Earlier this year, I wrote an article about the Ballast Trust for an Italian online journal called Culture e Impresa. This is a journal that publishes articles related to culture and business and is linked to the Centre for Corporate Culture in Milan. At the moment the article is only up in Italian but a full english translation of the journal will be available shortly. In the meantime the previous edition is available to read online still.
This weeks photo is the first Railway related image. It is from the "miscellaneous" collection of photographs and postcards that Bill accumulated and that we now have in several filing cabinets.
It is of a crane locomotive built by Dubs & Co. locomotive manufacturers in Glasgow from 1863 to 1903 when it amalgamated with Neilson, Reid & Co. and Sharp, Stewart & Co. to become the North British Locomotive Co. By the time of its amalgamation it had become the second largest locomotive works in Britain.
A locomotive crane can have a huge lifting capacity making them a very useful bit of equipement. More detailed information from this site: "A unique feature of locomotive cranes is their ability to perform lifting operations while serving as a locomotive for one or more attached rail cars. They can quickly travel miles to remote job sites under their own power, if required. Precision engineering and careful couterweighting enable them to work with very heavy lifts while maintaining their center of gravity over a narrow wheel base."
It is of a crane locomotive built by Dubs & Co. locomotive manufacturers in Glasgow from 1863 to 1903 when it amalgamated with Neilson, Reid & Co. and Sharp, Stewart & Co. to become the North British Locomotive Co. By the time of its amalgamation it had become the second largest locomotive works in Britain.
A locomotive crane can have a huge lifting capacity making them a very useful bit of equipement. More detailed information from this site: "A unique feature of locomotive cranes is their ability to perform lifting operations while serving as a locomotive for one or more attached rail cars. They can quickly travel miles to remote job sites under their own power, if required. Precision engineering and careful couterweighting enable them to work with very heavy lifts while maintaining their center of gravity over a narrow wheel base."
Exciting news for me today as one of our images on Flickr has been favourited!
It's the picture of the brigadier, which I have also posted about here on the blog and I'm delighted that someone has found it and liked it. It's also very good timing as I was thinking today about my goals for our account on Flickr and what images I should put up and more generally about why archives should use Flickr and other sites.
I had been reading some good thought provoking stuff this morning about Flickr from Kate at a blog called ArchivesNext, in particular this post which discusses why archives should use Flickr. So I'm planning to formalise how I use Flickr in the next month and think a bit more carefully about what images I select from the large collection we have here. I've tended to pick ones I think are "pretty" or interesting but I might try to focus on particular types of vessels for a change. Any preferences for what images I show on the blog and Flickr?
We definitely have a long way to go before we reach the levels that the Library of Congress has with 79% of their photos favourited but its a start.
A mystery photo this Friday as all I know about this picture is that it has Elizabeth written on the back. I think that probably refers to one of the larger boats in the background rather than the small one that the two boys are playing on.
My boxes for box listing arrived this week. They were a barginous £1.05 per box and are still a fairly decent size 40 x 33.5 x 25cm.
This means that I can now begin box listing the accessions in the outstore. "A box list is a finding aid that describes the size and the contents of each box in a very generalized way."* It is a necessary step for all of the collections we have so that I can find out more about what exactly is in each accession and make a decision about when to catalogue it fully and what assistance we'll need in terms of specialist knowledge from volunteers.
This information in turn will help me to prepare for expanding our volunteer numbers if I have a better idea of the type of collections and therefore the type of volunteers we need. On the downside, it means I have to go and work in the freezing cold outstore!
* Definition from here.
I've mentioned before that the National Maritime Museum had put some of its collections online. Well, I discovered at the weekend that this website by Surface View also has images from the NMM available to order as large-scale wall murals, prints or blinds.
This means that you can have an images from the plans for the Mauretania (1907), HMS Fearless and even the Bounty amoung others on your wall. They also offer images from other archive collections, museums and photography collections.
