Blog at the Ballast

The Ballast Trust has a backlog of nearly 400 linear metres. This is made up of around 15 distinct collections ranging from 90 linear metres down to just 2 linear metres. It is my job as Archivist to decide how to tackle the backlog, making best use of the expertise we have from other staff and volunteers and what our priorities should be.

There are many different ways to decide cataloguing priorities. A normal working archive might focus on accessions that most closely reflect their collection policy or are frequently requested by researchers. Some archives concentrate on getting through multiple small collections quickly and leave large collections till last. An interesting presentation from two American Archivists about minimal processing to clear archival backlogs can be found here.

At the Ballast Trust, the first step has been to find out exactly what we have and I am now thinking about what factors should inform the decision process to assign priorities to collections. I have read the Logjam Report which has useful criteria for definining cataloguing priorites. Our own priorities include:

• Whether we have staff or volunteers with the expertise to process the collection
• Size of collection - could it be a quick win?
• Physical condition - is it at risk?
• Does it have an owner - is there a particular demand for it and does the owner have the space to take it back when finished?

In time this will mean that we can begin to reduce the number of shelves we have that look like this.

So far I've focused on the shipping side of things on the blog which is not very representative of what the Ballast Trust does. Particularly not the work of our 3 volunteers who are all processing railway collections.

I thought this podcast by The National Archives at Kew on "God's Wonderful Railway" would help balance things out. It is a recording of a talk given by Bruno Derrick to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Great Western Railway in 2008.

The talk covers the early years of the Great Western Railway and how the development of the railways transformed the landscape of Great Britain and became the agent of enormous social change.

How to listen to the podcast: A podcast can be listened to on a computer or on any mp3 player—not just an iPod. To listen to this podcast simply click on the 'pay' button and it will start to play automatically. If you want to save it and listen later, click the 'download' button. This will allow you to download the file, save it and listen later.

This is a picture of Vehicle Ferryboat No. 4 outside A & J Inglis Ltd in Glasgow. I've not had much luck finding out any other information about this so comments welcome.

**Update** I've since discovered that this was built by Ferguson Brothers in Port Glasgow in 1938 for the Clyde Navigation Trust.  It was used on the route between Govan and Partick.  More information here.

As a recently qualified archivist, one of the things I like most about my job at the Ballast Trust is that I get to think about how the Trust should do everything. This is a great opportunity to start at the beginning and think about access policies, accession databases, forms and cataloguing procedures.

However, before I tackled the detail of documenting how we work and developing new procedures and systems, I needed to document the purpose of the Ballast Trust and provide some kind of operational statement. Most archives have a collections policy which would cover this but as we technically don't collect anything I needed a more general statement.

• Ballast Trust Policy Statement

I have put together the policy statement above, after looking at different examples of collection and access policies. It will be formally approved by the Board of Trustees at their next meeting in December.

This image shows the shipyard of Archibald McMillan & Son at Dumbarton.


The ship in the middle of the image is the Kana, built for the Moss Hutchison Line in 1929 to transport cargo.

The records of Archibald McMillan & Son are held by Glasgow City Archives. The company was established in 1834 by Archibald McMillan and his son, John, and stopped building ships in 1930. During this time they built nearly 560 vessels.

This image is taken from Bill Lind's collection of photographs and McMillan & Son were a company that he was interested in. An article about the company appeared in the 1976 journal of Scottish Industrial History.