagara Falls.

- Sontag 1977, p.09, On Photography

Published on November 19, 2009 in 35mm Slides and Quotes. 0 Comments

Wardair

Another slide from the collection. Just a quick example of how italics are so frequently used amongst aeroplane graphics. Date Unknown, origin Canada.

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Published on November 8, 2009 in 35mm Slides and Identity / Branding. 0 Comments

Gingham Seats

Following my previous thoughts on the parallels between 35mm slides and flight – here is the interior of a plane from one of my slides. Date unknown, although possibly 1960s. I love the symmetry – I’m thinking of using a series of symmetrical images like this as apart of the museum’s identity.

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Published on November 8, 2009 in 35mm Slides and Identity / Branding. 0 Comments

Perfect Photo Inc

This is one of my favourite pieces of vintage graphic design in my collection. Only 3 colours are used, primaries, and the typography is simply beautiful. This box is also undated so it’s difficult to tell what period it’s from – but the colours and typography would suggest late 60s or 70s. The logo is also quite interesting – it has a certain naivety to it which I like yet it still manages to retain a level of corporate authority – possibly due to its placement inside a rounded triangle. Which is not something you often see actually, it’s usually squares or circles – I particularly like the quadrupled multicolour outline.

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The typography reminds me a lot of aeroplane graphics – I think it’s the use of italics and the extended terminals at the end of P, F and T; there’s a definite feel of movement, and that cobalt blue background looks a lot like the sky.

Infact I think there’s an interesting correlation between 35mm slides and continental travel. Firstly I think the proliferation of the slide was brought about at a similar time to commercial flights. In a post WW2 America especially there seemed to be an explosion of possibility and desire for travel and experiences abroad. I need to do some research to clarify these statements but I don’t think they’re too far from being accurate. A large portion of my slide collection are holiday photographs.

Another interesting point is that a lot of my slides I buy on the internet and have them imported from other countries (mostly America) – so the very nature of having images flown over and delivered to my door creates a second parallel between slides and continental travel. I find it uncanny that the graphic design of slides can be easily compared to that of aeroplane companies – more images to come for comparison.

Published on November 6, 2009 in Identity / Branding. 0 Comments

Argus Incorporated

First thing to point out with the design of this packaging is its use of only one colour. An aqua blue of sorts – quite common amongst 1950s domestic design I think; pale pastel colours. It’s printed on to a cream textured paper stock, although it may have originally been white that has simply aged – either way, a soft colour palette typical of 40s / 50s domestic design. I really like the use of a compressed typeface for the address – again quite common for this period and is used a lot these days to give a retro / vintage quality to design. Although this could easily be a 70s piece of design as well. Regardless, it’s very simply designed with some nice consideration for composition and layout.

I’m not sure how these boxes would have been printed but up close it looks like a screen print, I’m enjoying the blobby texture of the ink and the rounded edges this creates around the typography.

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Published on November 6, 2009 in Identity / Branding. 0 Comments

Forest Fire

Tidying up my slide collection made me rediscover the wonderful logos and designs that adorn the slides and the boxes they come in. One of the key features of my website will be its design and aesthetic, which should be idiosyncratic with its content, and have a direct correlation to the design styles of that period; the mid 20th century. It also made me realise I have a lot of other pieces of ephemera that can help inform my design decisions, and I will be studying these in some detail.

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Published on November 6, 2009 in Identity / Branding. 0 Comments

Starting Again

So after a tutorial with Darryl the other day I’ve realised I’ve had my head buried so deep in the technical aspect of researching and archiving that I’ve completely forgotten I’m doing an Illustration degree. I’ve got a massive list of emails to museums and various links and resources regarding how to archive and catalogue, but by focusing entirely on this and trying desperately to understand it (and fail) – I’ve just been grinding myself down to a halt. For a moment I’d forgotten what it was I was doing, and that I think visually, and my degree and future career are both based upon making things.

I won’t lie… I simply don’t understand a lot of the information surrounding archival practice, I’ve been trying to digest it but it’s very technically advanced and I think requires years of study to fully understand. David at the Tate Archive said one of the most useful things to me regarding this, “You just need to do what makes sense to you”.

So with this dimly lit bulb of enlightenment, I’m taking my research back to square one and will do what I should’ve been doing weeks ago – actually working with my slides and developing the identity of the museum. All of the research I have done thus far, although may seem impenetrable and useless – has actually given me the time to really think about how I’m going to catalogue and organise my collection. I may not have written those thoughts down, but they’re there. They will surface when the time comes, allowing everything to fall into place just that little bit easier. All of this research can also materialise in an appendix – possibly printed in a separate book from my visual research.

