This blog is brought to you by Explore Your Archives week and is the second on Continuity of Care – the project to catalogue and conserve the records of the Royal Scottish National Hospital. Thanks to a grant from the Wellcome Trust, this project started in the middle of August and will be completed by July 2015.

The project includes funding for a conservator and Liz Yamada started in the post in September. She has already surveyed the collection and identified items which need conservation work. Of particular interest are the first two Registers of Discharges and Removals.

Page from the Register RS/1/4/1

The volumes record where children were sent after leaving the Institution. They record information on the length of stay in asylum and more interestingly the condition of the child – whether recovered, relieved, not improved or incurable. As the photograph shows although all the children are discharged as ‘not improved’ the observations tell a different story.

But this blog entry is about the conservation of the items rather than their archival content.

Covers of the registers RS/1/4/1-2

Pages of the registers

They look very similar from the outside but could be conserved in very different ways. It is likely that the first volume, covering 1864-81, will be conserved in a conventional way: the pages will be cleaned with a latex sponge; the edges and spine folds repaired with Japanese paper and wheat starch paste; the binding re-sewn; and the old cover re-attached and consolidated so that it continues to be used as a book. The second volume, covering 1881-1915, on the other hand, is likely to be disbound, the pages put in polyester sleeves and stored in a folder with the detached cover.

Register showing edge tears

Why the difference in approach? The second volume could be repaired in the same way as the first but it would be more difficult, hence more time consuming and as a result, much more costly. One of the crucial differences between the two volumes is that the paper used for volume 13 is more brittle and as a result, many of the folds have cracked, so most of the pages are now single sheets. Another key difference is that the text is very close to the page edges and there are lots of edge tears in those areas. Very light Japanese paper would need to be used for repair so that the text is visible through it. This would not be very strong and would necessitate repairing both sides which doubles the repair time. The Japanese paper used for conservation is generally cream in colour so it will always stand out on blue paper originals. Although this is not detrimental to the preservation of the item, it is not very attractive. The repair papers could be toned blue with acrylic paints before they are applied but again, this adds to the repair time. Placing the pages in polyester sleeves will ensure that the pages can be handled without losing further information and can be preserved without the need for repair. Should it be necessary or desirable to carry out full repairs on the volume in the future, this will still be entirely possible.

Polyester sleeves are completely inert and a useful tool for the long-term preservation of many paper-based items. They protect items physically from being torn or creased and in some cases protect them chemically from items that give off damaging fumes. However, they cannot be used for everything in an archive collection. The cost of sleeves can add up quite quickly as can the weight which can impact on boxing, shelving floor loadings and archive staff who have to carry the boxes. They also add bulk, taking up valuable storage space. Polyester also carries static so it is not suitable for friable (powdery) media such as pastel, charcoal and soft pencil because it can lift the image off the paper. Sleeving items also changes the feel of the item, the smell and the overall appearance which is not necessarily desirable.

Michele Keogh
Wednesday, November 12, 2014 – 11:14

 There’s always something new in SRO’s online catalogue. Called AEON and soon to become AtoM, we are continuously uploading digitised archives, item dates, new agencies, series, consignments, corrections, checking restricted access, new admin history, etc.; it’s enough to keep you up all night.

Although SRO is not able to take in regular transfers of State archives from government agencies due to a lack of storage space, the State Archive collection requires plenty of work to describe the 15 kilometres of State archives we already hold.  As well as work undertaken by SRO staff, we were fortunate to have six re-deployees from BOCS Ticketing from late 2012 until early 2014 and we recently started a new work experience project through Centrelink and an employment agency. These additions to our description effort has increased the number of amendments to items, uploads and accurate descriptive details we can provide to you.

The main focus for SRO staff is to ensure significant older collections are described at each individual item level, so that every file, plan, register, etc., is accessible via our online catalogue. We are currently working on Series 675 – Correspondence files from the Colonial Secretary’s Office and smaller agencies such as police stations that were only accessible via the Archive Notes in the search room. All police stations are now described on our catalogue with the series and item level descriptions planned for 2015. An alphabetical index of divorces working back from 1976 is also being compiled to help SRO staff with enquiries.

Selections of all the above activities will be expanded on in future blogs, but there are a few that we are pretty excited about.

