Case Study - Laura

How I got involved
Becoming an archivist has appealed to me for some time but I was never really sure what exactly it entailed, the fact that I am about to go into the third year of my degree pushed me to find out more. Fortunately for me my application for work experience was accepted and I was able to volunteer at The Hull History Centre for a month in the summer of 2010.

What have I done?
Over the month I have been able to experience three key areas; I shadowed the Senior Archivist during her duty in the public search room which meant assisting her in retrieving documents and experiencing the variety of queries from the public facing archivists. I have also finished two very different cataloguing tasks, one which related to Stamps Family Solicitors and another was The Hull Pegasus Model Flying Club.

Both of these collections were interesting because it meant reading through documents and organising them into a structure easy for the public and the archivist to understand, which is harder than it sounds! I also had the chance to work with the conservator using state of the art equipment for scanning documents, as well as witnessing other gadgets at work preserving, maintaining and making the archives accessible in different formats.

I have learnt so much over the month I was able to volunteer and I have really enjoyed the tasks I have been set. This experience, hopefully, has put me one step closer to entering the field of archives and records management. I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone at The Hull History Centre for giving me such a fantastic opportunity, and advise anyone thinking about volunteering to try to do so.