My experiences as a graduate trainee

By gtougher on January 22, 2010 • ( 0 )

For the past four months of my archive traineeship I have been part of the cataloguing team at GUAS which has taught me a range of skills and allowed me to work closely with two main collections. The first, was a new Glasgow University Archaeological Society accession, composed mostly of minutes, draft minutes, agendas, publications, lecture programmes. The second was a collection of records of the Chemistry Department. My task was to arrange and catalogue both collections according to recognised cataloguing standards such as ISAD(G) and EAD.

As part of my traineeship I am also based at the Glasgow NHS Archive at the Mitchell Library for two days a week, where I have a variety of responsibilities and have been working on many ongoing tasks. I greet new readers, help with their research and also accessing the catalogues and handling records. This is a great chance to work in another archive and gives me an opportunity to interact more with readers.

Through the co-operation of the head archivist I hope to have a small display area, exhibiting some of our most interesting and informative records from the NHS archive. I proposed the idea of an exhibition in order to raise the profile of the NHS archive and inform family historians visiting the city archives that our records are a valuable resource in their research.

At the beginning of December I started my document delivery placement which has taken me out of my comfort zone and will provide me with a whole new set of skills that I am very much looking forward to gaining.

Cheryl Brown

If you are interested in becoming an archivist and would like to find out what our current trainees are working on just now please see our website.