Cheers from London! Here is a highlight from what we did our first week:
Brian
and I arrived at Twyford House early Friday (28 June) not before getting a
little lost and wet from the rain. Ian, our host, tried to meet us at Arsenal
Station but we accidentally took different ways down the street and missed each
other completely. We arrived to Twyford House before him, but when he got back
he treated us to a traditional English breakfast. We talked about what we were
doing here and about the living situation.
We got back to our flat and I was
incredibly exhausted. We traveled for twenty-four hours, who wouldn’t be? After
taking a short nap Brian and I decided it would be better to try to get out of
the house and experience Highbury, rather than be tired and grumpy all day. We
went out and visited a few of the local churches. I have never seen such old
churches before; most of them had small cemeteries within the grounds and we
snapped a few pictures. There was a spirit there that I have felt when doing family
history research. These people, although known in life, were almost completely
lost through time and wear.
Saturday Brian and I learned the bus
route to the Society of Genealogists. It’s not too far from our flat; it only
took about thirty minutes. We were too nervous to venture out any further into
the city, so we walked back from the Society to our flat. The route passes
through Angel, so we were able to get things we needed like phones and food.
Later that evening I was feeling a
bit more adventurous and I wanted Brian to experience some history. I took him
to St Paul’s Cathedral. I’ll admit I don’t know much modern London history, but
the story of St Paul’s I do know. As you probably know, St Paul’s survived the
continuous bombings on London during WWII. It became a symbol of English spirit
and their will to never give up. Brian and I were shocked by how this massive
building didn’t get touched. There was a choir singing on the steps of the
cathedral when we first arrived, and it was awe-inspiring. I stayed there and
soaked up the history and the feeling of peace I had there. They rang the
bells. It sounded like the cathedral was dancing.
Sunday Brian and I went to church at
the Hoe Street chapel. Everyone was very nice there. Everyone was hoping we
were new in the ward so I could help everyone with their family history, but...
I told them I would be back. Definitely.
After an eventful first weekend, it
was finally time to officially start my internship. I arrived way too early
(which will end up being the norm from here on out). I was let in and I met Tim
Lawrence, the head of library services. He was really excited to have me on
board at the Society. He took me on a tour of the entire library, as well as
teaching me their reference system and online catalog, which was interesting.
There were so many books! There was a floor of indexes and copies of original documents
for each county, a floor for county histories and textbooks, and a floor
holding all of their original images and archival materials that could not be
bound or needed extra care. Tim and I enjoyed talking about British history and
he basically quizzed me on my genealogical knowledge, which I aced with flying
colors. My favorite part of the tour of the library was when we went to the
Lower Library which held the archived original images. Tim pulled out a book
about three feet long, two feet wide, and six inches deep. It was the biggest
book I had ever seen! He opened it up and I said “oh those are land indentures!”
He seemed surprised I knew about that record type; he didn’t know I worked with
them extensively for over a year.
I was able to meet many of the
volunteers and paid staff that day as well. Everyone there is really nice and
wants to be there. We push each other to do our best work, and we all have a
passion for genealogy. It is a great work environment and I am very proud to be
one of them.
After the tour I went straight to
business. I was introduced to my work station in the Lower Library, where I
would do my scanning, editing, indexing, and uploading. I was taught how to
edit the images and create new indexes, and I started my first volume of Crisp
Marriage Licenses that day. I’m an art minor, so editing the images was easy
for me. Creating the index didn’t give me too much trouble; the handwriting was
straight forward. I didn’t get to uploading the image that day.
First thing Tuesday Tim taught me
how to upload the index and images. It took a while for it to work the first
time, but I made myself a tutorial that I go through to make sure I don’t miss
any steps. The whole process of enhancing the images, creating an accurate
index, and then uploading both to the Society of Genealogist’s members page
took a little getting used to, but when it was all said and done I have been
able to go through the steps quickly. By Friday, I was able to upload three
volumes, which each contain about one-hundred documents. My first week, I was able to upload
five volumes of Crisp Marriage Licenses.
On Wednesday I went up to the Upper
Library to work with Else Churchill, the genealogist of Society of Genealogists.
We decided that doing research wasn’t the best choice for me, because she
actually didn’t do a lot of research on the job; she usually writes and gives lectures,
grades papers, and deals with correspondence. I was able to write comments for
two blogs; the first dealt with black sheep in our family history, the second
dealt with the importance of Societies. After that, I read through some
legislation that has much genealogical significance these days. A new act is
proposed, which would make the personal information found in genealogical
records be somewhat harder to get to, including civil registration documents in
the UK. I was able to read and decipher the legal language and create a
proposal that Else will use in a community forum to hopefully add an exception
for genealogy when it comes to personal information.
Overall, I had a very hectic,
stressful, exciting, and overall great first week. On the weekend, Brian and I
went to the British Museum and saw all the amazing antiquities there. We also
went to the National Portrait Gallery and I taught Brian all about the history
of Britain’s kings and queens. I love that history is all around me, and I can
be Brian’s personal tour guide (he admits I give better tours than the
professionals).
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