So without further adieu, last night I got every single one of my slides (which were in a state of chaos and disarray), and laid them neatly on my bed, like the obsessive lunatic I am.

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Beautiful… So then I put them back into my cupboard (neatly), but created a working environment that will allow me to organise and catalogue my slides easily and effectively – I set up my slide scanner here too so everything is ready to go.

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Published on November 5, 2009 in Archiving / Cataloguing. 0 Comments

Thoughts on Jessica’s Email

Jessica sent me links to two pdf documents – Rules for the Construction of Names, and the ISAAR.

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The first pdf, International Standard Archival Authority Record, contains a staggering 129 pages of how to identify and describe artifacts. The second, Rules For the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, contains 94 pages of highly formal academic talk; lists of rules, conventions, and sterile descriptions of… well… how to properly document names. Some of this could be useful but it’s very difficult to get through. They are both about as exciting as their front covers.

As Jessica said, these are quite unnecessary for me, they were created for professional archives with mostly paper based documents that must abide by strict international conventions. It is a relief not to have to concern myself with these. But what I do need to think about is how I classify, describe and catalogue my images – or what is otherwise known as metadata.

Jessica gave me a link to the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set which lists 15 different elements by which an image can be described – I’ve put a link to it in my ‘Archival Links’ list. It uses a lot of technical language that I struggle to understand, and I will go into it in further detail once I start cataloging my slides.

Published on November 5, 2009 in Archiving / Cataloguing. 0 Comments

Help from The Black Cultural Archives

One of the most helpful emails I received was from Jessica Womack, assistant archivist at the Black Cultural Archives. She highlighted several key points I need to consider and gave me some very useful links:

Hi Jordan,

As you have already expressed, it is difficult to define the process of “archiving”, I have identified three areas I think are appropriate to your situation.

1. Cataloguing

To catalogue material, that is to write a description of an item, archivists working in professional repositories use a standard called ISAD (G) http://www.ncaonline.org.uk/materials/namingrules.pdf , in conjunction with naming conventions http://www.ncaonline.org.uk/materials/namingrules.pdf ,  http://www.icacds.org.uk/eng/ISAAR(CPF)2ed.pdf , and controlled vocabularies such as the following http://www.ukat.org.uk/ .

For what you intend to do I think all this may be a bit unnecessary, especially as these standards are mostly designed for paper based records, not images. What you need to create essentially is metadata for the images you hold. Some time ago I worked on a project digitising slides for a University slide library, I used the Dublin Core Metadata Set to create a flexible database to describe the images http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/ . When filling in the “subject” field you may want to use

2. Packaging

You may decide you want to package your collection of slides in preservation standard boxes/sleeves. Here are some suppliers, but be warned, it is an expensive business.

http://www.preservationequipment.com/

http://www.conservationresources.com/Main/uk_catalog_index.htm

3. Making material available online

Copyright may be a difficult issue for you. Legally, when you create a copy of a work, you should seek permission from the creator, and sometimes pay them! This includes digitising slides. Whereas you could by all means do this for your own reference (like copying a chapter from a book in a library), when you make it public that you have copied these images by putting them online you will be laying yourself open to people discovering you have copied their work, and they may not be happy about that! Some issues to address regarding copyright are

-          What are the slides of? Are they images you created? Do they include works that other people have created. Take a look at this site http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/get_to_grips_with_copyright

-          Would you be able to trace the copyright holder (creator) or at least attempt to?

-          Will you have any disclaimers in place? For example we have the following statement on the front page of our image gallery “Please note in many cases Black Cultural Archives is not the copyright holder of these images. The copyright holders for specific images are acknowledged where known. Black Cultural Archives has made every effort to trace the copyright holders for individual records, but in most cases we have not been successful. If you are the copyright holder to any of these images, please contact us at archives@bcaheritage.org.uk.” Then if people want us to remove them from our site we will

As for researching things with no provenance, I don’t know what people did before the internet! I can’t give much advice on that really.

If you want some advice on the technical side I can provide a little, but two initial things struck me

1.       you will need a special scanner for slides

2.       because of their size they need to be scanned at a very high resolution, so invest in some external hard drives/server space

We do have a leaflet about the archive but it no more information than is on the website. I could send you one if you think it will be useful for your project documentation though?

Best of luck, hope my rambling is helpful!