Among the records now described on AEON are large collections of contributor record cards and files from the Coal Industry Superannuation Board previously known as the Coal Mine Workers’ Pensions Tribunal.  Apart from the obvious value to family history research, these documents provide some social detail, such as the notable influx of non-British European names following WWII, and the eventual inclusion of women. They are also an interesting record of the vagaries of employment with retrenchments and other such details recorded. The files are restricted from 100 years from date of birth, due to possible inclusion of medical and other very personal information, but the cards are ‘Open Access’. Permission to access files can be sought through SRO. By November 2014, almost 2000 files and 1800 cards have been added to the catalogue.

 Bankruptcy files (Series 165), from the W.A. Supreme Court have, until recently, only been recorded on the catalogue by surname. This has made searching for surnames such as Smith, Brown, or Thomas almost impossible. Starting from 1892, we are working through the collection to add first names and other appropriate identifying data, with nearly 1,400 file records enhanced. This is a fascinating collection including bankrupted Afghan cameleers, Goldfields boarding house and restaurant keepers, farmers, hoteliers, drapers, and greengrocers from all over the state. The life and work or business history detail in many files is extraordinary and so much thematic research could be undertaken in the collection.

 David Whiteford and Michele Keogh

The Open Government Partnership, launched in the summer of 2011 can trace its roots to President Obama’s challenge to the members of the United Nations General Assembly in September of 2010—a challenge to work together to make all governments more transparent, collaborative, and participatory.  The Partnership has grown from eight to more than 60 nations representing more than 1,000 commitments to improve the governance of more than two billion people around the world.

The United States issued its first Open Government National Action Plan in September of 2011 and the National Archives participated in the process.  In December of 2013, the White House issued the Second Open Government National Action Plan, committing to work with the public and civil society organizations to implement initiatives to increase public integrity, to manage resources more effectively, and to improve public services.

I’m pleased (and proud) to report that five of the ten action items addressing public integrity have the National Archives written all over them!

1.  Improve Public Participation in Government.  Our Citizen Archivist Dashboard activities and Federal Register 2.0 are just two experiments in increasing public engagement.
2. Modernize Management of Government Records.  Implementation of the President’s Memorandum on Managing Government Records and the Directive on Managing Government Records are works in progress in this arena.
3. Modernize the Freedom of Information Act.  Our Office of Government

… [ Read all ]

It was supposed to be the war to end all wars; a war on a global scale unseen up to that point in human memory. History would change how we would remember World War I but at the time, those who lived it had never experienced anything like it.

Our World War I poetry collection sheds an interesting light into the experience of those who lived through World War I, both on the battlefield and on the home front.

A first edition of Yanks: A Book of A.E.F. Verse collects poetry originally published in the official newspaper of the American Expeditionary Forces in France. Compiled and published in 1918, it gives compelling glances into the lives of men stationed at the forefront of the trenches. One corporal lamented the myth of Sunny France in his poem:

More so that the glimpses you get into the trenches, it is the glimpses into the life of those who are left at home that are most fascinating to this author. In our poetry collection are chapbooks from women who lament sending their men off to war and try to hold down the fort at home while also mourning those who would never return.

Hit by The War : Reckless Rhymes by Marie-Rose Gabe is one such chapbook and FSU holds the only copy stateside. These poems lament the woman’s life on the home front. A two poem set in this collection, “Tommy Grumbles” and “A ‘Ministering Angel’ Replies” show the desire of those left behind to honor the soldiers who are returning and the soldiers returning not wanting a fuss.

World War I officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. However, a cease-fire had taken affect seven months earlier on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year. So when the United States wanted to set aside a day to honor its heroes of the Great War, November 11th was chosen.

An Act of Congress in 1938 officially made November 11 a national holiday, Armistice Day, to honor veterans of World War I. The act was amended in 1954 to rename the day Veterans Day to honor those who’d since fought in World War II and in Korea. Renaming the holiday allows it to be the day it is now, a day in which we honor all American veterans of war.

There is a new exhibition of books from the Library at Innerpeffray on display in the University Library stairwell.

The Library at Innerpeffray, near Crieff, was founded in around 1680 and was the first free public lending library in Scotland. The collection contains books from the 16th century to the present day on a wide variety of subjects, including witchcraft, animals, farming, medicine and European history.

The exhibition features books from two recent exhibitions at Innerpeffray – the Battle of Bannockburn; and Golf and other Scottish Sports. The exhibition was curated by Miriam Eriksson and Joana Krogsrud, who were students on the MSc Environment, Heritage and Policy programme last year.

