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Methodology
Collecting
the papers from Skempton's flat
was an adventure in itself, as was gathering together the material in
his office, covered in the dust of his long working life at Imperial
College.
His office was left exactly as when he had last used it, complete with
a half eaten chocolate bar on his desk and pair of old shoes in the
cupboard. It is these things that bring the archival subject alive;
this is how he lived and worked.
Most of the papers were
still in reasonable or systematic order and sorting and preliminary
listing were relatively straightforward. It was the devising of
categories for the lists that proved the hardest - was everything he
did a project with research? Or was it research, sometimes for a
project? Discuss! So we did, both amongst
ourselves, that is College Archivist and Project Archivist, Mike
Chrimes ICE Librarian and with Skempton's former colleagues at Imperial
College.
When the categories were
decided upon, the papers sorted, boxed and labelled, next came the data
inputting, to the databases that form the catalogues.
The Skempton and Bishop databases (see
left) are fully searchable and can
generate their own web pages, thereby making an accessible front end of
the catalogue for users. The next step was the creation of this
Skempton and Bishop Archives website. This includes access to the
catalogues, information on Skempton and Bishop and some images from
their archives. It is also linked to other resources from some of their
international contemporaries and colleagues.
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