Report to Heritage Lottery Fund

April 2000

Report No 14

Issues

Issues Not Resolved

Delays in appointing staff.

The post of Digital Imaging Technician for the Special Archive Services team was due to be re-advertised in April, however, Scottish Executive personnel are experiencing delays in ratifying the re-advertisement of the post as a promotional opportunity. The post will therefore be re-advertised on May 4.

Procurement Policy

Progress

Top Level Finding Aids Project

A formal assessment visit to the Jordanhill campus library of Strathclyde University Archives was undertaken by Alan Borthwick and Rachael Third on 18 April; and on 20 April Rachael paid a partly informal visit to Aberdeen University Library Special Collections to investigate the possibility of TLFA work occurring there in the near future. Arrangements were also made for a number of formal or informal visits to participating archives in May. The intention is that by the end of the summer team members will have visited all the participating archives on the mainland at least once, and contacted the other archives by phone where there is no immediate prospect of TLFA work starting. In this way we hope to have communicated our current thinking to all the archives, especially as not all of them were represented at the general participating archive meeting in Edinburgh in March.

Alan Borthwick briefed the incoming SCAN IT staff about the TLFA project on a couple of occasions during the month. He attended a meeting of the Higher Education Archives Hub committee in London, 3 April: an essential part of SCAN’s work, as the Hub are doing for participating HE institutions what SCAN is doing more generally in Scotland, and some of the HE Hub participants are also in SCAN. (George MacKenzie also attends these meetings as a formal committee member when he can, and we have found that useful information emerges from the editorial side of that project, which is run in a devolved manner as far as TLFA compilation is concerned, and there have been difficulties in ensuring consistency of approach as a result.) Alan also prepared for the NAS staff seminar on descriptive standards and a possible new electronic cataloguing system for NAS, to be held on 5 May.

Further reading of initial draft TLFA entries was undertaken throughout the month. A batch of entries was sent off to the National Library of Scotland for review and comment. In this case it was thought to be essential to canvass the views of NLS staff about how work was going well in advance of work being formally completed, because of the size of the task. By the end of the month the reading of the Falkirk History Research Centre initial draft TLFA was almost complete. Work on the other two presently being considered in detail, Angus Archives and Perth and Kinross Archives, was not so well advanced.

TLFA entry creation continued for the Scottish Jewish and Scottish Theatre Archives, Glasgow. It is expected that Jordanhill campus library staff will undertake many of their own TLFA entries. All members of staff undertook TLFA entry creation for the National Library and National Archives of Scotland during the month.

The essential 6-monthly staff appraisal work for all the new staff members was continued during the month, and almost the required tasks were completed by end April.

Special Archive Services Project

Joanna Baird had a further meeting with the web-site designer from Multimedia Incorporated to discuss the layout and look of the SCAN web site on Wednesday 5 April. Joanna Baird also showed some examples of documents from different periods as well as the images of documents provided by our participating archives for our original SCAN launch of January 1999. Joanna created several digital images of a variety of materials for use by Multimedia. Joanna Baird also created a web exhibition from an exhibition provided on CD by Fiona Scharlau of Angus Archives entitled ‘Revealing Women – the story of the Women of Angus’. Robin Urquhart created some palaeography texts and handy tips for the Scottish Handwriting page on the prototype web-site.

Robin has been compiling Knowledge Base entries on ‘Emigration’, ‘Cinema’ and ‘Madeleine Smith’ as well as working on background research for the ‘North by Northwest’ exhibition to be held in conjunction with the National Railway Museum.

Joanna Baird accompanied Hazel to Dundee University Archives on Tuesday 18 April to see Pat Whatley and her staff demonstrate their PowerPhase camera, acquired for their ‘The Drawn Evidence’ project.

Joanna has added 5 on-line leaflets contributed by various archives to the prototype site. 4 new ‘documents of the week’ were created in the course of April. Robin Urquhart visited Glasgow City Archives to demonstrate the prototype web-site.

Joanna Baird carried out an interim probationary appraisal for Robin Urquhart.

Robin Urquhart was on annual leave for a total of 9 days in April.

Joanna gave an introduction to the Special Archive Services project to the new IT staff, Bill Paton and Niall Taylor.

Testaments Project

Hazel Anderson and Peter Dickson went to Frankfurt to visit the GSU Technical HQ and to assess a book cradle and copy stand, manufactured by IKM, a company that has supplied General Register Office (Scotland) with similar equipment. Hazel also visited Dundee University Library with Joanna Baird to see their scanning camera in operation.

Checking of the re-keyed testaments indexes continued throughout the month. As a result, some of the indexes were returned to ADS, the company doing the data capture, for re-output.

Progress on checking and numbering the Aberdeen testaments warrants by Jane Hill speeded up considerably, due to the better order of the records.

The GSU volunteers continued their work of indexing and paginating post-1823 testaments registers (Aberdeen, Perth and Fife). Paginating proceeded faster than predicted, as the existing pagination of many volumes needed no correction.

Conservation of the pre-1800 Edinburgh Testament registers continues virtually on schedule. Peter wrote an evaluation of the IKM book cradle and an overall assessment of book support during digital capture.

Progress on camera procurement was put on hold while the GSU worked out arrangements for out-sourcing supply of the hard- and software developed by them.

Hazel Anderson carried out appraisal interviews for end-of-year staff reports with Jane Hill, Margaret Fox and Peter Dickson.

