Searching The Archives!

We brushed on this subject in the recent copyright thread. It’s a shame, that private military researchers have such limited access to the collections. Years ago it was the norm, but today it’s no longer a problem making the pictures available for online browsing. Far larger collections have gone online – often with the help of volunteers.

If they insist on charging for the use of images, then at least make a low resolution image available online, so researchers can find the material without traveling. If they want to run a business with the material, then make it a darn business. Just as long as they remember, that they are in competition with plenty of public domain pictures these days – 95% of their material can be replaced (for publishing use) with public domain material from other sources.

Interesting point. Generally personal research at a location remains the most efficient and coste effective method, despite the ‘wired world’. We are in a state of transition for access to archives, which our grandchildren will probably regard as a bizzare dark age.

It’s de Havilland Support Ltd. Lower case ‘d’.

Their job, as described by their name, is to provide type support for the de Havilland types that British Aerospace [or whichever brand they are this week] will no longer do. That, from my conversations with DH type operators, they do well.

It would be interesting to see what held the de Havilland Moth Club might be able to provide as well as a referral to DHS Ltd.

I’d expect for your fifty quid you’d get a useful answer.

The RAAF Museum’s Mosquito rebuild has drawings from all over the world, including many from the Smithsonian, unarguably one of the world’s great resources.

Most people who’ve not worked with archives don’t realise the massive requirements they have in terms of cataloguing, indexing, storage and expertise. It’s not ‘exciting’ or ‘sexy’ so it doesn’t get media coverage and tends to be at the end of the funding handouts, usually getting any (or no) dribbles of cash.

I will comment on the RAF Museum. The research staff in DoRiS are incredibly knowledgeable, and I’ve found them remarkably helpful and have no complaints with their work – quite the contrary. However the museum is, by any measure you choose to apply, the worst managed and run equivalent to any other first-world peer aviation museum in the world. The appalling mismanagement of one of Britain’s richest aviation picture archives with access to copies effectively having been denied for years at a time is a fundamental failing, IMHO, to their mandate of access.

The disjunction between the archive and the museum is well illustrated by the fact that they went from having a Sydney Camm display between the Belfasts in the 70s and 80s to being unable to find a photograph of him – one of Britain’s pre-eminent designers – for the interactive computer display in Milestones of Flight display in the 21st Century.

They have, however, done significant work on ‘Navigator’ for a trawl through their collection, but you’ll end up paying for anything you want and much of the data is lower than museum standards (IMHO) in depth.

Part of the issue is the American principle that any state-funded archive should be accessible at low (or no) cost to the people. That’s never been a British expectation, and sadly places like Australia and Canada have inherited the British model.

What is interesting is that few archives I’ve used have any meaningful interest in achieving standards that relate to peer performances (as opposed to internally set or national standards tied to funding). I suspect if you point out that another peer institution did this or that, they’d look at you wondering why you mention it. That’s the nature of exclusivity in knowledge brokers.

Regards,

I notice that the RAF Museum is taking another slating and I think you are quite right that it is mismanaged.

Perhaps the reason it is so far behind the likes of the Smithsoniam is funding. There are plenty of people on this forum who are quick to knock establishments like the RAF Museum yet I bet seldom offer their time up to volunteer to help.

The bottom line is in this country the government under funds everything and you get what you pay for.

Perhaps the reason it is so far behind the likes of the Smithsoniam is funding.

Very different funding models, and the Smithsonian also faces strictures – some of which would close the RAFM. However the antipathy towards creative, in depth fund-raising by the RAF Museum’s management is more the issue than the (as you’ve said) inevitable shortfall in government funding.

(For instance note the withdrawal of BA support to the ‘BA Collection’ at Cosford prior to the global economic crisis, as against the continued Qantas support to the Australian War Memorial right through to now. Excuses and reasons will no doubt be offered – winners show results, not excuses and reasons.)

There are plenty of people on this forum who are quick to knock establishments like the RAF Museum yet I bet seldom offer their time up to volunteer to help.

I volunteer at my local air force museum, a day a week.

There’s not much argument, as per my last point, that the RAF Museum could use more volunteers better than they do – even Cosford shows more. However, that conservatism fits the pattern.

Regards,

Funding pressures, digitisation requirements and staffing costs for having people available [staff or volunteers, who still need equipment and resources] to carry out research requests is likely to see more museums adding research costs to their ‘operating tariffs’.

Widening accessibility to archive material is a great aim, but it costs money to do it successfully.

Perhaps the reason it is so far behind the likes of the Smithsoniam is funding. There are plenty of people on this forum who are quick to knock establishments like the RAF Museum yet I bet seldom offer their time up to volunteer to help.

I have over 30 years experience in Drawing/design office management and an integral part of that job was document/drawing control – so when I realised that the RAF Museum had some issues with their drawing records I naturally offered my services – which incidentally fell on deaf ears!

Unfortunately I could not volunteer my services as I dont live local to the museum.

Had an interesting discussion a while ago about museums and the need to catalogue and in some cases digitise their assets.

