We have been very busy learning this week! On Monday we had our memories group, we were given a copy of a fantastic photograph of the Dunkeld and Birnam Women’s football team from around 1946. Prior to this donation we had nothing in our collection relating to the women’s football team, it is fantastic to be able to continue to expand our collection and our local knowledge. It’s lovely to discover Dunkeld and Birnam have an extended history of women participating in sports, especially football since the Women’s football world cup 2027 qualifiers are currently taking place (the Scotland ladies have a match on Saturday at 5pm)!
On Tuesday Imogen spent the day in Edinburgh at the National Museum of Scotland’s collection centre to take part in an object packing and handling training course. This was a very interesting and informative day and it taught Imogen some new skills she will be able to share with the other Staff and volunteers within the archive and museum.
On Wednesday Ruth was in Edinburgh at the Museum Galleries Scotland Strategy Sympossium. This was a fantastic opportunity to network with other members of the sector and find out what the current strategic aims are across scotland within the heritage sector. Ruth also made a guest appearance on the big screen as she had been interviewed about taking part in the museum futures programme!
The volunteer work continues on, we are still researching as part of our National Heritage lottery project on shops and houses, we are discovering lots of fabulous information about the history of the village as we go. Other volunteers are hard at work digitising, some are also investigating the potential use of Optical Character recognition software to help transcribe our digitised documents.
We have reorganised our exhibition once again! To maintain a musical them for march we have re-installed our MacIntosh exhibition alongside our Neil Gow exhibition, it is a wonderful local story. We also have our Scottish Horse and King’s seat exhibitions on display.
On Friday Imogen and Kate attended a Textile Conservation Workshop for Community Archive and Heritage Groups hosted by the Scottish Council on Archives. This workshop is part of their ongoing Collection Care for All programme. This was a great way to learn more about how to care for our textile collections and maintain them in the best way we can.