The University is fortunate to have a partnership with the Library at Innerpeffray, and it is planned that a rolling exhibition of books from Innerpeffray will be on display in the University Library. For more information about the Library at Innerpeffray and how to access it, see http://libguides.stir.ac.uk/content.php?pid=337208&sid=4975624 .

Helen Beardsley

Senior Subject Librarian (Arts and Humanities)

What’s up with this letter?  For years it’s been lying around in a drawer flaunting its sketches in a come-hither way sure to grab my attention.

Despite my tendency to swoon at the sight of old paper with writing on it, it was always immediately obvious that it would take some effort to figure out what was going on in this one. Passing glances at the text didn’t illuminate the subject matter in a way that attracted a longer gaze, and fact that the writing laces around and through and between the sketches (kind of like this post) added to the effort required to read it. It was also clear that the writer meant to be entertaining, so a reader would have to catch up with a sense of humor that might belong to another age.

No one has ever asked to see the letter. It was probably “hidden” in the sense that it doesn’t seem to be attached to a collection and it isn’t catalogued. I have no idea how the letter got here and until recently (until my turn at the blog rolled around) I never had occasion to take it out and really examine it just to satisfy my own curiosity.

Last week I finally took the letter to my desk to transcribe it, but before I completed that task I did a little research to learn about the writer, Henry Chester Kellogg (1819-1896). Understanding Henry’s background – knowing who comprised his world — provides some context for his letter. Somewhere along the way it dawned on me that the 27-year-old correspondent was Emily Dickinson’s neighbor when the Dickinson family lived on West Street, with Kellogg families to their south.

Dickinson house (1840-55) on West (No. Pleasant) St., ca. 1868.

1855 census showing Henry Chester Kellogg’s family, his Kellogg cousins, and the Dickinsons.

Kellogg store in Merchants Row, across from the town common.

The young Kelloggs – Henry’s brothers, sister, and cousins — attended Amherst Academy both before and during Dickinson’s attendance. Henry’s sister Eliza Mary Kellogg, later Mrs. Hanson L. Read, figures in Dickinson’s letters, as do his cousins Emeline and William Kellogg. Other records show that Henry and his brother Dwight stayed in town and worked as shoe makers, while brother William Wallace Kellogg worked as a printer in Eastern Massachusetts and was a state senator.

In our letter, Henry writes to brother William about nothing, or to be more specific about what constitutes “nothing,” about the practice of letter writing when one has nothing to say. He touches on the love life of the recipient (mostly wondering whether there is one). There are some slightly more straightforward (and cheeky) updates about the people they know. It’s reminiscent of some of Emily Dickinson’s letters to her brother in which she strings him along just to exercise her pen, to give Austin something to read while he’s away from home.

The transcription below is cleaned up a bit to make it easier to read, with punctuation added here and there, a few spellings corrected, and with “clarified” sketches as accompaniment.

Amherst Aug. XXIII, 1846

“How are you Bill, what’s the NEWS?

“I’m well enough.  How be you old cove? I didn’t know as you was alive. How did you expect to hear news from me a professional character unless you correspond oftener. Hey?”

Perhaps you may say Mr. Editor that a poor excuse is better than none but you must know in your peculiar capacity that it’s rather of a hard case to get up an article without “matter,” or (to deviate from the term used by your fraternity), a difficult “matter” to write when there’s nothing to write. For all that, you may say that I may make the attempt. I will, and [if?] you will probably be obliged to spare but a few of your valuable moments to run it over, it may, I hope, command a little attention, for I suppose that it is with you as with us a letter from either is acceptable. Father’s health is a great deal better than it has been. His deafness is almost over with, he is about every day, though he has not worked in the shop for two months. Mother, Eliza, and Dwight’s folks are well, but Mary Taylor is quite sick with the typhus fever. I heard today that she was a little better. Minerva & Phila were up there one day this week. Phila has been with us a few days, she is sick now and has had a physician. Her health for a month or two past has been improving, she has been staying in Ashfield at her sister’s. Laurette is in visiting at Cambridge I believe. Mary Stacy is in town, she was down to our house last week with Stephen Hubbard. Hiram Fox has sold out to Merrick Marsh and is going to Baltimore. Needham has gone home to stay a spell. [Very] dull times since commencement. I understand Hon. Dickinson [Judge John Dickinson?] is going to live with Martha Kellogg soon, and yet another Dr. Fish* is a going to marry that dried up and wrinkled specimen of a maid (Old [Pickle?]alias) Old Priest Nelson’s Daughter. What a number of  she will break.

