Having volunteered on the digitisation project at the Courtauld for two years in April (can’t believe it!) I always had my eye on the Italian section of the Conway collection. We process the boxes the order they appear on the shelf, which is alphabetical, so I knew it would take us a while to get to Italy.
I was so delighted on a recent shift when I had been asked to brief a new fellow volunteer on the accessioning task. We walked down to the Italian section of the library and, much to my delight, the next folder to sort was Ravello! I felt like I had won the lottery – though I’m not familiar with that feeling!
This stunning, magical, charming, quiet little town, for those of you who don’t know, sits 365m above the Tyrrhenian sea on the magnificent Amalfi coast, away from the bustling tourist havens of Sorrento and Positano, and has a very special place in my heart. I went there on my first holiday with my now husband and we loved it so much we initially planned to have our wedding in Villa Cimbrone, known as the terrace of infinity, though it didn’t happen in the end, as it was too complicated logistically.
Ravello. CON_B03049_F005_001. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.
I have to say that at first, apart from the odd Kersting image, I didn’t think that the box had captured the beauty and magnificence of this place.
Ravello. CON_B03049_F001_001. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.
When I got home after my shift that morning I had a look at my photos to compare them to some of the places I recognised in the archive collection. I thought we had stacks (as we do now when we go on holiday with our children and with the less selective use of our digital cameras) but we didn’t. At the time we visited, digital cameras were not so affordably available and I also much preferred my SLR.
Ravello. CON_B03049_F006_005. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.
It made me wonder: had all my visual memories of this town been imprinted in my mind? Is the mind the best place to record our most enjoyable and visually memorable experiences, rather than on photographic paper or as a digital file stored on our computer? When I explored this idea and thought about all my travels abroad, I realized that the most memorable places and times in my experience do not have an extensive photographic record.
Ravello. CON_B03049_F001_008. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.
Perhaps I am romanticising my memories of this special place. But I can vividly recall the quiet glamour of the Villa Cimbrone, and the Ravello Festival concert in the grounds of Villa Rufolo that we happened upon as we made our way along the small winding streets with dramatic views of hilltop houses and the beautiful coastline to the Hotel Parsifal, the converted convent where we were to stay. And I can’t help but imagine that my experiences were similar to those of Escher, Greta Garbo, Humphrey Bogart, Virginia Woolf, Robert Wagner and Jacqueline Kennedy and other famous visitors who have come here seeking inspiration.
Ravello. CON_B03049_F005_023. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.Ravello. CON_B03049_F005_024. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.
We always said we would return to this charming, magical place, but it would have to be for a very special occasion indeed to experience it all over again and alter the memories we have.
Ravello. CON_B03049_F005_018. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC-BY-NC.
Muny Morgan
Courtauld Connects Digitisation Volunteer
While digitising a box of photographs of Oxfordshire churches with fellow volunteer Muny, we found a wonderful wall painting in a Kersting print; a welcome surprise after the usual mix of white-walled naves and pillars.
CON_B00607_F007_005. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.CON_B00607_F007_006. The Courtauld Institute of Art. CC BY NC.
In the Middle Ages, it was common practice to paint the walls of churches. Few people could read, so it was necessary to teach by using pictures. During the Reformation, these images were covered over as they were considered symbols of Popish idolatry.
The painting is on the wall which separates the nave from the chancel, and is an example of how certain images became assigned to specific positions in the church. One of the most common is Doom, or the Last Judgement. The symbolism explains the positioning of the Nave as representing the ‘Church militant’ and the chancel as the ‘Church Triumphant’, separated by the judgment before which all souls must pass.
The Last Judgment in South Leigh follows a traditional pattern. Two angels with trumpets are waking up the dead. On the left, an angel in white is calling to the saved, with a scroll above announcing ’Venite Benedicte Patris Mei’ (Come you blessed to my Father). They then move towards the north wall where (not visible in the photograph) St Peter awaits them at the gates of Heaven. On the right, the angel wears dark clothing and summons the damned, the scroll above saying ‘Discedite Maledicti’ (Depart you cursed). They are bound together with what looks like barbed wire and are being pushed towards the jaws of hell, which are just visible on the south wall.
