Over
the last few months I have been helping as a LHSA volunteer on the Royal
National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) Scotland project ‘Seeing our History -
Living with Sight Loss in Edwardian Edinburgh and the Lothians’. With the backing of Heritage Lottery Funding,
this project brings expertise and volunteers together from many different
backgrounds to help to unlock the history of what life was like for blind and
partially-sighted people in Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland during the
Edwardian period.
According
to RNIB, the experiences of blind and partially sighted people have been
largely neglected in areas of social and cultural history, but by bringing to
life a resource from the RNIB Scotland/Edinburgh and Lothians Archive, now held
at LHSA, teams of experts and volunteers are about to take on this gap in
history. Therefore the project is based
around an excellent source within the archive collection, the Register of the
Outdoor Blind for Edinburgh and Lothians from around 1903 to 1910. This Register was used to document the lives
of 1170 blind or partially-sighted individuals. The period in which it covers
was a time before major development and support for sight-related disability
was available and so often these individuals had to depend on minimum
support. The Register enables us to
trace details about these individuals including: name; address; place of birth;
age when sight was lost; cause of blindness; marital status; how employed;
weekly earnings before losing sight and weekly income after; and date of death. This raw data, alongside records held within
the National Records of Scotland (NRS) such as Census and Parish Registers,
will be used in a research collaboration between partnerships of sighted and
partially sighted volunteers. Between
them the aim is to collect life stories about those individuals recorded in the
Register and hopefully contribute to a better understanding about the lives of
blind and partially-sighted people years ago.
Once life stories have been compiled, a series will be broadcast on the
RNIB Insight Radio and other resources made available about the projects
findings.
This
project has created an exciting opportunity for many different people
to get involved at its different stages. As was one of the aims, certainly from my
experience at the pre-research stage, the project has also provided an opportunity
for those involved to develop skills useful within the heritage and information
profession. I have only very recently
finished my degree in Information Management and Preservation from the University of
Glasgow. Working on a project such as this has not only allowed me
to gain new practical skills, but
it has also allowed me to tackle issues surrounding the best ways to make
archival resources accessible.
The
Register is a single bound volume in handwritten format, often difficult to
read, and therefore had to be transcribed for the researchers to use for preservation needs as well as on account of the difficulties that
interpreting handwriting can bring to those with limited experience. As a volunteer with LHSA I was asked to
create an Access database and produce a set of guidelines for another volunteer,
alongside some very helpful LHSA staff, to use in order to input the data from
the Register. Transcribing the
information into an Access database was the most effective way to ensure that the
data from the original document identified each individual in a coherent and
organised format, and could best assist the needs of the researchers.
This
has been a really interesting process because it has made me think about the
role of the archivist and accessibility, dealing with issues such as avoiding
personal interpretation of archival materials, whilst at the same time making a
rich resource easier to use. It was
really important to get this balance right and to emphasise within the
guidelines the importance of getting as accurate and as authentic transcription
of the Register as possible. Working
with the original document flared up many issues that were important to address
to ensure that those transcribing the Register were consistent throughout the
whole transcription. For example, as the Register was filled in between around 1903 and 1910, different people
have used different abbreviations to describe details, such as the cause of blindness or people's
marital status or religious denomination.
It was important that every variation of the abbreviation was
transcribed and accounted for. To solve the issue of what they all denoted,
a key was created in order to provide meaning to each and every abbreviation
that was used. The guidelines emphasised
the ‘golden rule’ for transcribing – the importance of transcribing exactly
what you see, rather than what you think it should say, so as to avoid personal
interpretation. This was often harder
than it sounds especially when the handwriting was difficult to read. I think the key to ensuring this level of accuracy
was to remind ourselves that each entry within the Register captures certain
aspects of a person’s life and, therefore, each person deserves the same amount
of attention to detail and accuracy.
These issues were also important for the researchers to be aware of in
order to increase usability of the resource.
Therefore a separate set of guidelines was produced for the researchers
and I also had the pleasure of explaining these guidelines to the research
group when I met them at the NRS.
I
have thoroughly enjoyed being part of this project and the exciting prospect of
helping to make such a rich resource more accessible. Hopefully once the research stage is complete
many other different types of researchers as well as the general public will be
able to learn about another interesting part in our society’s history.
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