David Light of Hardenhuish School and Samantha Lethaby of Abbeyfield School both spent a week at Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, working for the archive service in July this year. In their own words they describe what they did and what they thought of working here…

What kind of things did you do?

You are most likely to be doing a different job everyday, whether this is helping out with public enquiries downstairs or cataloguing new additions to the extensive archives. (David Light) Read on to find out more....

If I’m completely honest, I wasn’t really looking forward to work experience, thought I was going to be bored all week but the first day I came here I got told I was going to Westbury in this big car to pick up loads of boxes (of archives) about birds which I thought sounded fun. We picked them up and then had to bring them back to the history centre and sort through them. … I have also been around helping other people in the History centre to finish listing documents on the computer and helping to find certain pieces of information in books down at the help desk. (Sam Lethaby)

Image Courtesy of Wiltshire Ornithological Society

Material Collected from the Wiltshire Ornithhological Society  
            

What was the best part of your experience?

I think that the most interesting day of my week was when I was working on public enquiries, because I found it very interesting to discover what sort of queries people e-mailed and posted in. The most surprising thing which I discovered was the number of enquiries the history centre get sent each day, I was staggered to find out that they got so many because I walk past the building almost every day and it always looks deserted, empty and as if everybody inside is just sat around twiddling their thumbs, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The staff are all incredibly friendly and will help out with any query or problem you may encounter. Whilst, working at the WSHC you will see a lot of really interesting documents, some of them almost 1000 years old and still in amazingly good condition, with the majority of them still being easily read, (that is if you can understand the language!). (David)

I haven’t really got a best bit, I’ve enjoyed it all but the main thing I liked was being able to handle documents from hundreds of years ago and read into them, I found it really interesting.  The most surprising bit for me was the staff. I didn’t think they would have been as polite and kind as they were. Everywhere I went someone either smiled or said hello. And everyone took great interest into why I was here and if I liked it and where I came from etc. (Sam)

What was the worst part?

There was a couple of really boring tedious tasks during my weeks work, one of these being that I had to rip little plastic tags off little note cards, so they could be recycled. The other tedious task involved a screwdriver and a load of old slides that had to be destroyed, I think you can see where this is going. (David)

I think the worst bit for me was writing all the birds names onto the boxes once I’d put the tape around the records. It took a long time and really made my hand ache but it had to be done so I just stuck at it.(Sam)


Wiltshire Ornithological Society Material in the Archival Strongroom