The image is clearly designed to scare the wits out of the congregation:
“The damned are dragged into the mouth of hell propped open by a devil.” Image courtesy of www.wasleys.org.uk
The original paintings were discovered in 1870, when the old layers of whitewash were removed after the new vicar, Gerard Moultie, decided the church needed restoration. The work was carried out for £85 by Messrs Burlison and Gryllis, a firm heavily influenced by William Morris. This is particularly evident where the originals were too faint to copy and were effectively replaced by 19th-century design, for example in the painting of flowers and birds beneath the Last Judgment.
The original artists were probably trained in monasteries. They were not necessarily monks, but young men who showed artistic ability and were trained in monastic scriptoria. There is also evidence of a growing number of itinerant painters who were associated with the Guilds of Painter-Stainers in London and other cities.
For a small village church, South Leigh has several associations with the famous. The ancestors of William Morris owned land there, and it is only 10 miles or so from Kelmscott Manor, Morris’s country house.
In 1725, John Wesley preached his first sermon from the pulpit (he returned in 1771 and was refused entry).
Between 1947 and 1949, the poet Dylan Thomas and his wife lived in the village and maintained an eccentric lifestyle. This was many years after he wrote ’It is the sinner’s dust tongued bell claps me to churches’, though it would be wonderful to imagine him seeing the Last Judgment through an alcoholic haze and wondering which way he would go.
John Ramsey
Courtauld Connects Digitisation Volunteer
Digitising the Conway photographs has been really interesting and enjoyable, but lately, we volunteers have been let loose (figuratively, not at all literally) on the Courtauld Gallery’s collection of prints, which has opened up a whole new and exciting side of things. Viewing and handling these object is fascinating, especially as they vary so much in terms of dates, artists, styles and subject matters. Working on these prints while on the digitising software is proving to be a wonderful way to engage with and explore them- it allows one to, in the interest of checking the focus of course, zoom right in to otherwise easily overlooked details, and even to the individually incised lines of an engraving!
In order to help the volunteers understand more about the objects we are now dealing with, the gallery team is kindly hosting events to introduce us to the collection and explain some of the issues we might encounter; I attended one of these days and I have to say it was all incredibly interesting and informative.
After meeting up in the staff room and acquainting ourselves with each other and with the biscuit tin, we head up many flights of the gorgeous salmon-coloured stairwell to the Courtauld’s Prints and Drawings Study Room.
Here a wonderful selection of works had been laid out awaiting us, and we were free to have a thorough browse.
Using the displayed works as examples, Dr. Rachel Sloan (Assistant Curator of Works on Paper) explained some of the different techniques used in printmaking and showed us some of the tools and printing plates used. First, we saw an engraving — where fine straight lines are cut by hand into a metal plate using a tool called a burin, in what sounds like a slow, labour-intensive, quite precise and controlled technique. Apparently, in order to get a curved line, the plate, not the burin, is turned. Then there was an etching — where the metal plate is coated with a wax ground first and it is this that is drawn upon. Then acid, rather than brute force is used to bite into the metal to form the lines that hold the ink. This enables the artist/craftsman to exercise more freedom in drawing and mark-making. Next up was an aquatint — which is somewhat similar to etching in that acid is used, but the use of a powdered ground allows for the creation of areas of tones, rather than lines. This means that effects similar to those of a watercolour painting can be achieved. These differences were beautifully demonstrated and evidenced by the prints on show, but are proving very difficult to explain!
Bust of Mademoiselle Marcelle Lender, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
The last print technique explained to us was the lithograph, and the print used to demonstrate this was Toulouse-Lautrec’s 1895 print ‘Bust of Mademoiselle Marcelle Lender’. A lithograph is produced differently than the other images, in that the image is not cut in to a printing surface, but is instead drawn on to it. The method is based on the principle that that oil and water repulse each other. The artist, in this case Toulouse-Lautrec himself, draws directly onto a stone using a greasy ink or crayon. This allows for a much looser expressive printmaking technique and this is brilliantly obvious in this print: you can see the different marks made – some light and scratchy, some bolder and more substantial, all full of energy and dynamism; it looks as though the performer was caught on stage, perhaps even mid-song, clothes rustling and swirling as she leans forward, giving it her all.
