Michele Goddard  & Andrew Robertson

This article has the objective of sharing with Members the work that has been taking place ‘behind the scenes’ on cataloguing our extensive archive. I thought it best to explain how the project came about, those working on it, the benefits to the Society and the way forward.

As you will know, the Society has amassed a vast collection of diverse items over many years many irreplaceable.  We hold Photographs – prints, slides, negatives, glass plates, photo albums; Library items – books, catalogues, research material, scrapbooks; portfolios containing letters, photos, research; Collections of engine plates and models; drawings and patents – in reality the list seems to be endless!  All of these items have been managed by a ‘paper’ system and the knowledge of Society Section Officers.  Particularly given the ever growing size of the collection this out dated approach presents increasing challenges and is not sustainable.

It was clear that the Society required a ‘museum quality’ cataloguing online ‘database’ to record its archive appropriately.  With this objective in mind Andrew Robertson and I set about considering all the essential requirements of such a system – ease of use, data protection, duplication of data, backups, user access, making ‘data’ available, data loading and downloading, search requirements as well as the ‘technical’ knowledge of the Road Locomotive Society key personnel.

Andrew explored eighteen different commercially available products. He condensed these down to 4 vendors whom he contacted with some specific technical questions and request for quotes on behalf of the Society.  In autumn 2021, Andrew Robertson and myself presented our proposed solution to the Trustee Board of our proposed solution and in January 2022 the Trustee Board approved the ‘eHive’ product as the technical solution.  Andy Smith had joined us to become ‘the implementation team’.

The solution will enable the following:

• a standardised centralised listing of all items that belong to the Society.  This will list the items’ location and be ‘real – time’.
• digital images of the objects, including the photographic collections, to be stored.  This will aid identification of items the Society owns.
• information will be held securely, on ‘the cloud’, be backed up and would initially be available to Section Officers, and those assisting in data entry.
• a comprehensive search facility, only be as good as the information entered!  Although many items of data are free format entry there are also many ‘pick lists’ that ensure data is entered to the standards that we define. 
• each item to have a permanent location and a loans process for temporary change of location.
• handling of items to be minimised ensuring the archive receives less ‘wear and tear’.
• the provenance of items gifted to the Society to be properly recorded even if the ‘collection’ is housed in different locations.  Acquisitions can be documented prior to detailed cataloguing.
• in the future, an option to provide a view of the catalogue through our website using a member login facility.  We hope this would generate more member research.

I have chosen two examples from the system.  The first is the Major Ind road roller model. You will see from the screen print (Fig.1) of the catalogue record that the ‘named collection’ is Major Ind, with an accession date of January 1960.  It has a record number of A1, archive object 1.

The second example (Fig.2) I have chosen is record number P5178, chosen since it is my Burrell roller, No.3047.  It is located in the Burrell Crane & Roller Album, donated by Tom Paisley in 1980.  We have ensured that the actual album has a record and the images in the album have individual records. Click on Image below to see a full size image in a separate window.

A dedicated team, including the Section Officers, are working on the considerable task of cataloguing our items.  We have started by creating records at a ‘top level’.  The listings of our portfolios and library have been added along with, at the time of writing, 13891 photographic records.

During the implementation we had approximately 13,500 photographic records uploaded, these included the Tom Paisley Albums and entries from the Modern Photographs database.

We are working through these records, adding additional information and a digital photograph to each record. We have created a scanning process where we retain high quality images offline in multiple locations and hold a high-quality image in ehive, the eHive image is equivalent to a 6×4 inch photographic print.

In future reports for the Journal, the team shall share our progress on the cataloguing along with some more examples of the diverse objects that have been donated to the Society.

Clearly provision of the underlying system comes at a cost but given the importance of the archive as a key element of the Society’s activities it is essential that it is safeguarded for the future.