Science & Industry Documentation Project

In July 2014, two volunteers were recruited for an exciting summer project at Birmingham Museums Trust. The aim of the project was two-fold: to reorganise the hard-copy documentation system of Birmingham’s Science & Industry loans collection, and to begin the process of improving the digital documentation of the science & industry permanent collection (via the museum’s digital collections database).

Helen Scadeng and Matt Sharman, both with backgrounds in research, volunteered their time to carry out the project. After only two short summer months, Helen and Matt not only fulfilled the aims of the project but they exceeded the project milestones with speedy gusto and enthusiasm!

Based at Thinktank Science Museum and each working one day a week, Matt and Helen completed the reorganisation of the hard-copy documentation system ahead of schedule. Despite working on separate days, together they were able to successfully refile the hardcopy entries of over 100 loan objects – a huge achievement when working as a ‘remote’ team!

Ahead of schedule, they were then able to start improving the digital records of the permanent science & industry collection. Collating information and images of 70 objects, this is the single largest project to improve the digital records of the science & industry collections in over a decade. But Helen and Matt didn’t stop there, they delved into further research of the objects, and found out some weird and wonderful facts in the process! For example, Helen uncovered a ‘six-degrees-of-separation’ between a bust of the renowned inventor William Murdock and the famous landscape artist David Cox. The Murdock bust was gifted to the museum by prominent Birmingham businessman George Everitt (the Director of a Smethwick engineering firm). George Everitt’s cousin was the artist Allen Edward Everitt, who was schooled by David Cox!

In September, we were incredibly pleased to hear that Matt had been offered a full-time position in a local authority Archives Service, but were very sad to see him go! At the same time, despite the completion of the summer documentation project, Helen decided to single-handedly extend the life of the project and to expand its scope to a greater level of research on specific collection areas – and this was all despite the fact that Helen was also just about to complete and submit her postgraduate thesis!!

A HUGE thank you to both Matt and Helen for their enthusiasm, their skills and their sheer hard work over the summer. And since September, a MASSIVE thank you to Helen for continuing to research the collection and for uncovering some fascinating histories. I’m looking forward to continuing to work with Helen on some exciting curatorial projects planned for the coming months!

Nazia Ali,
Science & Industry Curator