After the prints, Ketty Gottardo (Martin Halusa Curator of Drawings), talked us through three other works, the first of which was an actual Leonardo da Vinci drawing! It was hard not to momentarily consider employing a ‘look, there’s a kestrel’ distraction technique and scurry off with this wonderful little drawing, which is a pen and ink sketch study of Mary Magdalene, thought to be late 15th C or early 16th C.
Studies for Saint Mary Magdalene, Leonardo Da Vinci
It was fabulous that instead of being asked to keep our distance or being eyed suspiciously (possibly warranted, see above), we were allowed, even encouraged, to get up close and really examine these works. There were even magnifying glasses supplied for this purpose. I loved the way that it was obvious in this very free and rapid little drawing that Leonardo was exploring different poses and head positions, presumably for a larger work; much though one might try to not get caught up in the whole cult of the artist notion, it did seem quite amazing to almost see Leonardo da Vinci’s thought process in action.
The next drawing we were shown was a 1717 sketch, I think in chalk, by Jean-Antoine Watteau: Satyr Pouring Wine. Again this would have been a preparatory sketch for a larger work, one no longer extant. The different colours and rapid sketchy lines are used beautifully to give some life and depth into the body; I love the darkly delineated slanted eyebrows and cheekbones that mark him out as a fawn and the heavily shaded muscular pouring arm and clenched fist that are done with the fantastic confidence of a prolific sketcher.
Satyr pouring wine, Jean-Antoine Watteau
The last work we were shown was On Lake Lucerne, looking towards Fluelen (1841), one of many watercolour studies done of the Swiss Lake by J.M.W. Turner. Up close, it was possible to see a variety of highly diluted subtle blue, grey, green and russet coloured washes that Turner so cleverly used to produce this eerily atmospheric scene, where, lit by a full moon struggling to break through, a looming cliff makes a ghostly appearance from the depth of the mists. Astonishing is about all I can say!
On Lake Lucerne looking towards Fluelen, J.M.W. Turner
I feel we were incredibly privileged to see and spend time with these works, especially as by their very nature, many of them are too unstable or delicate to be on general display.
And as if that wasn’t enough, we were then taken up even higher through the building, through a warren of narrow corridors where I seriously wondered if I should be leaving a breadcrumb trail, and on up to the attic rooms of the Paper Conservation Studio.
Here, Kate Edmondson (Conservator of Works on Paper) gave us a very comprehensive talk about the types of damage we might encounter, about handling the prints, and about how works on paper are cleaned and conserved. This was all tremendously interesting. I never knew, for example, that foxing, the little reddish-brown age dots on old paper can sometimes be caused by metal impurities present in the paper oxidising — Kate thought we might be able to zoom in and identify these metallic flecks while we were digitising! Also curious was the fact that many of the difficulties encountered by conservationists were not necessarily due to the prints themselves but to later additions and interference, such as owner’s stamps and identification numbers etc. These have to be checked for and dealt with before a print can be washed, as some inks in them can flood out and rather scarily seep into the print. We handled furry samples of something called Japanese paper, a fibrous looking tissue used for delicate repairs and were shown a water bath, in which Gore-Tex is used as part of a process of dampening the prints in order to soften them. We were also shown a lovely old leather-bound George Romney sketchbook (late 18th C portrait painter) so we could see the tiny careful repairs the conservation people had been working on – and it was explained how all repairs have to be reversible and removable.
The level of knowledge needed, as well as patience and care, was impressive; conservation doesn’t look like a job for the impatient among us.
Impossible though it may be to believe, I could easily ramble on more; we saw and learnt so much. I will finish up by saying how nicely we were treated; people were so helpful and so generous with their time and knowledge. I for one came away far more interested in and curious about prints and paper than I would have imagined was possible. Actually, it has just occurred to me — printmaking must have greatly enabled the wider distribution and dissemination of images, but now old prints cannot always be accessible. It is therefore rather pleasing that we have somehow come full circle, and our digitisation work will send them off out into the world again to be shared, seen, enjoyed and studied by many again.
As part of our digitisation pilot, we organised 6 brainstorming sessions to develop new ideas and harness the creativity of unselected members of the public.
In the Collecting Stories session, we brainstormed the idea that putting the Courtauld Libraries’ images online could spark conversations not only to do with the academic appreciation of fine art and architecture, but also with personal history, community engagement, social development, and storytelling. We wanted to come up with ideas for the website’s structure, including options to collect stories and interpretation.
