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.