Blog at the Ballast

This week I'm off to Calais on Friday for the E-Faith weekend on Industrial and Technical Heritage (programme here).  I'll be talking briefly about how the Ballast Trust works and the way in which we have been able to make use of volunteers and staff with specialist knowledge to process technical records.  Details of other papers and reports are available here.

I'm also attending the Heritage Volunteer Managers Network meeting in Inverness on Thursday.  This will be a good opportunity to find out about how other organisations use volunteers and learn from their experiences. 

So, its going to be busy but I'll report back here next week when I return.  I will still be able to post a Friday photo thanks to the wonders of technology.

Once you start looking for them, there are actually a few engineering, railway or shipping archive related stories each week.  On a Monday, I'll round up any I can find that might be of interest here:

• 18th century ship logs used for climate change research
• Launch of HMS Defender
• A triumph of Victorian engineering - the anniversary of Loch Katrine aquaduct (exhibition, news article and news article)

We've been doing some moving around this week so the scanner is still out of operation.  This means that I can't share the photos of earlier HMS Defenders that Dan McDonald took.  However, once we're all sorted out I'll get them up so we can compare the different defenders.

The upside of this is that I have a new office and we're getting a new kitchen put in as well so its all change in Walkinshaw Street.