One of the exercises we set up to get the conversation started saw our participants roaming the Conway Library looking for one image that was personally relevant to them and writing a story to go with it. Images and stories were then passed on for someone else to write a reply and present them to the group.
We wanted to discuss what it’s like to approach an image collection with the intent to tell a personal story, whether reading someone else’s story about an image enriches it, and how it feels to have a stranger describe something personal like the photo of one’s hometown or special place.
The exercise really got our group talking and the resulting suggestions and ideas will shape the way our project will be delivered. As for the images selected and the stories generated, they were beautiful and nostalgic so some of our volunteers typed them up and wrote further responses. Here are a few.
Broadgate, London.
“Broadgate – close to Liverpool Street
Swiss bank – public space – Richard Serra
Demolished – redevelopment – bars, cafes etc.
1980s corporate architecture – 20th century society
Historic England
Memory – affection” Jan Peters
“Hidden behind Liverpool Street station is Broadgate. In amongst the monstrous redevelopment of this area weaves the Broadgate art trail, the most impressive art collection by acclaimed British and international artists. Accessible to all and out in the open-air my memories are of numerous school trips with teenagers interacting with fantastic sculptures, as opposed to the untouchable work in galleries and museums. We never noticed the rather sterile architecture (the students’ opinion) but marveled at the Fulcrum by Richard Serra, laughed at the Leaping Hare on Crescent and Bell by Barry Flanagan and sat drawing the Rush Hour by George Segal. It still holds its fascination today.” Lorraine Stoker
CON_B02478_F008_010 – The Courtauld Institute of Art – CC-BY-NCCON_B02478_F005_003 – The Courtauld Institute of Art – CC-BY-NC
Isfahan (Persia) Shah Sultan Hussain’s Madrassa
“A painting or a ‘colourised’ photograph of the entrance to the Shah Sultan Hassain Madrassa in Isfahan, Iran. The coolness on the small pond, blue of the characteristics turquoise vaulting. Men in various uniforms stood by the doorway. A mix of clothing and styles – a young boy with cumberbund and blue shirt. Men in heavy overcoats.
Love insights into the clothing of people in the picture.” Pragya Dhitel
“As I worked my way through this box it was fascinating to look at a bygone era of a foreign country not known to me. The image to compliment this image, for me, would be CON_B02478_F005_003, a black and white image described as “looking glass niche”, which I presume would be on the vaulting of the roof.” Arun Mahajan
CON_B04383_F002_024 – The Courtauld Institute of Art – CC-BY-NC
“The Image is the view out of a classroom window in Amsterdam. It is a city where everyone lives, learns or works very close to one another. Everyone can see into everywhere else, seeing people live their lives. It is both comforting & disconcerting.
I imagine being torn by what is happening outside and having to stay focused on what is inside.” Barbara Bouman
“This really helped me think about this image more deeply.
At first look, this seems cold, austere and unstimulating. A place where your mind might wonder. But then the shapes, thrown into contrast by the light, offer another perspective which is anything but dull. The light draws you inward and outward simultaneously. I suppose that’s what classrooms are supposed to do.” Stephen Lines
CON_B03339_F001_012 – The Courtauld Institute of Art – CC-BY-NC
“I think a picture means a lot more if there are people in it. For this reason, I immediately decided to go straight to the Venice boxes. I found this picture inside the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari box. It depicts a lady in a white casual dress and probably dates back to the seventies. The face of the lady is not visible but her hair reminds me of my grandmother from a photo that I have seen at her home. It means a lot to me, even if it’s not her. Imagination is better sometimes.” Giulia Antonioli
“Interesting. Feeling a connection with people, but not people whose faces or expressions we can see. It’s not a picture that appealed to me, initially, but now I sort of get it. The story brings me more into the picture.” Lucy Sharp
CON_B07582_F001_009 – The Courtauld Institute of Art – CC-BY-NC
A pair of paper bags with large and small buckets (paper, galvanised steel and vinyl) by Richard Wentworth. 1982.
