{"id":193,"date":"2016-09-16T15:13:45","date_gmt":"2016-09-16T14:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/phddigitisation\/?p=193"},"modified":"2016-09-16T15:13:45","modified_gmt":"2016-09-16T14:13:45","slug":"the-women-behind-the-words-thanking-the-typists-of-the-twentieth-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/phddigitisation\/2016\/09\/16\/the-women-behind-the-words-thanking-the-typists-of-the-twentieth-century\/","title":{"rendered":"The women behind the words: thanking the typists of the twentieth century"},"content":{"rendered":"

Digitising this thesis collection is an act of time travel. We began in May at the early twentieth century and are currently working through the seventies. We have enjoyed images of a man in a beautiful three-piece suit coaxing a snake into a glass\u00a0tube from the twenties, and are currently\u00a0being\u00a0treated to some\u00a0majestic large collars, trousers and hair from the seventies. Not only do the fashions change, but the technology changes as well, from hand written, to meticulously typed on typewriters, and finally to modern computers, which we have yet to encounter. In this way the PhD thesis collection is a litmus test for the technological development of the society from which it emerged.<\/p>\n

The collection\u00a0is also an indication of social development. It cannot be denied that the authors of these theses\u00a0are not representative of society en masse, but a highly educated, largely male\u00a0minority.\u00a0But these are not the only people bound within these volumes, and one could argue not the only creators of these theses as physical objects. I\u00a0am fascinated by the names of countless women who worked tirelessly to create this collection. These are of course the professional typists who pieced together chapters, created tables and graphs and read handwriting that seems to have been often rather illegible. I encounter these women in the acknowledgments section of the theses. I find this particularly\u00a0amusing because presumably in order to be thanked in the thesis\u00a0they needed to type their own acknowledgement.<\/p>\n

I have been\u00a0taking note of\u00a0these women for about three weeks now and so far about 40% of the volumes I have encountered\u00a0contain acknowledgments to typists. I don’t know if these means the work was typed by its author or if the typist’s name\u00a0just hasn’t been included. I have recorded sixty different women.\u00a0Only two women, Helen Scott and Anthea Cormack, have\u00a0been named twice. Cormack typed two theses addressing fibrinolysis,\u00a0whereas Scott typed one PhD in chemistry and another MD about the liver.\u00a0Therefore I’m not sure whether typists specialised in certain topics or not.\u00a0\u00a0I have encountered one example of a man typing a thesis for a women, Maureen Child completed her\u00a0thesis entitled ‘An\u00a0ethological study of social interaction among nursery school children’ in 1978. She thanks Nick Child, perhaps a relative, for typing her thesis.<\/p>\n

These names will not be on the catalogue, they did not receive a new title for their work, and presumably within a decade or so their skills were no longer required. I have managed to find very little information about typists working in Edinburgh in the 60\u2019s, 70\u2019s and 80\u2019s but\u00a0clearly there were several. I would like to type an acknowledgement to them so they don\u2019t have to do it themselves for once.<\/p>\n

\"Koberl\"<\/p>\n

\"Komy\"<\/p>\n

\"Gruneberg1970\"<\/p>\n

\"Green1976\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Beagrie1966\"<\/p>\n

\"Hardcastle1971\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\"Voros\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\"Matonis1977\"\"Child\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\"O'Moore\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\"Leitch1976\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Digitising this thesis collection is an act of time travel. We began in May at the early twentieth century and are currently working through the seventies. We have enjoyed images of a man in a beautiful three-piece suit coaxing a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/phddigitisation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/phddigitisation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/phddigitisation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/phddigitisation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/phddigitisation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/phddigitisation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/phddigitisation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/phddigitisation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/phddigitisation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk\/phddigitisation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}