 

Speaking of courtship, love, and marriage, the Junior editor of the W. Tower has probably learned by “sad experience long ere this that “the course of true love never did RUN smooth” or that “come weal come woe” go where you will the object of our attachment will surely follow even though we plunge into the foaming billows she “our” adored is near us, close to our HEELS.

 

You probably have seen the proceedings here on commencement they were about as usual not over nor above interesting. I think myself that the Circus which was in East Street drew quite as large a congregation of the people as they had two exercises, crowded, and very good. I understand they made a fine appearance as they came in from N. Hampton about ½ past 8 in the morning just as the church open[ed] to ladies. The band looked & played finely, in uniform and “drawn by a splendid omnibus drawn by 12 beautiful cream colored horses.” Who should I see but Severus Brisbee that morning. You know he has been gone a good while to sea, he has been in town I understand several weeks. We did not have much company, Dwight’s folks had the most. Calvin his wife, Hannah, and her son, aunt [Kilton?] went home with them. Horace and his wife were down to Dicks. I did not see them, they are a going out to Mt. Morris, N. York soon I believe. Charles was down. Speaking of Music I did not think the N. York Cornet band 5 of them played near well as the Boston Brass last year, it was the general opinion. They paid them $150.00-. Dewey spent a couple of days with me, the day after we went on to Mt. Norwottuck with half a dozen others, a fine place I assure [you], and a fine view in a clear day. Dewy thinks of going down east on a singing tour again I believe.

 

You don’t inform us what progress you make with the fair sex. I trust in your responsible station your [ideas] of proper respect, & sincere protestations will be strictly adhered to. You have some idea of the pangs of “ill requited hafection” and know that when she loves the lord of her   she loves him over all others, and when in your noonday walks she invokes you to admire “the brilliant orb of day,” while you think it round as a cheese and bright as a lanthorn, she thinks and how otherwise that you are the man she took you to be. Then it becomes you a professional character, as a man of character, to put on a bold and confiding face and speak of the ardour of your affections, and the sincerity of your intentions.

  Perhaps your mind may wander back to the time when you sipt the delicious current nectar wine without ceremony in her parlour as none but a “lover “ ever enjoyed that privilege, and anticipate the time, when the silken tie that binds 2 willing  is consummated, you can sing in character “My wife shall dance and I will sing so merrily & pass the day for I hold it one of the wisest things to drive dull care away” or, if my lord prefers, the WOODEN SHOE DANCE.

 

If you are disappointed in this silly article I refer you to my apology and to an oldage [sic] “a little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men” hem hem. Now William I will thank you to write soon, just insert an occasional adventure anything to fill up (as above). “Mother says tell William to be sure and come home Thanksgiving, and not work so hard as to get sick.” You have it word for word. If there’s anythink [sic] that you care about that I have not mentioned, name it and you shall have it if it is in my power to picture it out or communicate in any way. This is without doubt from your absent brother H.C. Kellogg.

Addressed to Wm. W. Kellogg Esq, Georgetown, Ma.  With a postmark “Amherst Aug [21?]. Along the edge, “H. C. Kellogg, Recv’d Aug 23, 1845,” presumably in William’s hand.  Did William note the date later? He’s off by a year: the New York Cornet Band was at the 1846 commencement, and Henry’s “6” is easily taken for a “5.”

* “Another Dr. Fish” is Dr. Seth Fish.  In September 1846 Dr. Seth Fish married Emily D. Nelson, daughter of “Old Priest Nelson,” Stephen S. Nelson, a founder of the “Amherst Branch of the First Baptist Church in New Salem” (History of Amherst, Carpenter & Morehouse, p. 234).  Amherst College has administrative offices in the building now.  Dr. Fish’s son was Dr. D.B.N. (Dyer Ball Nelson) Fish (AC 1862 but non-grad), the “strange physician” who attended Dickinson when she fainted in August 1884 (see Johnson’s Letters, no. 907).

It’s Homecoming Week at FSU and there have been many exciting events happening around campus for students and alumni. Homecoming is always a festive time of year at FSU, with events like Pow Wow, Warchant, the Homecoming parade, and the Homecoming football game to keep folks busy all week.

Please enjoy some photographs and ephemera from past Homecoming activities.

To see more photographs, ephemera, and artifacts related to the history of Florida State, check out the FSU Heritage Protocol Digital Collections or like the Heritage Protocol Facebook page.

