The working life of Museum of London

Since my last post back in December a lot has happened in the world of digital preservation at LAARC (London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre). We have taken in several large archive deposits, including a great deal of digital images relating to a number of Olympic development sites, and I’m currently busily processing the deposits in order to make them accessible through our online catalogue.

We’ve also had a number of enquiries regarding our collections, ranging from a request for information on fish bone samples from archaeological sites, to questions about plans and standing building drawings of a church in the City of London which we hold in our collection. While these are standard enquiries for a collection like LAARC, they do sometimes involve the investigation of our legacy data to find out exactly what information is available.

So, what exactly is legacy data I hear you ask? Well, in the context of digital preservation it is often used to refer to files or data stored in old or potentially obsolete formats, which as a result can be difficult to access and even harder to interpret. As a result, and in particular when dealing with enquiries relating to archaeological excavations which occurred in the 1980’s and early 1990’s (when digital records were being created, but the idea of digital preservation hadn’t really entered our consciousness), it is sometimes necessary to conduct searches across this legacy data, extrapolate the required information, and manipulate and migrate the data into a more accessible format, while ensuring that the data itself has not been altered in the process.

Part of our legacy toolkit at LAARC!

Our standards and guidance for deposition, and our work with current depositors of archaeological records, aims to ensure that we are not faced with these problems for current and future digital deposits. However, for digital records that were created before such standards were in place, we simply have to deal with the data in whatever form we have it, and work to the best of our abilities to extract the required information. Our long term goal is to process and migrate all of the legacy data we currently hold into accessible formats which we can then provide access to online, but with legacy data from over 670 sites, it will take some time!!

I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to talk about some of these issues when I was invited to give a short presentation at the Digital Preservation: What I Wish I Knew Before I Started event, organised and co-hosted by the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) and the Archives and Records Association (ARA) back in January. The event aimed to give ideas and practical advice concerning digital preservation to current archive and records management students, and hopefully inspire them to get involved in this particular area. For anyone interested, all the presentations from the day are available at the DPC event page and comments from the day can be found on Twitter by searching the hashtag #dpc_wiwik.

Finally, I can’t write a blog about my work at LAARC without mentioning that it’s our 10th anniversary this year – and we are running a number of events and hands on activities both at LAARC and the Museum of London to celebrate. I had my first experience of these when I participated in the Archaeology Up Close day on the 20th January, when we put on a display of finds and records on the theme of ‘Made in London’. Various finds were on show which provided evidence for shoe making in the Roman period, medieval glass and ceramic making, and post medieval clay tobacco pipe manufacturing. It was great to be able to share our collections, and passion for archaeology, with visitors to the museum, and for my part it was certainly nice to get away from my computer for a day! Various LAARC staff will be at the Museum every Monday, Tuesday and Friday for the next 8 weeks, talking about our archive collections and archaeology in general, so come and say hello when you are on your next visit, and follow the LAARC VIP blog for more info.

LAARC staff talking to (hopefully) interested members of the public about archaeology

Hello, my name is Andrew Fetherston, and I have just started working at the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC) as the new Archaeological Records (Digital) Officer, having spent nearly two years as the Digital Archivist at The National Archives. I’ll be taking over from Joanna Wylie, who is heading back to New Zealand in the new year after 3 and a half years of accessioning, archiving and preserving London’s digital archaeological collections. Which means I’ve got exactly 3 weeks to try and distil over 3 years of Joanna’s knowledge, skills and experience into something I can understand!! Still, New Zealand’s not that far away really, when you think about it, and you can do wonders with Skype nowadays, so I’m sure it will all be fine.

Anyway, as part of my training, I’ve been let loose on the LAARC blog, possibly just to see if I can use a computer (so far so good), but also to say a little bit more about LAARC and the role of Archaeological Records (Digital) Officer.

An archaeological archive differs from a traditional archive as it includes both records (in various forms and formats: paper, photographic, digital) and finds. At the LAARC, we accept archives relating to archaeological projects undertaken in the Greater London area, and I will be responsible for managing the digital records that are received as part of these archives.

Archaeology (old stuff) and digital (new stuff) seem odd bed-fellows, but in reality modern archaeological excavations can generate huge amounts of digital data. These can include relatively common digital records such as reports, spreadsheets and digital photographs, to more specialised formats such as GIS (Geographical Information Systems), Geophysics and CAD files.

As well as managing and providing access to these records, I will also be involved in assigning site or ‘project’ codes to new archaeological projects in London, assisting in responding to external enquiries about our collection, keeping our website and collection databases up-to-date, blogging about our work, and helping with the LAARC’s outreach activities.

However, my very next task is to help decorate the traditional LAARC Christmas gingerbread house – an Archaeological Records (Digital) Officer’s work is never done!

Previous incarnation of the traditional LAARC Christmas gingerbread house