Scotch College

Help! Archives bulge with work to be done

Words: Dr Jim Mitchell • School Archivist

The Scotch Archives bulge with work that needs to be done. We need to tackle what is already here, and to cope with the flow of incoming donations and enquiries. A group of volunteers is already on the job, but more help will always be welcome.

If you would like to help (and also enjoy the company of other Old Boys) please contact me so we can arrange a mutually agreeable time for you to visit the archives and see what volunteers are doing.

You will be helping the school manage its heritage, and you are sure to be fascinated by what you find here. A cheerful band of volunteers works at the archives, and the range of tasks is so large that we feel sure we can find some work to interest you.Examples of things wanting attention are:

When

• See in what years ABC is listed in the OSCA Yearbook as a soldier. —Why: Canberra has no record of him, and will only look him up if we can tell them when he served.
• Look (in Collegian? Annual Report?) for any mention of DEF’s dying in or after 1951. Why: we have no record of his death, but Brian Morris has just catalogued a memorial bequest prize!
• Date a pamphlet about a Presbyterian precursor of Billy Graham. The pamphlet lists his tour’s months and days but gives no year.
• Search for records of Scotch – Eton cricket matches.—Why: we want to know its history.
• Date a door knocker said to have come from the School’s original site in the city, and which has a registered number.
• Date a clipping from The Australasian about Wesley but with references to Scotch.
• Generally help handle enquiries as they come in.

When and where

• Read some Collegians to see if GHI played occasionally with the first XI, as we have no note of this.

Who

• Put names to faces on photos.
• Identify a high jumper in a photo taken by JKL (1980) by looking in Collegians 1978–1980, or by asking JKL if he recalls.
• Find out if S. Lamrock was ever vice-captain of football.

Larger tasks include:

• accessions
• writing names on back of photos
• checking Collegians for things tucked inside
• copying Old Boys’ life stories, and checking the copies against the originals
• Selling items we don’t need on ebay
• indexing of school publications
• sorting and filing
• our collection of crested china needs research to identify its dates and makers
• compiling a list of every boat. And its dates
• recording every prize winner
• Checking through the photos that have been sorted and filed by students, who often utterly midjudge a photo’s date

Scotty Macleish is one of our dedicated archives volunteers. He says that among the benefits of working in the archives as a volunteer is the ability to check a record and settle an argument (see ‘Archives settles arguments’ on page 71) . GS