Throughput Reports

Special Archive Services

	April 2000 – Predicted	April 2000 Achieved	May 2000- Predicted
Topic Pages - drafted	2	2	3
Frequently Asked Questions - drafted	5	6	6
Topic Pages - quality-controlled	3	4	2
Frequently Asked Questions - quality-controlled	8	10	6

TLFAs

	April 2000- Predicted	April 2000 - Achieved	May 2000 - Predicted
TLFA initial draft entries –drafted	200	240	300
TLFA initial draft entries - quality controlled	500	380	400
TLFA entries - revised within SCAN	200	280	200
TLFA entries – agreed by SCAN and part. archive	0	0	30

Testaments

Testaments Editorial	April 2000 Predicted	April 2000 Achieved	May 2000 Predicted
Warrants (CC1/6)
Folders checked	10 (51-60)	15 (51-65)	15 (66-80)
Pages numbered	3250 (p.17357)	4137 (p. 18244)	4000
Testaments registers (SC1/36, 8/35, 49/31, 20/50
Index entries created	2500	2576	2500
Vols/Pages numbered	75/65000	67/84146	70/75000

Testaments Conservation	April 2000 Predicted	April 2000 Achieved	May 2000 Predicted
Vols. assessed	0	0	30
Folios cleaned	3000	1427	2500
Vols. paginated	10	3	10
Folios conserved	500	400	500
Vols.rebound	0	0	0
Vols. completed	10	8	10

Costs

Drawdown request 30 March 2000 £108.248.48

Drawdown received 28 April 2000 £106,796.60

Drwawdown request 17 April 2000 £39,033.91

Assessed by HLF as £40,486.64

Being processed by the end of the month

Staff

Total staff employed 30 April 2000

18

Procurement

In Progress

Digital cameras; cabling requirements for digital cameras; web server and storage; cataloguing software.

Participating Archives

Number of participating archives at month end 47

Change since last report 0

Statistics on Use of Network Facilities

None available

Users Group

First meeting of this group will take place on Saturday 20 May at Thomas Thomson House.

Project Board

The Project Board met on 5 April, its minutes are appended to this report.

Notes of Project Board Meeting

5 April 2000

Present: Ishbel Barnes, Rob Mildren, Stuart Low. Apologies: George MacKenzie

1. Review of March work plans and agreement on April work plans:

1. 1 Special Archive Services sub-Project

1.1.1 This sub-project is currently on schedule.

1.1.2 It was noted that entries to the Knowledge Base are falling behind target, as entry preparation time is taking longer than anticipated. It is hoped that the Participating Archives will make more of a contribution in this area.

1.1.3 It was noted that Bill Paton, newly appointed to the IT Team, would be working closely with the SAS Team.

The sub-project work plan for both March and April were agreed and approved.

1.2 Testaments

1.2.1 It was reported that the digitisation programme was marginally ahead of schedule. The Conservation programme is, however, slightly behind schedule due to there being one less conservator on the team than anticipated. The procurement of the digital cameras is approximately 6 months behind schedule. However this situation is considered to be retrievable because the eventual throughput will be much faster than initially estimated.

The sub-project work plan for both March and April were agreed and approved.

1.3 Top Level Finding Aids sub-Project

1.3.1 This sub-project is slightly behind schedule but is still on target.

1.3.2 It was suggested that each participating archive could be usefully viewed in terms of a ‘mini-project’, where a project officer, start, end and review date would be allocated before work began. This would enable the work period on each archive to be formally defined and closed off.

1.3.3 Ishbel proposed that the NAS should be encouraged to use the agreed ISAD(G) format for material catalogued in future.

The sub-project work plan for both March and April were agreed and approved.

2. Procurement

2.1.1 The procurement of the digital cameras is progressing in association with the GSU.

3. Staffing

3.1.1 The two new IT appointments both joined the project on 3 April.

3.1.2 It was noted that due to insufficient interest in the digital imaging post, advertised internally, it may be necessary to advertise the opportunity in the press or to offer it internally as a promotion opportunity. Joanna is in contact with Scottish Executive personnel regarding this issue.

3.1.3 It was agreed that consideration be given to the appointment of a casual employee over the summer period. It was suggested that their time might be spilt between the SAS and TFLA teams to enable the recovery of any slippage.

3.1.4 It was agreed to advertise for another conservator.

3.1.5 It was noted that a further two GSU volunteers are due to join the project in May.

4. Finance

4.1.1 It was confirmed that the drawdown request for the period November 1999 to March 2000 had been sent to HLF, requesting the sum of £108,248.48.

4.1.2 It was agreed that future drawdowns should be sent to HLF on a monthly basis on approximately the 15^th of each month.

4.1.3 It was agreed that all future costs for the project from April 2000 to project end would be forecast in the summary spreadsheet. This will indicate overall budget against expenditure performance and highlight potential conflicts.

4.1.4 It was noted that if digital imaging proceeds faster than anticipated then there may be implications for the predicted costs of data storage. More storage may be required to keep pace with the anticipated acceleration in the imaging programme.

I. SCAN Users Group

5.1.1 The first meeting of the Users Group has been re-scheduled for 20^th May.

6. A.O.C.B

6.1.1 It was suggested that Gordon Brown might be approached to officially launch SCAN when it goes public on 30^th November 2000. It was also suggested that a mixture of both real and virtual exhibitions might be set up between the participating archives to mark the occasion. To add an international dimension it was also suggested that Archives in North America, Australia and Europe might feed into this process. It was agreed to open this concept for fuller discussion at the Team Meeting on 6^th April.

The next Project Board meeting will be held on Monday 8th May at 14.00 in Thomas Thomson House, Bankhead Crossway North, Edinburgh.

SL

5 April 2000