Jessica

Published on November 2, 2009 in Archiving / Cataloguing. 0 Comments

Books

Books relating to the archival process:

  • E. Shepherd and G. Yeo, Managing Records: A Handbook of Principles and Practice (Facet, 2003)
  • Andrew H. Eskind, International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House: Conventions for cataloguing photographs (International Museum of Photography, 1978)
Published on November 2, 2009 in Bibliography. 0 Comments

Museum List

A list of museums that I sent emails too.

R = Replied

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Published on November 2, 2009 in Archiving / Cataloguing and Bibliography. 0 Comments

Email Template

Template email to museums regarding how they archive:

Hello there,

I would like to ask if you could give me any information on the archiving process at the (name of museum here)

My name is Jordan Chatwin, I’m currently a third year Illustration student at Camberwell College of Arts and a collector of 35mm photographic slides (mainly family/amateur photographs from the mid 20th Century). As one of my final major projects for my degree I am planning to archive my collection, which is at around +3000 slides now (although nothing compared to most collections!). This will involve researching the backgrounds/historical context of the images, organising/archiving them, and setting up a website on which to display the images and information – kind of like an online museum.

I’m particularly interested in your cataloguing processes as I know each museum/archivist has their own method of indexing / categorising / referencing etc. I would also like to ask how you find out and research information about artefacts that are perhaps from an unknown origin, or have no background information attached to them when entering your collection.

I know very little about archiving and would greatly appreciate any information you could pass on to me. If you have any leaflets or printed material I would be happy to receive them through the post, or alternatively through an email.

(my address)

(my email)

Thanks very much for your time.

All the best,
Jordan

Published on November 2, 2009 in Archiving / Cataloguing and Bibliography. 0 Comments

Work Placement?

Originally my plan was to get a work placement with an archivist to learn the ins and outs of archiving. However I later realised this would be an inefficient use of my time. After contacting over 50 museums I got such a positive response that I had enough information to teach myself how to archive. A dissertation would better inform my project and 3 weeks learning how to archive could easily be compressed into a few days.

Here are my original thoughts on how / why I should contact museums for a work placement:

I know nothing about Archiving or Archivists, let alone how I might go about working for one. There is a world of Archiving out there that looks very much to me like a gaping black hole. I know it’s there, but I can’t really see what’s in it. So to start me off, I got in touch with someone who could point me in the right direction.

I have a weekend job at the The Fan Museum, Greenwich. I had recently found out that the shop Manager, Jeanette Hope, is also a trained archivist (though her knowledge and skills in this area remain unfortunately disused for The Fan Museum), so my first step was to talk to her and see what help she could give me.

As well as giving me a few pointers on how to index and catalogue, she firstlyl let me borrow The Museums and Galleries Yearbook (2007 edition), which I will go into later, and secondly she pointed me in the direction of the Mary Evans Picture Library.

The Picture Library has an online catalogue of around 200,000 images and sells and hires rights to these images for public and private use. Essentially it is a more advanced and commercial idea of what I want to achieve with my own 35mm photographic archive.

The position I’m in to approach potential places of work is interesting – most students in my field of study would be trying to get work in the creative industry, which is notoriously difficult and competitive. As such contacting a design company or agency often involves creating something to stand out, usually something physical than can be mailed. But because I’m interested in learning how to archive, I feel this method is somewhat inappropriate. Creating something physical to send could potentially baffle the Archivist or person I’m trying to work for, the Archiving world is a considerably smaller one compared to the Design and Creative industries, and at the end of the day these people are not in the business of making things. Why, they may wonder, has this person sent me a one-off, screen printed, fold out leaflet with their contact details? It can only ever be a novelty and a nice gesture in this context, and spending time creating ellaborate ways to stand out will be a waste of time and energy. A simple, personal email should be enough to garner the attention of most Archivists.

Further more, due to the specialist nature of Archiving I think there are possibly less places that would take on a work placement than there are in the Creative Industry. So my chances may be better in terms of contacting them, but actually securing a placement I think will be difficult. My focus really is not in the quality of how I approach people, but in approaching as many people as possible – I need to widen the possibilities and expand my points of contact. For this reason also, an email is a more appropriate and suitable option.

Published on November 2, 2009 in Archiving / Cataloguing. 0 Comments

Introducing…

The new home for my research blog. Named after a lyric from Quasimoto’s Goodmorning Sunshine, and a controversial and apparently rubbish 1967 Swedish film; I am Curious (Yellow).

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Published on October 26, 2009 in Miscellaneous. 0 Comments