Case Study - Verity

How I got involved
For as long as I can remember I have wanted to study history and ultimately pursue a career involving history. In order to find out more about the work of an archivist I applied to the Hull History Centre in the hope of gaining some work experience and I was very grateful to be given the opportunity to volunteer at the Centre for three weeks in September.

What have I done?

I have really enjoyed my time at the Hull History Centre, everyone has been very welcoming and friendly. I have gained invaluable experience helping to catalogue collections, conserving archives for the future and also shadowing archivists in the public search room.

In particular, I have been involved in cataloguing teachers’ personnel records from the Hull area and in the process I unearthed some truly fascinating items. Equally fascinating have been the photographs of Tarran Industries (Ref C DIET) which I have helped to catalogue. The photographs detail the construction of prefabricated houses in post-war Hull.

I have also been lucky enough to be part of ongoing conservation work at the History Centre. This work has entailed removing application forms to Sailors’ Orphan Homes, dated around the time of the First World War, from a book so that they will be able to be better preserved as individual items.

In preparation for the recent Heritage weekend I was pleased to be involved with preparing activities for children at the Centre. I was able to help by making some pop-up cards as well as writing and drawing the instructions for the children on how to make the cards

I have had a really great time, it has been incredibly interesting and I would like to say thank you to everyone at the Hull History Centre for making it such an enjoyable experience.