Engaging with our archive peers & the wider community: looking backwards, moving forwards

This week has seen the Archives and Records Association annual conference taking place in Edinburgh. The theme is ‘advocating for archives and records’, a highly relevant topic in this time of cutbacks. LHSA staff have all attended at least one day of the conference and found the presentations to be stimulating and thought-provoking. It was great to see how archives across the world are engaging with their users, arguably advocating the importance of their records through both traditional means and new social media, creating a community of users who in turn value and advocate for the archives. One of the key messages from a duo of French archivists was that in this age of information overload, an archivist’s skills of finding the right thing at the right moment are more relevant than ever. 

Nurses in the Florence Nightingale Nurses' Home, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh

Tomorrow, Laura will be presenting a talk to a group of nurses celebrating the 55^th anniversary of the day they started their training at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh on the 3^rd of September 1956. Her talk will cover a brief introduction to the Archive, followed by a look at the history of nursing in the hospital. It will feature an excerpt from a silent film called ‘The Ever Open Door’, made in 1938 to raise funds for the hospital in the days before the advent of the NHS. You can see the film in full by visiting our website: The Ever Open Door