Of all the museums/collections I regularly visit (when in the UK) for research the PRO/TNA has been the most helpful.

The library at the Museum of Army Flying is very friendly and very accommodating but I do get the feel that some there do treat it like their personal collection and generally don’t like anyone coming near it. That and some quite rare documents have been ruined by mis-handling – the Lawrence Wright original diaries come to mind.

The RAF Museum where a friendly bunch although desperately in need of a bit of modernisation and I got the feeling they were being pulled in various directions by various parties with no clear plan. That and they very “RAF” – I could well see some whizz-kid going in to pitch them a brilliantly simple digital indexing system and some stuffy Air Rank chap tapping the rough shag from his pipe and proclaiming “Now look here old chap, this is all very good but we don’t do it like around here… we’re the bloody RAF!”

Another museum that shall remain nameless which has now, thank God, gone flatly refused my donation of parts and a sizeable cash donation towards the restoration of a rare type in their collection. I got the impression that again, they very much saw it as “their” collection and they’d rather see it rot than let any outsider get involved.

Now that’s off my chest…

One of the things I’ve wondered about the RAF Museum, in fact any of the document rooms of museums, is why not use the one resource they have – the visiting researchers – to help catalogue their collections.

Case in point – search TNA/PRO archive and under each document is a link to “My National Archives” which is a wiki based site where anyone is welcome to add additional information about the contents of the document. Effectively this is researcher generated metadata, data about data, which is incredibly useful for research.

Back to the RAF Museum, items such as building drawings and airfield plans – last time I was there they were copies of the original drawing put onto large format microfiche. When you wanted a copy someone had to go through the index cards, find the film, put it into the special printer and then print it out on the odd size paper that the machine used.

At the time they repeated this process for every request and I was told that if the machine breaks down, it’s hard to get parts/replacements and that even the odd sized paper stock was difficult to come by.

Now why in this day and age aren’t they storing these films digitally? When a drawing is requested charge a nominal fee and tell the requester that part of this fee is towards the digitisation of the original document which will then go into a digital archive. Once the microfiche is properly scanned it can be stored in a digital format and printed from a regular A3 laser printer. No more messing with, an potentially damaging, microfiche which can then be put into deep secure storage as archive media.

The same principle could work for the accident record cards, log books, etc, etc.

From talking to curators and staff at museums I think the problem they see is that they will have to digitise and catalogue everything in one go which is, frankly and overwhelming task. If they approached it as a “user” driven exercise cataloguing that which is requested you will target the most wanted stuff and with researchers adding their own metadata the staff will simply need to act as auditors.

Now why in this day and age aren’t they storing these films digitally? When a drawing is requested charge a nominal fee and tell the requester that part of this fee is towards the digitisation of the original document which will then go into a digital archive. Once the microfiche is properly scanned it can be stored in a digital format and printed from a regular A3 laser printer. No more messing with, an potentially damaging, microfiche which can then be put into deep secure storage as archive media.

I agree entirely and for many museums this is exactly what they want to do. However an exercise like this has to be done properly – note I didn’t say professionally – because not all professionals in the business of scanning to digital know exactly what needs to be done with film archive material and/or are driven by commercial need.

After all what we don’t want is scanned film archives done in B/W colour space and saved as .BMP files – this may sound unlikely; but it is commonly done because it is quicker to scan B/W than say 16-bit Grayscale or 24-bit RGB.

Scanning formats should not be an issue for Accredited [or Registered] museums because there are ‘recognised industry standards’ for “digitisation”.

From talking to curators and staff at museums I think the problem they see is that they will have to digitise and catalogue everything in one go which is, frankly and overwhelming task. If they approached it as a “user” driven exercise cataloguing that which is requested you will target the most wanted stuff and with researchers adding their own metadata the staff will simply need to act as auditors.

And who says these archives are not approaching it as a “user” driven exercise? Who says they think they will have to digitise and catalogue everything in one go?

:diablo:

Digitisation for the big girls and boys of the museum/archive world involves a little bit more than people think…

🙂

Scanning formats should not be an issue for Accredited [or Registered] museums because there are ‘recognised industry standards’ for “digitisation”.

One of the biggest, if not biggest issues, is infrastructure.

That and in some archives, being pioneers in their (our 😉 field…

One of the biggest, if not biggest issues, is infrastructure.

That and in some archives, being pioneers in their (our 😉 field…

Being part of a ‘volunteer based team’ wrestling with the various issues around ‘digitisation’ I don’t disagree – hence my comments in post #11.

