Throughout the year our volunteers and interns have been working hard to help preserve our collections and make them more accessible. Having just completed one of our volunteer programme weeks, here we highlight and show our appreciation for their amazing efforts and great work.
Raz and Tanya
The week before last saw the arrival of our latest new recruits, Raz and Tanya. Razvan is a sixth form student on work experience who was with us for 3 days. You can read more about his experience in his article (coming soon) on our 'Student Features' page. And Tanya, a DMU Graduate Champion who is with us for 6 weeks working on packaging and listing the Zandra Rhodes collection. As they both had a shared interest in Russian history and space exploration, for their first task they helped repackage some of our Russian Space Exploration artefacts which had recently been used for a teaching session while enjoying getting to handle the objects, photographs and documents that make up this fascinating collection. Look out for more from Tanya in a few weeks' time.
Isabella, Katia and Megan
Joint hosted with our heritage colleagues, the DMU Museum team, for this second volunteer week, three DMU undergraduate students, Isabella, Katia and Megan assisted with organising, listing and creating a display of one of our latest accessions.
Originally consisting of only one box, the newly acquired papers relating to the DMU Pharmacy department are a welcome addition to the collection. Pharmacy is one of DMU's oldest courses, with early records indicating classes began at least as early as 1887. Featuring a range of material from staff and student magazines, photographs, lab reports and pharmaceutical guides, there is also an interesting selection of lab apparatus which belonged to long-standing Professor Sydney Carter who was based at the School.
The three worked extremely hard, managing to preserve and complete a full box list of the collection which you can now browse on our online catalogue: DF/D/03 Papers of the School of Pharmacy.
They also created this wonderful display which is soon to be installed in the Hawthorn Building.
MA Photographic History Research Student, Jaylee.
As part of her MA programme, Jaylee spent her placement module working with us between Mar-May, 2024. During that time she clocked up over 125 hours and assisted with creating a catalogue for the Photographic History Collection of local collector, Dennis E. Gamble.
You can read more about this fascinating collection focused on Leicester/shire photographers and browse more cabinet cards and cartes de visite in Jaylee's article on our 'Student Features' page where she contextualises the collection and highlights some potential avenues for research using the images.
Remote Volunteer, Josie
Starting last October, Josie is a newly qualified archivist who has since been generously volunteering for 4 hours per week. Working with a range of our digital collections, Josie has been utitlising and developing her skills in digital collections management and cataloguing. More recently she has begun assisting with the creation of an online exhibition. See below for some highlights:
For this collection, Josie has been uploading images and transferring and cleaning metadata relating to a collection of photographs taken by John Smith who was the curator of Stamford Museum when the BBC television series Middlemarch was being filmed on location there. Due to his generosity in sharing the images, these now feature in the online Genetic Edition, Transforming Middlemarch along with additional images now a part of the wider collection. The images provide real insight into the making of a TV show in the 1990s.
P/001 - Lydgate arrives in Middlemarch.
F/016 Marjorie Steele Fashion Illustrations, 1920s-1940s
Here, Josie has been ensuring our files are named correctly, indexed, uploaded to the catalogue and have well-maintained collection entries: all vital to their long-term accessibility. Not only that, but the illustrations are gorgeous to look at! Browse the collection using the link above.
Online Exhibition: DMU Contour 1947-2024.
As archive projects can span several months, Josie has also picked up Jaylee's baton to complete cataloguing the photographic history collection, and our previous intern, Hafsa's work on researching and preparing an exhibition on the history of DMU's Contour programme. It is hoped this exhibition will launch by the end of the year. You can view all our online exhibitions on our webpage.
Again, we would like to thank all our interns and volunteers for all their hard work. If you are interested in a career in archives or heritage, would like to improve your employability skills, or would just like to get involved, please do get in touch using our enquiries email: archives@dmu.ac.uk.
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