Isabelle

About Me

I am a digital archivist trainee on the Bridging the Digital Gap programme run by The National Archives, seconded to UCL Institute of Education. During the course of this traineeship, I have been:

• Digitising UCL's collections, gathering metadata
• Accessioning and cataloguing material for the Institute of Education archive and UCL Special Collections to ISAD(G) guidelines using Axiell Calm (I have worked on a collection from start to finish, including creating the box lists, writing the catalogue entries and repackaging the material)
• Assessing the non-standard and potentially obsolete media held within the archive
• Appraising collections, particularly of audio-visual material
• Using Transkribus to transcribe and use OCR for handwritten text
• Using OCR software to generate searchable PDFs
• Doing conservation training including cleaning and repairing paper items and making enclosures for ancient manuscript fragments
• Managing transcription volunteers for an oral history project relating to the East End of London
• Writing project proposals
• Supervising the archive reading room

My greatest passions are the high quality digitisation of cultural heritage and making archives more accessible.

I have two years of digitisation experience within archives. I began by volunteering in The Postal Museum's digitisation studio alongside my work there as a host. Following this, I was lucky enough to be selected as one of eight trainees on the Bridging the Digital Gap programme, where I have been digitising UCL's special collections.