Friday photo is not changing to puppy of the week but it so happens that today's choice of ship shares its name with a breed of terrier - the Dandie Dinmont. The dog breed is named after a "jovial farmer" who appears in the Walter Scott novel Guy Mannering, perhaps the ship was too...
Regardless, it is now my new favourite name for a ship. The Dandie Dinmont was a paddle steamer built by A & J Inglis in Glasgow in 1895.
She started life working the Craigendoran - Dunoon/Holy Loch route for the North British Steam Packet company.
Specification details are available from clydebuilt database here and the records of A & J Inglis are held by Glasgow City Archives.
Our Volunteer Policy was approved by the Trustees yesterday so we now have an official statement of what we can offer volunteers and what we would expect from them.
We're very fortunate to have three great volunteers already at the Trust who between them must know everything there is about railways and locomotives. However, we still have plenty of work for new volunteers and we can offer great experience in handling technical records, whether you are interested in a career in archives or helping to preserve Scotland's industrial history.
More information about the type of projects we have is available on our website.
We are looking for people with the following:
- Time to spare - this could be as little as a couple of hours a week or daily attendance (within office hours).
- Attention to detail - the records require accurate and detailed listing.
- Willingness to learn - we have set procedures for processing records.
- A knowledge of something (ships, trains or engines) is necessary for some of our collections - we like to match collections to specialist knowledge where possible.
In return we can offer:
- All the tea and chocolate biscuits you can manage!
- A chance to socialise with friendly individuals.
- Training in computers and specific IT software if you wish.
- The opportunity to help preserve Scotland's industrial past.
If you are interested please contact Kiara King (email: k.king@archives.gla.ac.uk or by telephone: 01505 328488). Or download and complete our application form and send it back.
A little update on where we are with our archive pace setter scheme project. I posted about it here when we were awarded pace setter status. But I never really explained it on the blog, although the project plan is available on our website here.
Basically the project is going to test our use of the Archivists Toolkit (AT) by using it to catalogue the Montague Smith collection for the National Archives of Scotland.
This is a collection of 3000+ railway drawings that has been arranged and described by one of our volunteers, Campbell Cornwell. As the listing has been completed by hand and would need to be typed up before returning it to the NAS we felt it was the perfect candidate for a pilot project inputting it into AT.
We have done a trial run to understand how AT will work with the series and item level descriptions and Delaine has taken to the system really well so we hope that it will be easy enough to input when the time comes.
However, before we can start typing the information up, there is one field of information that we weren't aware should be captured when the initial listing and describing was carried out. This is the measurements/dimensions of each drawing and is crucial information for the NAS to help them plan for order requests when they come in.
So, at the moment Delaine is in addition to numbering and rolling each drawing, also taking down the measurements with the aid of a trusty ikea measuring tape for ease of measuring.
This has delayed the project a little bit as its not just a simple package and data entry exercise any more but we want to provide the best possible catalogues for the collections we process and so it is important that we capture this information now.
Excuse the slightly squint images for today's photo, that's how I put them in the scanner. The images are of the hovercraft/hoverbus built by William Denny & Brothers and launch in 1962. It was one of the last projects the company undertook before they went into liquidation in 1963.
Denny's were a firm known for innovation and this hoverbus was one of the first in the world built for commercial operation.
The BBC has a great clip of the hovercraft on its maiden voyage from Dumbarton to Oban in 1963. Click here to get to the page and then click on the video icon next to the Denny Hovercraft link to view it.
The maiden voyage also took the D2 down to London and British Pathe have this clip of her arriving on the Thames in June 1962
£1-A-TIME HOVERBUS
At the Ballast we tend to specialise in large scale industries but tomorrow I will be attending an event that focuses on domestic technologies: sewing machines, woodwork tools, typewriters and blacksmith or cobblers' tools.
I will be attending the launch of the STICK Effective Collections project 'Old Tools, New Uses' which is working with museums in Scotland to identify the treasures and duplicates of tools and domestic technology they have.
A series of workshops are being held to enable participants to learn the importance of items in their collections from an independent specialist advisor, have access to a schools resource and get the opportunity to dispose of duplicate items to artisan communities in Africa in partnership with the charity Tools for Self Reliance .
Another busy week where I haven't been able to get to the scanner to do some new Dan McDonald photos so today there's another from his fishing sets. This shows men attending to their nets in 1939.