With my fifth week at Wessex coming to a close I am quite sad to think the end of my internship is on the horizon–but I will save my sentimental blog post for next week! Much of my time this week has been dedicated to the preparation of the Newbury and Reading archives. The Newbury archives have been somewhat challenging as a number of them belong to multiphase projects, resulting in an abundance of document files that aren’t always easy to decipher and arrange. Many stressful sighs later, and with the help of Lorraine, I eventually made sense of and organised the more complicated projects. Ticking them off the list was a relief to say the least!
Much of Wednesday and Thursday was spent preparing for a deposition of eight archives to Reading next week. At first glance I thought gathering together the paper and physical archives would take a mere few hours but once I began to organise everything I soon realised I’d been a bit optimistic. Just as I thought I was finished another task would pop up, emphasising more than ever how important it is to pay close attention to the museum guidelines on preparation procedures. Although it does sound like I’m complaining I did enjoy this activity as it was nice to be able to get my teeth into a project that I could work on solidly and complete within a couple of days. I look forward to depositing the Reading archives with Lorraine next week.
By Catherine Coates