Welcome back to part two of my weekly blog series, in which I share my internship adventure at the Mills Archive Trust with you. This week I have been dealing with the trials and tribulations of fame. Ever since my first blog went live I can’t walk 5 minutes without somebody asking me for a picture or an autograph, but I guess that now that I am a world famous ‘blogger’ it is one of the things I will have to get used to! So what have I been up to this week?
Well, as you know I am here for 6 weeks ‘cleaning up’ the online library, to make it easier for all of us to navigate. Collectively, me, Ron and Elizabeth have come to the decision that we will ensure that a more simplified approach is taken to categorising books. Topics will now be assigned according to the main overarching themes of the book, this will ensure that the topics assigned to a book will be reflective of the main focus of the book itself, rather than perhaps a brief reference.
Since I started, I have looked at over 1200 different mills and I’m pretty sure that Elizabeth knows every single one. Again this week, she and Ron have been adding to my lexicon of milling terms, and I’m afraid that this will eventually permeate into my social life where I’ll soon be talking about gazetteers on my next pub crawl.
I have also been subject to one of Ron’s ulterior motives with this internship – to get me really interested in milling! He has given me a book titled ‘The London Millwrights’ and it goes into great detail surrounding the transition from millwrighting to engineering. This change was sparked (as many of you probably know) by the mills growing larger. I have found it extremely useful for my library development role as it has enabled me to better understand exactly which books are about traditional millwrighting and which ones are more focused upon engineering. This book has given me a degree of clarity on that front, allowing me to categorise books more appropriately. It was a truly fascinating read and I would implore any of you to have a read of it.
On a more social side to my activities this week, I got called Lewin, by one of our brilliant volunteers. At my previous employment, I got given the name Lance by two employees who decided Lewis was a bit too boring! The problem was that other employees genuinely thought my name was Lance, and of course I wouldn’t want to embarrass them by saying to them you’ve been calling me the wrong name for the past three years so I stuck with it. I’m glad the name Lewin didn’t stick though, employees at my last work thought I was half deaf because it would take me a few seconds to respond to the name Lance, and kept telling me I should go for a hearing test. (I didn’t if you’re curious.)
To finish off, I’d just like to say that I am still thoroughly relishing my time at the Mills Archive. I am enjoying getting to know everyone and can’t wait to come into work each day. The experience that I will gain working here will be invaluable for my future aspirations, and I can only thank the Mills Archive for this opportunity, which I’m sure will propel me into a career in heritage. That’s of course if the blogging career falls through!
So that’s the end of this week’s blog! Thank you for listening to the ramblings of a Lewin, and I hope you will join me again next week, where I will update you on what I have been up to!