“Materials – tactile paper, the ephemeral throw away, everyday object. Manufacturing steel, paper “the sound of crushing paper around a steel hard bucket.” “Opposites.” The fact the bucket has no water in it. Water and paper do not mix. Thinking of conservation. Archives – conservation. Situated on concrete near Haywood Gallery – Modernist building. Wentworth went to Hornsey Art College the year I was born.” Veronica Bailey
“I love that you have added sound to the image.” Barbara Bouman
CON_B04300_F001_021 – The Courtauld Institute of Art – CC-BY-NC
Miss Cranston’s tea rooms Louise Campbell
“Finding this collection of photos brings back lots of good memories and a fuzzy warm nostalgia.
I grew up in Glasgow, I really enjoyed getting to visit the tea rooms if I was good. They were always the first choice of place to lunch; even as a child. I love the Mackintosh decor even though in the 80s and 90s it was dated and not very cool. I even enjoyed lunched there with my mum, and the staff fussing over me and happily making me (something) complicated off the new orders.
Looking back at the photos, they stand up and I now still love the Art Nouveau period and would happily decorate my whole house as Art Nouveau as it brings back such happy memories.”
“Childhood memories triggered by architecture interiors of the Art Nouveau period/Mackintosh. An interest in interior design now. How the past influences future space.” Veronica Bailey
“Looking back at the photographs and reading the others’ description you can imagine the noise and sounds of the Mackintosh tearooms. The hustle and bustle of people’s voices, sounds of children sitting patiently waiting with parents, the smell of cakes and brewed tea.
The architecture is amazing to look at, especially the Art Nouveau period. I particularly like the design of the fireplace and black and white chequered tiled floor.” Saffron Saidi
I have been volunteering at the Courtauld Institute since March 2017. Throughout my thirty-eight years of teaching Art, Design and Art History in inner-London schools I have visited the Courtauld Gallery many times and have also participated in the Institute’s more recent schools outreach and broadening participation activities. However, it was the Courtauld Connects digitisation project, involving the creation of an online archive of 1.1 million images from their own image collection, with the 20th century housing projects and the Anthony Kersting Middle Eastern photographic collection, which attracted my attention. As Sir Nicolas Serota commented, the project ‘is an exciting contemporary expression of Samuel Courtauld’s belief that ‘art is for the people’, and I was eager to play a small part in the transformation of the Courtauld archives into a national and international public resource.
As a volunteer, I have access to the Courtauld, its community, exhibitions, events and collections. I can even view and sit in awe of the Gauguins every day now! In addition, working as part of a great team, the practical training and experience in cataloguing, handling, transcribing and digitising historical material and in creating a digital archive has certainly been educational and highly rewarding.
Visiting the Tate Archives as part of our training and development was a fantastic experience. After walking through the bowels of the art gallery, with its air conditioning and heating ducts – even an old delivery bicycle – past the spectacular spiral staircase inspired by the original floor tiles, we entered the ‘Site Timeline’ – a drum-shaped room at the heart of the building. This room, a small part of the highly successful £45m revamp, is dedicated to the History of the site and is set within the foundation of the oldest part of the building’s structure, Millbank Prison. I was well-aware of the history of The Tate as a prison, but it was quite remarkable to hear that in the 1960s there was a serious proposal to add a brutalist, modern extension to the building!
The new staircase, Tate Britain. Photo courtesy of Lorraine Stoker.
One interesting part of the renovation I have since identified is that when designing the rotunda mirrored bar in the Members Room, the architects Caruso St John were inspired by the Courtauld’s own A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Manet.
Though a regular visitor, I had never got further than the Djanogly Cafè, so The Digital Archive corridor – with its gallery of touchscreens – certainly surprised and impressed me. You can reference a work of art in the Tate collection, access the image of the painting or sculpture and compare it next to the digitised image of the archival item. It was amazing to digitally turn the pages of a Donald Rodney sketchbook, and I have just discovered I can do this on my laptop.
The touch screens in the Digital Archive corridor the Tate, where you can explore digitised items from the collection. Photo courtesy of Lorraine Stoker.
The Hyman Kreitman Reading Rooms were next. There, we heard about the 1928 flood and the new flood doors which are, of course, still untested!
