Zoom In - A Closer Look at Science

The British Museum's scientists and conservators invite you to the British Museum, Great Court on Saturday, March 23rd 2013, 11:00-16:00. This exciting events will allow you to take a closer look at science in the museum and discover how science unlocks the secrets behind the museums collections. 

You will also have a chance to visit the Heritage Smells! demonstrations. You will have a chance to find out why objects smell and to use instruments to "sniff" old books, plastics or ethnographic artefacts.

Heritage Smells is a major collaborative research project seeking to understand the smells behind old objects and documents. 

This event promises to be a fun learning day for all visitors and will also provide a chance for heritage educators to seek inspiration for new ways to interpret their own collections.

Admission to the event is free. The event forms part of National Science and Engineering Week 2013.

Summary - ARA Officers' day

Members of ALES may be interested in the summary of the recent ARA Officers' day in Birmingham. In particular, Laura Cotton is leading in the development of a handbook for ARA officers detailing job descriptions and other essential information for those interested in or actually taking on the roles. Suggestions for what information should be included are welcome...

http://www.archives.org.uk/latest-news/2013-ara-officers-day-takes-place-in-birmingham.html?utm_campaign=ARATodayissuethirtyfive&utm_source=Suite26&utm_medium=Email+Campaign

If you want to email suggestions to me at alison.diamond@nas.gov.uk, I will forward them to Laura.

Alison Diamond

ALES Chair

New Online Resources at National Records of Scotland

The education team at National Records of Scotland (NRS) is developing new online resources to support teachers and learners in the delivery of Curriculum for Excellence and National Qualifications.

Our approach is simple and straightforward: we wish to provide content that can be adapted by teachers to support different topics, themes and areas within the Scottish curriculum at different teaching levels. Our units will offer images of original sources, transcripts and background notes.

Three new resources are available at http://www.scottisharchivesforschools.org/indexPilotResources.asp. 

Please visit the resources and, if you have time, provide answers to the following questions by emailing education@nas.gov.uk .

Content and supporting text:

• Which units did you use?

• Is sufficient context provided to enable you to make full use of the resources?

• We have chosen to make complete documents available as far as possible, believing that students should encounter the whole source rather than just selected extracts. Do you agree with this approach?

• We are piloting both topic-based (eg. Scottish Suffagettes and The Great War) and thematic units (Letters and Diaries). Do you have a preference for either presentation and, if so, why?

Style and layout on screen:

• Are you able to navigate the units to identify sources? Do you have any comments on the style of the pages?

• Can you right click and save the images, and are they of sufficient quality for you to use them both electronically and in print form?

• If you are able to test the images on a smartboard, please do so and let us know of any technical problems you encounter opening or using them.

• We provide document transcriptions as printable Rich Text Format documents (rtfs). Are you able to access this type of file or would an alternative, eg. pdf, be preferable?

Your feedback will be really useful to us in developing our online service. Thank you for your time and assistance.

Sedburgh School Training Event

Sedbergh School is hosting a training event on May 16th. The event is aimed at School Archivists but may also be of use or interest to archivists working in small archives or those involved with creating education resources or exhibitions.

The Programme of events is as follows.

09.30       Refreshments will be available upstairs in Queens Hall

10.00       Welcome

10.05         Rachel Kneale: Cataloguing and Arranging in the School Archive Context

10.45       Katy Iliffe: Using Adult and Pupil volunteers in a School Archive

11.30       Paul Dyson: War Memorial Website

11.50       Pat Chandler: WW1: Preparing to commemorate the centenary

12.10       Group Discussion about WW1 commemorations

12.30       Lunch

13.10       Tour of the School Archive

13.30 David Clements: Archive Manager and Archive Browser. Cataloguing Software for a small archive

16.00 Departure

The cost is £10 which includes lunch and other refreshments through the day. Cheques payable to Sedbergh School Foundation. To book contact, Katy Iliffe of Sedbergh School Archive and Heritage Centre on 01539622275