John Atkin and Michael Kluckner have curated two new “Through the Lens” shows for the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre’s digital Planetarium Star Theatre. Using historic photographs from the early 20^th century paired with contemporary shots of the same locations, these “indoor” digital walking tours allow you to experience the changes that have occurred in our city over the past 100 years.

The Canadian Fishing Co. Ltd. and New England Fish Co. building on the Gore Avenue Wharf, 1920. Reference Code: AM54-S4-3-: PAN N163

The historic images come primarily from the Archives’ W. J. Moore panorama negatives, which we’ve featured here before. Remarkably, the Space Centre uses the same high-resolution JPG images that you can download from our online search and projects them to fill the dome of the Star Theatre. They are matched with stunning modern panoramas and other audiovisual elements to produce two unique shows. This year, there will also be some historic aerial views which, on the planetarium dome, promise to provide a unique, if dizzying, perspective on the city.

Aerial view of Kitsilano Beach and Park, 1945 Reference code AM54-S4-: Air P28

Last year, Through the Lens: Building Vancouver’s History, was so popular it sold out and was repeated earlier this year. Don’t miss your chance to see this year’s shows!

7:00pm Thursday, November 13 (Michael Kluckner)
7:00pm Thursday, November 20 (John Atkin)

Tickets available at the door

There is little doubt that Norman Corwin is the most celebrated writer, director and producer of radio drama ever. At a time when radio was the dominant medium his works helped to ramp-up the national morale and patriotic fervor following the savage attack at Pearl Harbor and to celebrate the victories over Germany and Japan in 1945. Afterward his many works for United Nations radio underscored the need for human rights and international cooperation. He continued to write noted works for the stage, television  and other venues, and to teach, until his death in 2011 at the age of 101.

Corwin became known as ‘the poet laureate of radio.’ It was a title that had at its root his first radio job with WBZA, a small Massachusetts station owned by the Springfield Republican. There he launched the poetry program Rhymes and Cadences. By 1937 Corwin moved to New York and took the show with him to WQXR where it aired as Poetic License. Hearing the program, William B. Lewis, the vice president of programming at CBS, invited the young talent to CBS. Not quite 28, in December, 1938 Corwin relaunched his poetry broadcasts on the network as Words Without Music.

Above is a brief interview with Corwin done by WNYC’s Sarah Montague and below, a rare copy of WQXR’s Poetic License from January 5, 1938. In this segment Corwin finds dynamic ways of introducing and discussing poetry and women poets.

Thirty-five years later Corwin would write to WQXR co-founder Elliott Sanger:

“I had no idea [WQXR’s] beginnings were so humble —$5 for a spot announcement, and a gross monthly income (in the year you took me on) of less than $200 for two summer months. Of course, I was paid nothing for Poetic License, but it seemed to me then that the price was right; and in terms of the good it did me, I might have paid you for the privilege.” *

By 1942, Corwin was a well established star at CBS. But he took some time-out to consult for a revival of some of his most popular works at WNYC known as The Corwin Cycle. Working with WNYC drama director Mitchell Grayson and the actor House Jameson, (pictured above) among others,  these dramas included Fly Through the Air With the Greatest of Ease, The Odyssey of Runyan Jones, Oracle of Philadelphia, To Tim at 20, My Client Curley, Descent of the Gods, Good Heaven, Samson, Daybreak and Mary the Fairy. The Brooklyn Eagle’s  radio columnist Jo Ranson described the series as  “a fine idea…because the able writer has something to say, and always says it with vigor and wisdom.” The revival garnered the award for Outstanding Drama Series in 1942 from the Institute for Education by Radio at Ohio State University.

* Langguth, A.J., Norman, Ed., Norman Corwin’s Letters, Barricade Books, Inc., New York, 1994, pg. 314.

If you walked by the front of Carnegie Hall 50 years ago today, you would have seen a large crowd gathering, a brass ensemble from the Citywide Junior High School Orchestra sitting, and a small temporary curtain hanging at eye level under one of the brass lanterns. At noon, a fanfare sounded, marking the beginning of a ceremony during which Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall declared Carnegie Hall to be a National Landmark.