At the start of the digitisation of its collection, the Tate’s mission statement was ‘to fulfil our responsibility to promote public enjoyment, knowledge, and understanding of British and international art, we decided that our selection of archive material should follow these principles and reflect that this collection belonged to the nation’. The sheer scale of the Tate’s Archive digitisation, now in its third year, is overwhelming, with over 52,000 pieces already captured, all of which are available to view on the website. This stands in addition to the 65,000 paintings, sculpture and works on paper, also available to browse online. The aim is to take the largest archive of British art in the world and make it accessible to national and international online audiences, so with new collections coming in each year, this is an ongoing task.
The Courtauld’s Photographic Library digitisation project is in its first six-month developmental phase and this Tate Britain visit certainly put into context the extensive possibilities within an innovative digitisation programme and public online interaction, such as crowdsourcing, transcription algorithms, and the development of new routes into the collection in addition to the traditional paths of art or title based retrieval. Without doubt, this insight into the successful digitisation project at the Tate Britain has galvanised the Courtauld Connects volunteers, as we look forward to the completion of the developmental phase and the exciting possibilities over the next four years.
Tate Britain and Vickers Tower, 12th September 1964, Anthony Kersting. (KER_NEG_G4137)Tate Britain Sculpture Gallery, 24th January 1958, Anthony Kersting. (KER_NEG_W1000)Tate Britain Sculpture Gallery, 24th January 1958, Anthony Kersting. (KER_NEG_W0999)
My name is Mary Caple. I’m one of the volunteers on the HLF Digitisation Project at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Since we started digitising images in March, I’ve spent nearly thirty hours working on the project with Faye, Tom, Sarah, and and other community members donating their time.
I jumped at the chance to get on board with this initiative. During my undergraduate degree at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada, I took museum studies courses, designed exhibitions, and questioned various approaches to digitisation with my peers. What kinds of possibilities arise when exponentially more data is freely available online? Can digitisation make archives more accessible to a broad array of people within and outside academia? Since university I’ve researched in archives and worked on curatorial projects, but this role brings two firsts. Collections photography and the digitisation process are new to me.
One of the many reasons this project at the Courtauld is special is its approach to volunteer participation. While we are welcome to request a particular task on any given day, by default we rotate through jobs from cataloguing to photography. This way, each person involved digitising the Conway, Kersting, and Laib collections can try something new as well as play to their strengths. Switching around has another benefit. By spending time with distinct parts of the collections and approaching them on Tuesdays as a photographer, Thursdays as an archivist, and Fridays as a geographical sleuth/transcriber, a potentially overwhelming behemoth undertaking instead feels like a treasure trove. The ability to approach our material from these different angles keeps perspective fresh and gives a sense of what lies ahead in the months and years to come as the project progresses.
Here, I’ll take you through each of the three types of tasks each volunteer performs when they come in to the Institute. By starting with the small parts – the daily tasks of the 50+ volunteers involved – I hope you’ll gain an understanding of what goes into getting a large-scale digitisation initiative like this one off the ground.
Labeling/Sorting
Boxes waiting to be labeled
The first task on the roster for most volunteers involves sorting and labeling the collections. Over the last month and change we started labeling the Conway collection. Most of these items are printed photographs mounted on card stock, sorted in files, which are housed in boxes found on shelves of the library. As such, they’re also a bit sturdier (less easy to break, tear or maim) than the film and glass negatives of the Kersting and Laib images and a good point of departure for learning how to handle archival objects.
Everything gets a number in our very own Library of Babel. Lots of time is dedicated to going through and numbering each box with sticky labels, and numbering the files and cardstock pages (as well as the occasional news clipping) in each file in pencil by hand. These numbers come in handy later on when we’re taking photos – a number becomes the unique identifier for each image, and what you’ll see eventually when you navigate to the image’s page on the online site. We’re creating a new archival framework that will organize the way the images live in their online home.
While labeling is a great way to get to know the geographical and temporal depth of the Conway images, there are also small surprises. I learned one of my favourite archival lessons from Faye while sorting images. Every file containing architectural images is sorted from distance views to interior details, outside to inside. Keep an eye out if you find yourself flipping through them.
Transcribing the Kersting Logs
Another task dealing with the words and numbers of images involves “digitising” Anthony Kersting’s photograph ledgers by data entry. Kersting meticulously wrote down the date, place, and distinguishing information about thousands of photos he took all around the world throughout the 20th century. Transcription volunteers go through his logbooks and enter this information into a Google Form Faye has set up. This simplifies the data input procedure, hiding the entire spreadsheet of information each time we sit down to work.
