Hello everyone! This week I decided to have a catch-up with a fellow volunteer, Laurence, who has been volunteering here since September 2014. He studied History and Ancient History at Reading University, increasing his genuine interest in preserving historical records. After graduating, Laurence searched for career opportunities linked to his degree subject and came across the Mills Archive Work Experience programme and has been working here ever since!
Right now Laurence is sat at his desk intently studying hundreds of slides of various mills. He makes a record of the slide in an enormous spreadsheet and digitises it for the archive catalogue, linking it up with other relevant mills and archived documents. It looks very complicated to me and involves some major IT skills which I certainly lack but I can see that Laurence knows exactly what he is doing.
When asked what he would do if he came across a mill he didn’t recognise and was unable to find, I wasn’t able to catch him out because he stated that it would go in a special section for unidentified mills and of course if a member of the public did recognise it, then we are always grateful for any help towards making the archives as accurate and useful as possible.
Another interesting project Laurence worked on was the archiving of the Rex Wailes Collection. This took a very long time due to the sheer size of the collection and involved endless scanning of negatives and replacing photos with ones of a better quality to make the accessibility and viewing of the collection perfect. Thanks to Laurence’s hard work, the memorabilia collected over many years by Rex Wailes is now safe and secure in the Mills Archive catalogue where it will remain protected.
Laurence manages to make the most out of everything he does because not only is he passionate about the documentation he is taking care of but his creativity and dedication when doing certain tasks allows him to be accurate and precise in his cataloguing. Laurence is a lot of fun and he might kill me for saying this but he told me that he finds his work interesting because he feels like a detective searching for clues to find which mills things belong to. I think this is such an exciting way of looking at archiving, taking care of a collection that has been trusted to you by someone and using links and categories to back it up like evidence in a case file.
I am really glad I get to work alongside Laurence because he is such an interesting and relaxed person and with his vast knowledge of historical records and how to organise them with care and accuracy, he is sure to do great things! Like all the staff here at the Mills Archive, Laurence is always helpful and willing to take the time to talk to me. I have noticed he works closely with Nathanael, the two of them together creating the perfect archiving dream team! So if you visit the Mills Archives, say hi to Laurence because he is always working on something new and interesting to contribute to the ever-growing catalogued collections.