Hello everyone! By now you have probably read Kate’s first blog as an intern. I don’t want to repeat anything so I just had a quick chat with her about how she was getting on with the Rex Wailes collection. Kate will have lots of interesting things to say in her next blog but as a clueless English Literature student I am here to translate what she is doing into simple terms! We were laughing because Kate said that what she is doing is like second nature to her so it is actually quite difficult to describe what she is doing in simple terms with the collection to me who has no idea how to archive! But anyway, I’ll give it a go!
I met Kate last week at an intro session for the volunteers in which Liz, Ron, Elizabeth and Nathanael did presentations to explain what it is they do at the archives. That was really useful for all of us really because it gave us a better knowledge of how the tasks are divided between the team and who is responsible for each aspect of running the archives.
When I spoke to Kate today she was cataloguing the Rex Wailes collection by uploading information from one of the many boxes Rex left onto the website catalogue. She is concentrating on Finnish mills Rex collected documentation and photos of and then she must catalogue the information, such as which parish and province and then eventually Kate will scan photos on the website. Rex wrote a few articles for the Newcomen Society which is a society which celebrates the history of engineering and technology. Kate told me that it was strange reading these articles because all of the information provided by Rex has so far been very factual and precise, whereas these articles are much more personal and have more emotion than any of his other documentations, which is quite nice really because after all, Rex was passionate about mills and it’s good to see that passion come across not only in the vast amount of boxes full of his collection but also in his own words. Also, that is exactly what we are trying to do here at the archives through the blog! We want to bring the people of the archives to life! Kate showed me some of the postcards Rex had collected and written on and honestly I don’t know how she can read them as Rex’s handwriting is rather difficult to decipher! However, Kate said that although it is challenging at times, most of the place names are written in capitals so luckily she can read them easily.
When I asked Kate what some of the more interesting thing she has come across are, she told me that she found it bizarre that some of the mills had both Swedish and Finnish names! She told me that she thinks that this is not necessarily because they are on the border as such but because so many people from the different countries passed through, it made sense to have two languages present, just in case! Another thing Kate found quite funny was that Rex has included what we assume to be holiday photos, which look normal at first as they contain a number of people standing in front of various picturesque landscapes, but if you look closely, you can see why Rex has included these photos in his collection as you can see a tiny mill all the way in the distance! It is a really funny thought that whilst Rex was on holiday he would make people gather for a nice group photo, but in reality he is trying to get the windmill in! I imagine him saying ‘now just a bit more to your left…keep going!’ Even in his rest and relaxation time, mills were obviously never far from Rex’s mind!
Anyway that’s all I’ve got for you for now! And make sure you keep up to date with Kate’s blog too as she will no doubt find more interesting factiods to share with you!