Kersting may have been a globetrotter, but he was also a passionate explorer of his own backyard. A recent newcomer to the UK, I’ve found tracing his travels from Cumbria to Herefordshire and beyond a terrific learning experience. Often some Googling is in order to clear up undecipherable spelling or to clearly pinpoint where his travels had taken him for a given photo.
Tracing his photographic path through 1960s Middle East has been a particularly moving experience. I trawl through Wikipedia sites and old travel guides to find location information for castles and towns Kersting rolled through. Borders have changed. Many of the sites Kersting thought interesting enough to photograph have now been destroyed or badly damaged by the conflict in Syria.
Taking the Photos
Taking the photos
While boxes are labeled and data is inputted, we’re moving along with photographing the collection. This is a chance for the social volunteers among us to get collaborative – the photo team always consists of two volunteers. One person positions the images under the camera. The other uses the studio computer to edit each for uniformity and add some simple metadata to the files. While we’re welcome to have a look at the images whenever we’re in, this job provides a great chance to have a look at each and every image going up.
You might be wondering why we’re using a camera instead of a scanner to digitise. While a scanner might complete the job more quickly, and many digitisation projects do use scanners to capture images, the use of a camera here serves a particular purpose. As many of the images we’re working with are mounted, an image taken with a camera can capture that extra layer of depth – the sliver of space between board and photograph is given life. We hope to give the computer user a taste of the experience of getting to see these collections in person – the entire boards are treated as archival objects rather than just the photographs mounted to them. Tom Bilson, the Courtauld’s Head of Digital Media, describes this beautifully – ask him if you ever see him in person.
Spending time on each of these tasks gives volunteers a sense of the larger momentum of the project while they work on smaller tasks. Returning to the same task you worked on a few days, weeks or a month or two previous comes with the surprise of seeing how much the other volunteers and staff have completed in the interim. Something as small as a giant leap in the number of boxes labeled, having moved on to a geographical locale further down the alphabet or thematically different, or seeing a new subject arise (architecture has taken awhile!) is exciting.
Now that the overview is out of the way, I’m looking forward to diving into some specific stories about the collection to share with you in months to come.
Interviewing volunteers is one of my favourite parts of being a Volunteer Coordinator, I never get bored of hearing people’s stories and what led them to become a volunteer. This past month and a half I have interviewed over 40 new volunteers for our digitisation project so it’s been a brilliant 6 weeks for me. Now that I’ve listened to everyone’s motivations, goals and stories I thought I would blog about what I’ve learnt in a Q&A style…
After interviewing over 40 people, would you say there is a typical digitisation volunteer? In short, no. We are really, very lucky to have attracted such a diversity of experience, skills, knowledge-bases and strengths in such a short space of time. We have a very multicultural volunteer team so far, which I think is a great strength as we are digitising photographs from all over the world. We also have a wide age range amongst our volunteers, spanning from 18 to 70+. We have people with professional and unpaid experience from a wide variety of sectors like finance, education and architecture, as well as many who have formerly trained in art history, conservation and archiving, and also many enthusiasts – so this is a chance not only for volunteers to learn from us, but for us to learn from them and for there to be lots of shared learning from each other. A real network is already emerging!
Is there a main motivation for getting involved in the Digitisation project so far? As you would expect, everyone has a slightly different take on why they want to volunteer, but in general there are four main motivations for becoming a digitisation volunteer that crop up in most of the interviews so far, with many people mentioning at least two at some point in their interview:
A passion for creating an open data platform as a way of opening up stories, diversifying audiences, breaking down barriers and improving access to art for communities who might not be able to access the originals.
The pull of being involved with the Courtauld Institute of Art, as a world-class cultural institution.
The chance to gain hands-on experience on a digitisation process, with a view to move into employment or further training in this field.
The desire to spend free time discovering images that are interesting, beautiful and have not been made public before.
Has anything about the interviews so far surprised you? After managing volunteers for quite a few years, I have learnt not to make assumptions; but I am always very moved by people’s passion, drive and commitment to use their free time to help organisations further their cause, and I am overwhelmed by the variety of skills and perspectives they bring with them. It’s very motivating to be around them!
