Conferences and events

Society of Archivists annual conference

University of York, 26-29th August

David Powell presented a paper at the Society of Archivists annual conference in York regarding a ground-breaking archive scoping survey being undertaken of the UK's offshore oil and gas industry.  The paper looked at how the survey was being approached and some of the preliminary finding about the nature of this modern and vibrant industry's records and the challenges these present archivists.

At the same conference, Victoria Peters gave a paper entitled 'From classification to context: incorporating functions into archival description'. In her paper, she discussed the work that Archive Services has been doing on the incorporation of functions into archival descriptive systems. She argued that functions are an essential part of a descriptive system. They play a vital role in explaining the provenance of records by placing them more securely in the context of their creation and use. They can also facilitate the retrieval of records. Even more importantly, they offer the means to unite the disparate practices of records managers and archivists.