‘Scientific data and obsolete media formats at the British Antarctic Survey’ by Kevin Roberts, Archivist and Records Officer, British Antarctic Survey

Getting to grips with legacy scientific data at the British Antarctic Survey – Phase 1

Our first CAG meeting of 2022 saw us delving into the world of digital collections. Kevin Roberts Archivist and Records Manager at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) took us through the project he has been working on to uncover and record the Surveys digital records, a first step in creating a long term preservation strategy. As he puts it “These data sets, gathered at significant expense, often under difficult conditions, provide unique, unrepeatable measurements of the environment “ Before setting off down the digital road Kevin gave is a brief history of the Survey. Founded as a secret military operation in World War 2 and named after a Parisian night club (Tabarin) post war it took the name Falkland Islands Dependency Survey (FIDS) before alighting on its present name in 1962. While the archive is tasked with caring for the scientific records created it also holds personal papers from the men and women who have worked there.

While Cambridge provides the HQ much of the collection is created in the Antarctic or from one of the surveys ships – the latest being the RRS Sir David Attenborough.

Kevin took us though his journey around the building from the known collections held in archive stores / data centre through to the unknown, all the while gathering information on the various data sets he uncovered and the various formats they were held on. Kevin’s physical trip around BAS was a trip through the 20th century’s digital development. He took us through the projects methodology, updated records keeping and on to a rather scary digital life expectancy table which shows that doing nothing where digital is concerned is not an option. With phase one creating an understanding of what and how the Survey holds the records phase two will build on that information while looking forward to what the long term preservation / disposal options will be. The presentation, appropriately delivered digitally via zoom was a great start to our CAG year.

N. Boneham

Archivist

The Thomas H Manning Polar Archives, Scott Polar Research Institute 

Extreme Archives

Lockdown has found me working from home, away from the collections and indeed away from Cambridge. My old routine was fairly clear, rather like a polar expedition the archive worked with a lot of forward planning, archive appointments could be booked up to four months in advance so I always had my weeks pretty mapped out, also as we are lacking a staff room at the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) we  had a Coffee / Tea regime that saw us all meeting at 10.30 (rung out on the ships bell of Captain Scott’s Terra Nova expedition – 5 bells) and 4pm (8 bells) to share drinks and more often than not cake. Virtual coffee care of Zoom is available now but I’ve found myself only logging in a couple of times. Without the 6am start to catch a train and no research bookings I have found my working rhythm has moved and my coffee mates now are the ducks, deer and giant bumble bees that frequent my garden.

So much of the collection I work with was written in what I think can be termed extreme circumstances, scientific work carried out under difficult conditions. The contents of the archive were for the most part written by small groups of people living either on board ships or in huts and then splitting into even smaller groups in tents or ice caves. Some indeed went all out and were totally self isolating alone either through volunteering for specific work or through misadventure when disaster had struck.

Many of the papers I look after were written by people (mainly men) separated from their loved ones for weeks, months or years on end. With only their diaries to record their thoughts and infrequent arrivals of letters from home, as I come to the end of week 13 of my new working life I am pleased that communication has certainly come a long way since then.

Being at home has given me the chance to catch up on my polar reading, so many of our researchers are working on publications, biographies, poetry, expedition accounts and we always get a copy for the library yet I rarely get the chance to read something cover to cover.  I am trying to give myself some reading time each day, so far I’ve made it across the Antarctic continent in the company of the men of the 1955 Trans Antarctic expedition, travelled across South Africa with Frank Wild who lived there after going on five Antarctic expeditions, read up on polar publishing and how the spectral Arctic influenced the search for Franklin and climbed Everest in the company of George Lowe who was the first member of the team to congratulate Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary on their successful summit.

Like many of us I have been spending a lot of time with the catalogue, it has been a great opportunity to do all those little tidying up jobs that there is never normally time for, and creating new index options to make searching it quicker, this time of trying to answer research enquiries with no access to the original documents has brought in to focus how important a good catalogue is.

Having now been away from the collection longer than it took Captain  Scott to reach the South Pole I hope to be not overwintering in the living room…..

Naomi Boneham, Archivist, Scott Polar Research Institute

Photo credits: Featured image photo via Good Free Photos, and Naomi Boneham