Report on initial questionnaire results
Cameron Tailford and Stefania Zardini Lacedelli, 07 March 2022
Overall, the responses from the questionnaire reveal a fantastic opportunity for connecting local/smaller collections to the data sets held in larger national collections. The overall data includes a mix of collections that pertain to one area of the country (Saltaire, Tyne and Wear, Bradford Industrial Museum) and those that provide national coverage (Science Museum Group, National Museums of Scotland and National Museums of Wales, the BFI).
Photographic collections emerge as a common thread throughout the responses (Bradford Industrial Museum, Historic England, National Archives Coal Board Records) and show the potential for the eventual output of the project to be visual in nature (rather just text/data). Paper based collections contain local information, trade directories and business records (Grace’s Guide). There is also an increasing presence of oral history records and video material. Museum objects range from important inventions (Steam turbines at the Discovery Museum) to large volumes of workplace tools (such as donated miners’ equipment). There is a strong potential for connections between these datasets to reveal social histories alongside the obvious technological ones.
An important pattern that emerges from the responses is that each institution has something to contribute all three themes. Some, such as the Bradford Industrial Museum and the BT archives, are clearly more able to contribute to the textiles and communications strand specifically but the other responses show a good coverage of all three themes, not just from across all the answers but within each individual response.
Overall, an increasing amount of content has been digitized and made publicly available. The online collections section of the website and dedicated microsites are the most common spaces where the material is made accessible. On the other hand, the answers also reveal how a comprehensive level of digitization is difficult to achieve. When considering the responses as whole, one pattern for potential concern that emerges is with documents and objects whose histories and stories may not be fully digitised, standardised or publicly available. The paper records that have not been digitised or catalogued for some objects and collections, may have useful information pertaining to the projects aims such as more elaborate object descriptions.
The main differences in the responses are related to the potential challenges and ‘openness’ of each institutions collections both in terms of access and reuse. Some, such as the National Archives, are completely open to use while others present some restrictions, and may even have some records that are embargoed. The ability to export the data also differs across the responses: the majority of the datasets are organized in internal cataloguing systems which allow to export data in an Excel Spreadsheet, but this process often requires the involvement of a data specialist and might require preliminary discussion with the archive team.
A final note about the variety of roles and skills reflected in the answers. A set of answers provides a more technical perspective on the data, while others focus more on the interpretative and historical dimension. In some of them, there seems to be a good combination of the two elements. This is an interesting aspect to notice, considering the aim of the project to bridge these two dimensions – the machine and the human - and find a common language.
The collections provide an overview on the story of industrial heritage across nineteenth and twentieth century. The responses allow to trace a preliminary mapping of the themes across the three strands: the collections cover places and buildings (stories of cities and villages, monuments, world heritage sites, mills, topographical information); technology and innovation (machinery, steam engines, scientific instruments, working practices); art and design (registered designs, manufacturing, patterns, artworks); people’s stories and experiences (companies’ owners, workers, migrations, local and rural communities); economy and trade (companies histories, trade directories, global markets, international business network, legislation).
When considering all the data in totality it is apparent there is a mix of documents and objects across the institutions that provided answers. The item types are extremely varied, ranging from paper-based documents to photo and video collections, oral history interviews, maps, plans and museum objects. The complete data conveyed in the responses does not rely upon one kind of collection over another. It also apparent that visual and multimedia sources hold a significant place within this set of responses, including film and photography.
The complete set of data covers all of the UK. However, certain areas such a Bradford, Newcastle and Birmingham are strongly represented through their specific collections.
The size of the archives varies, ranging from 5,000 (Saltaire Collection) to 1/1.6 million records (British Film Institute, Historic England). The number of items is not always clearly defined: some of the answers indicate only the number of records available, or the number of the records that might be connected with the Congruence Engine themes. Some of the bigger archives includes multiple sources and multiple datasets which have been split into thematic categories (Historic England, National Archives). These data sets will require further investigation to understand which subset could be included in the project.
The majority of the collections were created on the turn of the century and have grown organically in the following decades with subsequent acquisitions and contemporary collecting practices. Digitization processes and the creation of new digital born resources (oral history interviews in particular) represent the most recent phase, and some of the datasets were created in this specific context (it is the case of the Bradford Photographic Archive, Britain from Above, National Archive Designs registered for copyrights protection). Some of the organizations have recently digitized new resources, while others are currently working on a new version of their online catalogue (Saltaire Collection).
Interestingly, not all the partners have interpreted this question in the same way. Some of them refers to specific fields in the datasets, other describe their data more generally. Considering the ambitions of the project to engage and include local communities and local knowledge, the fields in the overall data set that assist with this are particularly relevant. These include the memories of workers, photographic collections of workers, workplaces and objects donated by local communities that can be found in the Saltaire Collection, Discovery Museum and the Birmingham Museums Trust.