Photographs, Archives and Values

My sister is currently in her final year of her PhD. She is currently looking for some participants in a focus group to understand the way material degradation is linked to information content in photographic images. If you are based in London or nearby and are available, please join in 🙂 You can register your interest here, and get more information on her research and project here and here.

Assessment Workshops: Lifetime of Photographic Materials

Have you ever wondered about loss of information in archives caused by material decay? Or about what makes an archival photograph fit-for-purpose? If so, I will be exploring these questions as part of my PhD.

One of the questions the research project ‘Lifetime of Colour Photographs in Mixed Archival Collections’ aims to tackle is the way material degradation is linked to information content in photographic images. In particular, the point where photographs are no longer ‘fit for purpose’ is of interest. To understand this better I will be exploring this question with various groups of stakeholders – curators and custodians to photographic collectors, scientists and the general public – in order to capture a variety of opinions in a number of workshops.

The aim of the 1-hr workshops is to gauge the opinion on the point at which changes in information content is no longer considered to be acceptable for photographs in archives. The workshops will start with a brief introduction to the project and the exercise. The assessment exercise will consist of a classification exercise of photographs at different stages of degradation. This will be followed by a brief discussion on any issues arising from the exercise. Following the workshops and data analysis, a report on the results of the workshop will be circulated to all participants.

If you are interested in these issues, and want to voice your opinion you can visit the workshop webpage for more information or even better you can register your interest to participate in one of the workshops.

Workshops so far are planned for the following days at the Heritage Science Laboratory (Gordon House), 29 Gordon Street, WC1H 0PP, London.

Monday 4th April 2011 at 4pm

Monday 11th April 2011 at 4pm

Friday 15th April 2011 at 4pm

Thursday 5th May 2011 at 4pm

Tuesday 10th May 2011 at 5pm

Friday 13th May 2011 at 1pm

Friday 13th May 2011 at 4pm

Tuesday 17th May at 1pm

Friday 20th May 2011 at 4pm

If none of these dates are appropriate, do let me know as further workshops are planned for the future.

I look forward to meeting you at the workshops!

 

Packing ready…and Ready to go!

Well…the latest spat of illnesses will not put me down…I have just had a good sleep, and woke up to pack for tomorrow’s flight to Billund :D…now packing is ready and all I can do is wait…tomorrow morning we have a 6:30am flight. Bernard is lovingly coming over for me and mum somewhere around 5:15am so that we make our way to the airport…I might not blog as much in the coming week…will see depending upon PC and internet access. We will be staying at my sister’s boyfriend’s parent’s house for the first few days. Then Wednesday we will make our way to Copenhagen, until Saturday, when we fly back (separate flights…cos mum bought the flight tickets before me and it was too expensive to come back with Norwegian Air, so I bought Air Malta tickets, meaning I have a stop over at Munich (only 1.5hours so quite OK))…have blogged about this when I bought the tickets here.

I look forward to meeting my sister weeee…have not seen her in I do not know how many months…and also to see Denmark…hope all goes well!

Why oh Why!

Why is it, that now that I am off work, and have a holiday planned next week, my immune system decided it needs a break. Yesterday I woke up feeling poorly…my throat was sore, and had a low grade fever all day :(…please note that I just went to the doctor two weeks ago, and finished the course of antibiotics he had given me last Thursday :@. Well, I called my doctor, and he gave me some more antibiotics (hope they will help). Today I woke up still with the slight fever. Took my antibiotics, a panadol, and tried to relax a bit. Now a few mins ago, my bowel movements decided they wanted to participate in this malady. AAAAAAAAAA….Tomorrow morning at 6:30am, I have a flight to Denmark. Me and mum are going to visit my sister’s boyfriend’s parents, and also have some time in Copenhagen. I did not want to be sick…but with the low grade fever and sore throat I think I could manage. However, this new development is making me worried…I have a 3hours 15mins flight, and I want no surprises….Let us see how it goes 😀

Wish me luck!

International Committees et al

Update from this morning’s post…today was certainly a day full of trials and tribulations aaaaaaaaaaaa is the correct feeling.

Bernard did not manage to do it for me because he could not find Photoshop :(…therefore I tried to use every programme I found on my PC…but to no avail…after about an hour of trying my sister popped up on MSN and I said…what the heck let me ask her…she told me that she does have access to Photoshop through her Uni’s remote access…I tried to enter but it was soooooooo slow…so she enlisted her boyfriend (who at the time was still in bed)….and the international committee was set up… After numerous trials (by himself and myself on her Uni’s remote access thingy…because by then I managed to enter…but I had not used Photoshop in ages) he managed to get the right picture…YIPPIE..Phase 1 over…all that remains was that I separate the pages into colour and black and white sheets to make it easier at the printer’s…Or so you think…

Just as I started, the door bell rang. It was a guy from the electricity company. At the moment they are going round houses in Malta to replace the electricity meter reader into smart readers so that they would be able to take the reading without actually visiting the house. My mum said OK. Just as he was going to start I heard a shout…she remembered 1 IMP detail…to replace the meter he has to switch off all electricity. I told him to wait 5 mins and luckily he said OK. Problem averted.

He left and we made our way to the printer’s (about  20 minutes away by car). As soon as we arrived I said…I am sure I never copied the folder with my thesis sections onto the USB stick. But well we where there and told him to try anyway. Unfortunately I was right. So we had to make the trip back home to copy everything onto the USB stick and go back, where we managed to finish everything (I would like to thank them for staying open for a further 15 minutes to finish everything off).

So now I am the happy owner of 3 soft bound copies of my master’s dissertation…next week I will hopefully submit 😀 More updates about the remainder of the weekend later on…me off to bed…good night…Tata

PS: Congrats Michael…your help this morning has resulted in good karma coming back in the form of Denmark’s win….GOOOOOOOO DENMARK!

Back to Work?

Oh No!…not yet…

This morning I woke up ready to go to work…after two days at home I was ready to go (although I was still not feeling 100% fit)…dressed up and was ready to leave…unfortunately my body decided it wants me to stay home…so here I am updating you all instead of on my way to work…

So what will I do today?…probably live through the Cheltenham Science Festival alongside my sister and the other bloggers on the UCL blog. This festival looks really exciting and I wish I could be there…More details about why my sister is at the CSF can be found on her blog…My Path Through Research. There are a number of posts about the subject. I hope I feel a bit better to perhaps to do a bit of work on my masters…Will see!

Good Day

Cec