Orphaned Objects

Realised a couple of days ago that this blog's been running for a year now and has reached a whopping dozen entries, whoopee! At the time of writing I'm knee deep in writing business plans, activity plans, interpretation and design reports and an awful lot of funding bids for my day job, but I've been fortunate enough to find time now and then to keep the family photos scanning project ticking over.  Rapidly approaching scan 10,000, it was very appropriately festive, though completely co-incidental, this week to reach Christmas 1987. To nicely round off the year then here is the author getting stuck in to some serious present opening. And wondering when we can change the wallpaper. Stay tuned for yet more intermittent blogging in 2022. In the meantime - Merry Christmas!

Apologies, the blog’s gone by the wayside a bit lately, what with most of my time being taken up with my day job managing the redevelopment of Glencoe Folk Museum in the Highlands. There are a few articles in preparation, including a series on the Chemistry for Conservators course I completed earlier this year, but in the meantime here’s a placeholder quickie returning to one of my favourite topics – digitising film negatives. Walk towards the light! Or rather, don't as you'll knock the light off the table ya clumsy get. STILL ON ABOUT SCANNING 😒 As a break from digitising my own family’s archive (9,000 scans and counting…) my good lady recently unearthed a small batch of her family photos taken in the early 1980s. I was intrigued by these because it took a while to recognise the film format. It turned out to be Kodak 126 film (the 126 deriving from the images being 26.5mm square) This was introduced in 1963 in cartridge form, a more user-friendly way of loading a camera tha...

It’s not that I’ve been too lazy to update this blog – oh no indeed! Far from it as a matter of fact. A good Curator is adept at prioritising tasks to ensure the best work is done in the best time so in the last, ahem, four months I’ve simply been working on more time-critical endeavours. Like, erm, digging a pond. And catching up with my hobby of sitting down. And drawing naff cartoons. So there. I will not be giving up the day job. Thanks for asking.   In amongst this there’s been a major funding bid to submit, a conservation-based chemistry course to get stuck into (more in a future blog…) and, last month, a museum to re-open. I know, I know – excuses excuses… Anyway… BACK AT THE SCANNING. What’s going on with the project to digitise my family’s slide collection? Well it’s kind of, erm, done. Yup. 6,451 transparencies all scanned and catalogued, a chronicle of family activities between the early 1960s and 2000. Boom. Done. Oldest and most recent slides. Each is prese...

Three posts in with this new blog it’s probably time for an introduction to the braincells behind the keyboard of this little adventurous adventure. So… Started the way I meant to go on. Cute. And eating. WHO AM I? I’m David, which is my story and I’m sticking to it. On a good day I’m an adult human male and, after studying History and Archaeology at the University of York, have been pursuing a career in the museums sector for a shade over ten years. Luckily working in museums has often felt like being paid to pursue my own hobbies and has involved many sublime/surreal experiences – just a few being; Playing Santa's Elf (several times, several museums) Ploughing with horses Teaching Girl Guides how to cook Carrot Cookies Feeling like Willy Wonka giving tours of a store holding one million objects and showing off a world of pure... collection storage Tap-dancing in First World War centenary concerts Holding the goat down to take his eyedrops WHAT DO I DO?         ...