Blog at the Ballast

One for the start of the summer holidays this week! We uploaded this fab image of the Duke of Devonshire paddle steamer a couple of weeks ago to our flickr photostream. The ship was built by R & H Green, Blackwall, 1896.

There is more information about her on this website.



 Our image shows her at Lulworth Cove and I also realised this week via twitter that there are a few videos of her coming into the cove on youtube.

Today a new exhibition opens at the National War Museum in Edinburgh - Arctic Convoys. I attended a preview of it yesterday evening as the Ballast Trust had worked with the National Museums Scotland (NMS) and Glasgow Museums to arrange for our model of the SS Rathlin to be included in the exhibition.

Glasgow Museums hold a large collection of ship models loaned to the Museum from the 1970s onwards by Bill Lind and since his death the Trustees of the Ballast Trust and Lind Foundation are responsible for them.

We were very pleased to be able to work with NMS to arrange for the loan and the model looks wonderful in its new display. The Rathlin served as a rescue ship during the Arctic Convoys but she had been built by Alexander Stephen & Sons Glasgow in 1936. We have a photograph of her from the Dan McDonald Collection below and there is some good information about her work as a rescue ship here.

The campaign is being officially championed by the Scottish Council on Archives, to support the ongoing National Strategy for Business Archives in Scotland, the campaign aims to encourage archives, their users and the public at large to celebrate the unique stories behind individual Scottish businesses; the records of products that were produced or manufactured in Scotland and exported around the world; and the archival legacy of working Scots of all kinds - whether in business, farming, healthcare, education, the church or government.

The Working Archive campaign will celebrate the people behind the records - whether the workers and staff of businesses, the communities within which businesses are based or trade or the archivists and curators who work to preserve these records today.

At the Ballast Trust we see some great examples of working archives and from our own small collections we've create this flickr set and also contributed some of these images to the gallery.

Back in October we organised and shifted close to 10 tonnes of engineering plans. These were drawings relating to about 8 different engineering companies based in the North-East of England. They had come to the Ballast Trust along with other material for the Kincaid’s collection that had been cleared out of the premises of Clark Kincaids in the early 1990s.

Following discussions with colleagues at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, we had agreed that these items would be much better placed with them as a repository that is local to where those companies operated.

They sent up a great driver who amazingly drove all the way up from Newcastle, spent 3 hours loading plans and then drove all the way back down! You can see what they have done since with the plans (including some snazzy and essential freezing of the plans) and find out more about how they fit into their shipbuilding and engineering collections here.

On the 4th of December, I gave a talk as part of a joint training day organised by the Business Archives Council of Scotland (BACS) and Archives and Records Association Scottish Region and hosted by Glasgow City Archives to introduce members of both organisations to procedures and processes for handling technical records within their archive collections.

Here at the Ballast Trust, we specialise in processing technical records. Which we consider to be the plans, drawings, maps and photographs (often found in construction, engineering, architectural, design and manufacturing businesses) that provide evidence of the creation and development of products or sites within business and organisational collections.

For my presentation I have tried to explain our approach to technical records, the importance of background research and understanding your collection and then an awareness of plans and the use of 'core lists' or retention guidelines for certain industries. We will be publishing core lists that we use for shipbuilding and engineering collections in the new year.

A date for your diary and a reason to get yourself through to Edinburgh!

As part of Doors Open Days this year the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) is offering a number of talks and tours at their offices in Edinburgh on Saturday 22nd September.

From their website:

Hear experts talking about our extensive collections and view our exhibitions and fi lms. You’ll also get the chance to go behind-the-scenes to discover how we photograph, measure and draw industrial sites, and fi nd out how these unique images form an important record of Scotland’s industrial past and present.

View the programme here.

Some shameless self-promotion this afternoon with an image of the Meet the Archivists poster that I have designed for this November event. The Meet the Archivists event will take place on November 9th 2012.

Today I'm giving a talk on the value of Twitter for Archives and Archivists as part of the ARA Scotland Born (Digital) Identity conference in Stirling.

I've previously thought that there was no point to the Ballast Trust being on Twitter mainly because we don't have our own collections to highlight.  However, while I was preparing my talk I realised that there are loads of other reasons and benefits to using Twitter would apply to us so we have officially joined!

Find us here.

Image from here

As part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, Galgael are holding a workshop tomorrow (Thursday 26th April) to show you how to build a St. Kilda mailboat from found material (redeveloped flotsam) pulled from the River Clyde.

Go here for details of times and how to find Galgael.

One of the model railways at HMRS

On Saturday I gave a talk about the work of the Ballast Trust as part of the Archives, Artefacts, Amateurs and Academics workshop organised by the Business Archives Council and the Historical Model Railway Society.

It was a very interesting two days, very useful from our point of view to hear how other organisations manage and use technical records and has given me lots of things to think about.

There is a full write-up of the conference over on Turnip Rail (a blog written by PhD student David Turner about railway history).

One of the most interesting developments we heard about was the Transport Archive Register. This is an online register that aims to "describe archives containing railway and canal records which are not linked to national databases and which might otherwise escape notice. Local libraries, societies and individuals often have collections about which information is hard to find. Anyone is welcome to use the information provided and equally anyone can contribute."

The Ballast Trust gets a name check in an article by Alisdair Northrop about the value of business archives in the March 2012 issue of Scottish Business Insider.

It looks at why business history is relevant for today’s companies and discusses the strong position that business archives in Scotland hold and mentions the role that Bill Lind played in this and the work that we carry out today.

You can read the article online here or view a pdf version here.