Highland Archive Service (HAS) comprises of four centres covering the Highland region in Caithness, Inverness, Lochaber and Skye and Lochalsh. The archives held at these centres are the records of official bodies, businesses, societies, and individuals and are a unique record of our Highland past. The successful application to the Records at Risk for a grant of £1100 enabled HAS to conserve and digitise items identified at risk which were additions to an existing collection, Duncan MacPherson, which is owned by HAS and held at The Skye and Lochalsh Archive Centre.
The archive items identified as at risk were fifty-one glass plate negatives which were suffering from water damage, including mould and dampness, six hundred negatives (several of which were stuck together) and some tangled film reels including five 9.5 mm Baby Pathe scope reel c1920s. Having been left in a shed for an estimated ten-plus years, the mixed formats had been subject to extreme fluctuations of temperature and humidity and latterly water damage from a flood. The immediate threat was the risk of more deterioration in its current format and condition.
Working with our in-house conservation team we arranged for cleaning and archival standard packaging for the photographic collection. The conservation and digitisation of the film proved challenging due to our rural location, after contacting over thirteen potential conservators across the UK we were successful in finding a company in Edinburgh that carried out the work for us. Digitisation of the six hundred negatives was carried out by our Am Baile colleagues and featured many previously unseen images.
The funding has been essential to helping HAS understand the breadth and significance of the material in this collection. An audit of the existing collection highlighted multiple cataloguing issues and a decision was made to re-catalogue the whole collection. This will allow us to produce a more accessible catalogue and create enhanced educational materials with new stories and material, particularly in relation to the area of Lochalsh where our outreach work needs more focus.
The use of film by Duncan MacPherson was previously unknown and was an exciting element of the new additions. Already we can see that the Records at Risk grant increases the visibility and building relationships within a rural community with collaborative projects. The new addition contains new details which will allow us to narrate the interrelationship of Duncan MacPherson within a Gaelic-speaking rural west coast fishing and crofting community.
Following an approach in early 2020 by the Kyle Station Museum to collaborate on their proposed building refurbishment, we took the opportunity to highlight the Duncan MacPherson collection to them. The newly refurbished museum now features hundreds of items from the existing and newly conserved and digitised materials. They have even incorporated an Archive Room enabling visitors to browse our extensive collections. The room is decorated with copies of archive photographs, letters, and newspaper clippings, most of them from the Duncan MacPherson collection. Archivist Catherine MacPhee attended the opening day, giving a talk on the new items conserved by the grant and premiered the film to the local community.
Demonstrating the archive’s rich potential for use locally and nationally strengthened our archive at the heart of the community it serves. As part of Scottish Council on Archives 20th anniversary celebrations an image from the collection featured as a ‘Twenty Treasures’.
On a personal level, while the challenges of finding a company to complete the film digitisation were hard at times, my knowledge of archive resources in Scotland has widened. Having a deeper dive into the work by Duncan MacPherson has been thoroughly enjoyable, both getting to know the collection and then sharing in the richness of his work outwith and within our community.
The organisational impact will continue as we connect and build relationships with a rural community through collaborative projects and through educational outreach. This is in line with HAS’s vision to conserve and make accessible records which reflect the history and diversity of the Scottish Highlands and its inhabitants for the benefit of present and future generations.