If you were instead listening to WNYC at that hour, you would have also heard Secretary Udall proclaim Carnegie Hall’s historic significance as he then introduced Mayor Robert Wagner, who praised the dedicated committee that led the successful fight to save the Hall from demolition only four years earlier in 1960.  The leader of that group, violinist Isaac Stern, received a loud round of much deserved applause. He had convinced the mayor that the City of New York should purchase Carnegie Hall—the first time the City had purchased a building to save it from demolition. Convincing the City had not been an easy task: saving buildings wasn’t part of the natural mind set of the day.  Old buildings came down; new ones went up.  Some might have protested an impending threat but most just lamented the loss after it was too late.  In fact, Secretary Udall mentioned that George Washington’s plantation, Mt. Vernon, barely escaped the wrecker’s ball, thanks to another dedicated committee; it was made a National Landmark only in 1960.

Carnegie Hall Landmark Certificate

(Carnegie Hall Archives)

 In 1959, ground had been broken for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and it was then being heralded as the greatest performing arts complex in the world. A major feature was a new home for the New York Philharmonic, which had used Carnegie Hall as its home base since 1892. It was thought that New York City could not support two concert halls —and Robert Moses, one of the most powerful men in New York City’s political history and whose dream it was to give New York City a performing arts center, wanted no competition. Moses usually got his way, so  Carnegie Hall seemed doomed and headed in the same direction as Penn Station, the Ziegfeld Theater, and hundreds of other historic or cherished structures that were demolished in the name of progress.

There were other dedicated committees to help “save Carnegie Hall” that came and went, beginning as early as 1955. Their energies and sincerities were in the right place and kept the cause in the public eye. What they didn’t have were the fame, connections, and the power of persuasion that Isaac Stern had. He also had something else they lacked: a vision for what to do with the Hall once it was saved. He assured all concerned it would not be competition for the new music complex. Rather, he saw Carnegie Hall as a center for music education.  He even suggested that it might, one day, become the home base of a national youth orchestra.

Everyone learned quickly that New York City could indeed support two concert halls. Carnegie Hall and its three stages never closed, its Weill Music Institute now creates some of the most respected music education programs in the world, and the National Youth Orchestra of the USA has just completed its second year. 

In 1964, Secretary Udall parted the small curtain and revealed a bronze plaque which remains on the front of Carnegie Hall’s building to this day. On it is written “This site possesses exceptional value in commemorating and illustrating the history of the United States.”  Andrew Carnegie would have been thrilled. It confirms his prophetic words of 74 years earlier at the laying of Carnegie Hall’s cornerstone on May 13, 1890. Standing very near where the plaque is today, Carnegie promised, “It is built to stand for ages and during these ages it is probable that this hall will intertwine itself with the history of our country.”

In 1993, the day before their visit to our studios, Tom and Ray Magliozzi had accepted a Peabody Award for ‘Car Talk.’  At the studio, they reveal their hidden talent as Bluegrass musicians and take some fake calls from our staff.

Did you go to LiveFriday at the Ashmolean on Friday 31st? On LiveFridays, the Museum opens up its doors to the public for a fun evening of events, creative workshops and entertainment. This time, the theme was ‘Egyptomania’, to tie in with the Tutankhamun Exhibition, with extra ghoulishness for Halloween. The Ashmolean was packed with visitors – this is a really popular event.

Photograph: Katharina Ulmschneider

Our own Katharina was there talking to visitors about Jacobsthal’s camel – there is a whole story behind this camel, which we discovered when we were working on the Jacobsthal project – we are writing it up and will let you know when we finally get around to publishing it.

Dancing the Charleston in the West Meets East Gallery. Photo: Katharina Ulmschneider

Our Historic Environment Image Resource had its first museum outing, supporting the brilliant Photobooth. Lucie from the Ashmolean chose some of the Egypt images from HEIR, which were projected onto a green screen in a Photobooth.

There were costumes to dress up in, then you entered the Photobooth and chose your favourite background to be pictured against…

Dressing up for the photobooth – the things we do for the archives…

Katharina wasn’t the only one wanting a picture of her time-warp ‘travels’ – this is the queue…

Queuing for the Photobooth. Photo: Katharina Ulmschneider

The Institute of Archaeology’s Ian Cartwright was there giving a great talk on Harry Burton, the photographer of the Pharoahs. Other old photograph events included the amazing ‘Professor’ Heard’s Frightful Magic Lantern Show.

A glimpse of ‘Professor’ Heard’s original magic lantern slide projector…

There were too many highlights to list them all here, but other favourites for us included the Pop Up Charleston Demonstrations, the Vintage DJ and Dance Floor, and a gruesome talk on Mummification, Dismemberment, and ancient Egyptian Funerals.

We are looking forward to the next LiveFriday…