Hello, I’m Elizabeth, the postdoctoral researcher on the One Health archival project! During the Wellcome Trust grant, I was employed for five months from October 2023 to the start of March 2024 to develop academic engagement with the archival material and undertake a short research project. Thanks to funding from Heritage Collections, I can continue for two more months until early May, focusing on engagement and another short research project. I will spend the next month blogging to introduce research strands identified across the collections that might be of interest to researchers/students, share short research projects I’ve undertaken, and our academic engagement activities so far. By doing this, you’ll really get a flavour for the richness of the collections as a resource for research.  

RZSS Animal Arrival and Death Records

Just a quick introduction to my background! I have a PhD in environmental policy and ethics, with focus on biodiversity conservation, but more recently I have undertaken degrees in anthropology, in the subfield of anthrozoology, where we study human-animal relationships and interactions, considering socio-cultural, political contexts. My previous research projects have primarily involved captive wild animals in zoos and circuses, compassionate conservation and human-wildlife conflict and coexistence. I had previously undertaken research on Charles Darwin that introduced me to digital archival research, but I had not engaged directly with archival material – this is an exciting, new world to be immersed in. Thank you to Fiona Menzies, Project Archivist and lead, for introducing me to it!

Me and my cat, Reilly, who is known well at the Dick Vet due to his many rare health conditions!

The archival materials are fascinating in so many respects, windows into specific organisations in Edinburgh and how they were located within wider debates in Scotland and the UK about animal health, welfare, conceptions of animal cruelty, public health and the roles and perceptions of women in caring within communities, for instance. More on research possibilities in the next blog post! In the meantime, do get in touch if this post has already piqued your interest: you can comment on the blog post or reply to me directly at elizabeth.vandermeer@ed.ac.uk.

Sneak peak at research strands: 

Research streams that cross the collections

Since her last blog, Project Conservator Mhairi Boyle has been getting to work assessing and conserving the bound volumes from the R(D)SVS and OneKind archives. In this blog, she explains the assessment process used to evaluate the condition of OneKind’s bound volumes. 

In my last blog I was at the Zoo, helping to move the archive on a warm yet rainy summer’s day. It’s now a crisp October and I am stationed back at the Main Library, tasked with conserving the bound volumes in the OneKind and R(D)SVS collections.  

The OneKind archive, before rehousing

First, I had to decide where to start. When working on a long-term project, it’s important to establish an efficient workflow. This project is a little bit different than anything else I have worked on because all the collections were either partially catalogued or not yet catalogued. Project Archivist Fiona Menzies is hard at work establishing an order and organising the metadata for each collection, which means that over time many of the items and boxes will change location. To not disrupt the cataloguing and organisational processes, I decided to start with the larger bound volumes in the R(D)SVS and OneKind collections.  

Upon initial examination, it was clear that the OneKind volumes needed more attention than the R(D)SVS ones. I decided to undertake a more detailed survey of the OneKind volumes to provide an overview of their condition and identify the most common issues. Surveys often go at snail’s pace in the beginning, as you get to know the collection and the common conservation issues and the extent to which objects are damaged. As I got to know the collection, I was able to create damage categories to assign to each volume. I created Categories 1-4, from ‘Good’ to ‘Fair’ to ‘Poor’ to ‘Severe Multiple Damages’. ‘Good’ volumes are in stable, functional condition and require little/no interventive conservation treatment, and the other categories represent a sliding scale of object condition.  

The survey gave me an overview of the condition of the collection

The most common issues were surface dirt; red rot (the deterioration of the leather cover and/or spine); and damaged leather covers and/or spines. 

Surface dirt, red rot, and damaged leather are the orders of the day!

However, the most complex issue with the collection is the amount of Sellotape on many volumes. In many cases, extensive tape has been applied to volumes with damaged/detached boards and/or spines, to keep the volume intact. This will prove to be tricky to remove, because whilst in some areas the adhesive has hardened and come away from the plastic carrier, in many areas it is still fully adhered to the leather. Removing it may in fact further damage the leather.