All credit to those that are leading the way!! 🙂

Current digitization standards may be a VERY unstable and insecure format, with a strong liklihood to become obsolete not only in the LONG term, but in the short term, at the rate computer capabilities and improvements are proceeding. It is hard to fault a cautious archival administrator for lack of jumping into an expensive project of “preserving” the contents of their archives, when the entire COSTLY, and labor intensive project may soon result in obsolete storage media.
One has only to look at the Smithsonian’s program of digitzing several hundred thousands of aviation and space images in its archives, onto 12 inch laser disc media. It was a very labor intensive and costly program which produced a product that was obsolete soon after completion, with rapidly advancing computer technology and hardware.
I have some sets of these images which can be viewed on a large TV or computer screen, with an obsolete laser disc player. Such players had an average price of $600-$700 when new. Surviving laser disc players, that have now gone the way of 8-track audio tape cassettes and players, can still be found (for a limited time, I’m certain) being liquidated on popular auction sites for $10 or Less. I purchased an excellent laser disc player for $15 and often view these wonderful, and often rare, reference images. They are on several 12 inch, two sided discs which can hold nearly 200,000 images Each.
When I spoke to someone in the Smithsonian archives, they said the entire digitization program to that, then, state of the art, standard, was such a disaster, that they had no plans to transfer those hundreds of thousands of digital images to CDs or DVDs or any other current media.

I just found this story which illustrates why such archives need to be available online (not AC related, but a good story anyway).

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122810679

Barnstomer, I think you are confusing media with formats/readers, illustrated by at-the-time poor choices (given media future prediction at the time) by the Smithsonian in the example.

Basic formats such as .tiff (and .tif) will always be supported but media will constantly change. Re the museums, we are asking too much from them. The private sector will provide the solution as it always has. Not many Museums actually publish books in any field and none publish in a way that is anywhere near commensurate with the depth of their collections. Digital publications are just another form of publishing and instead of paper, the medium is a CD, DVD or Blu-Ray or even the internet itself.

I think the future is bigger than just scanned documents: Engineers will do work in CAD for restorations and a by product will be the sharing of the work (publishing and distribution) for a comparatively small fee. Comparatively small because CAD work is notoriously time consuming and the cost is best spread over several customer’s needs. Over time there will be a growing data base of “off-the-shelf CAD research” with each contributing engineer well known and documented for their contribution(s).

I believe we are beginning to see the future take shape here…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKeZ9_-Bp-k

Understandable, but you’re now a little behind the times, regarding the RAF Museum’s library. They have a new scanner/printer system, in which it’s possible to make the plan fit onto the one-size-fits-all roll of paper; during my last visit, each (A2-ish) sheet still cost £2, but they feared that the price would have to rise, due to the cost of the system. However, with a bit of forethought, it is possible to photograph the screen, and capture the image FOC. At the last count, there are 66,000 images, in the MAC files, and they’re all on their computer system, so hours of fun can be had finding which one you need.
Edgar

I’m afraid that I can be only on the periphery of this debate as the research that I undertake rarely involves the “big boys” in the aviation history field and I am too uninformed to contribute to the “what medium” aspect.

My interests tend to lie on the obscure side (do I hear some saying – now tell us something we don’t know!) with the result that, often, I find my research takes me well away from the mainstream. But perhaps this is to my advantage. Firstly I have found that this means that polite requests not infrequently result in the receipt of documents – as jpegs or pdf files- attached to emails, which saves me considerable time and expense (as I live in France and most of the research material which interests me is in the UK). Secondly I have found that many county records offices, local authorities, reference libraries and the like are only too accommodating and that, in these places, keen interest and politeness frequently are reciprocated and generate their own rewards.

But there is one matter that I find a trifle curious. This is the continued perception that, generally, what is required are hard copies of documents. To me, often these are the expensive and environmentally insensitive option. I am more than happy to have digital copies (particularly when I consider the weight of paper in the context of the maximum hand luggage weight allowance on RyanAir flights!) and to print documents on an “as needed” basis. However it seems that in many of the places I have visited hard paper copies are the only option. Perhaps the option of scanning documents, and downloading these direct onto ones laptop, might be a preferable, more practical and environmentally sensitive alternative. What do others think? Is this option more widely available that I have experienced? If not, could it be made more widely available at a lesser expense to both the provider and the recipient of copy documents?

RAF Museum is a complete joke. The last research enquiry I sent to them wasn’t even acknowledged. Their web site is rubbish (seems to be aimed at kids), their photographic collection now seems to comprise of a few selected images that they want to re-sell at ridiculously over-inflated rices. The actual museum has turned into a kid’s playground. Complete rubbish – and I’m not the only person who thinks so.

RAF Museum is a complete joke. The last research enquiry I sent to them wasn’t even acknowledged.

Recently I have been experiencing the same thing!

Contrary to that however was a very positive experience I had last summer with the RAF Museum, when I made an online enquiry about some drawings for the Spitfire. There was a woman then working in archives; I don’t recall her name but it will be somewhere in my records; anyway she sent me A2 copies of the drawings within a few weeks, accompanied by a very polite letter and of course the invoice, which I must say was very reasonable. I paid the invoice and surprisingly she took the time to send me another letter thanking me for prompt payment.

At that time the service was exceptional and I could not fault it, in fact I went out of my way to tell people of this marvellous service……then suddenly it all changed!!

A lot of my more recent correspondence has either not been acknowledged or the recipient was not very helpful.