Red rot galore. This deteriorated leather can be consolidated with Klucel G in Industrial Methylated Spirit

The removal of the tape is one of many ethical decisions which must be considered when treating the OneKind collection. Because this is an archival rather than a fine art collection, the preservation of information is of utmost importance. Because the bindings of the volumes are not historically unique, an in-situ and minimally interventive approach to the treatments will be adopted. To maximise efficiency and speed, tape will be left as-is on areas of the volumes where it does not affect the movement and functionality of the volumes. This will not affect the quality of the treatment, allowing me to preserve the whole collection rather than completely rebinding singular volumes. 

Tape has held this volume together. Now, it can be replaced with archival-friendly conservation treatments

Did somebody say tape?

In a way, I must be thankful for all the tape that I am going to tackle. A well-meaning person recognised the importance of keeping the volumes intact and put in their best efforts to preserve them in their original formats. It means that no boards or spines have been lost into the ether. I will be sure to update when I begin my tape-laden conservation journey! 

In today’s blog we hear from our new Project Conservator, Mhairi Boyle. Mhairi recently finished a maternity cover post conserving the CRC’s Special Collections and is very excited to be part of the One Health team.

In October 2021, in my previous conservator role within the CRC, I received a very strange message. It read:

“Hi Mhairi, do you have time this afternoon for me to pop by conservation and ask you for some advice? I’ve found what I think might be a bit of frog muscle.”

The message was from Fiona Menzies, the One Health Project Archivist. At the time, Fiona was sorting through the Royal Dick Vet School archive and had come across some a frog specimen adhered to a page of a notebook. As a paper conservator, I do not often get messages regarding animal specimens. Little did I know that this frog muscle would, in August 2022, be mine.

A tiny piece of dried frog muscle on some Litmus Paper.

That is, ‘mine’ in the sense that it is now my job to conserve and rehouse the three collections which fall under the One Health umbrella. Starting this project has been a little daunting – spanning three sizeable collections, we have everything from pig trotters in jars and graduation robes to animal sketches and photographs of farms. Not only this, but the content of the collections is sometimes confronting and unsettling to take in. This project is not for the faint of heart!

You have to be brave to join the One Health team!

On my first day on the job, Fiona gave me a tour of where some of the collections are housed. Although the R(D)VS and OneKind archives are now stored at the CRC and at our offsite storage facility, the RZSS archive is still stored at multiple sites across Edinburgh Zoo. Thankfully this was not a great shock or surprise to me: in my previous role, I went out to visit the Zoo with Fiona and our University Archivist & Research Collections Manager Rachel Hosker.

I’d like to think that running alongside the One Health project is Project MhairiHealth. Although paper conservation work is very practical in its nature, I never imagined that in my role I’d be moving crates of archives and heavy books around a zoo! I’ll definitely be fitter by the end of this project.

Making friends with the locals.

As I mentioned, the RZSS archive is dotted about different locations throughout Edinburgh Zoo. It is the task of Fiona and myself to consolidate everything firstly into one central location at the Zoo, to enable us to see exactly how much material we have and how to move forwards.

Part of the RZSS archive before moving.

At the CRC, we can put most things we are working on onto a trolley, and zip up and down using the library lift to wherever we like with little effort. However, at the Zoo, our moving operation has required us to work with the wonderful staff at the RVSS to move one big chunk of their archive from an office cupboard to what is now our appraisal office. There were quite a few stairs involved, and with impending rainclouds threating our operation, we had to be speedy moving the boxes from one part of the building to another. The last thing we want is a soggy archive.

After filling half of our office with boxes, we decided it was a good place to stop for the day. There are still parts of the archive in several other locations, but we will have to work in batches to process everything.

Stay tuned for the next blog post!

After moving!