Hi everyone,
It looks like we won’t receive another volume to transcribe (or the missing
pages) until the new year, sorry.
So I wondered if you’d all like to try a little sleuthing.
You will have seen the column headed “C” and probably wondered about it.
“C” was for Card and referred to a card index classification system of the
negatives (the X in the “X” column meant that the entry had been written
onto the appropriate card.)
This classified index was a great help in searching for the negative you
were seeking obviously, but ultimately your work will replace it with a much
more efficient system. In the meantime though, when scanning the books by
eye, spotting a specific letter is much quicker than reading every line and
I have use it recently in my manual searches.
However thereby hangs a major problem – matching the letters up to what
they represented. The system of allocation seemed totally illogical (“K” =
portrait, “A” = wedding, “Y” = miscellaneous indoor press job, “Z” =
miscellaneous outdoor press job – those I can remember). Because of this
illogicality we changed the allocation in about 1976 and the “decode” sheet
is inside the cover of every index book from then on. Unfortunately that for
the prior system seems to have not made it into the museum store!
I just wondered, therefore, if you’d all enjoy a little seasonal puzzle of
trying work out what each letter represents. There will be no prizes but it
will certainly make searching for requests from enquirers much simpler until
the database is fully up and running.
If you’re game to give it a try please feel free to chat about ideas here
and let’s see if we can’t reproduce the missing decode sheet. (You may be
wondering about the card index itself. As yet we’ve not located that in the
store either ☹ however I’m pretty sure it will be there somewhere. By the
way filling in the cards was one of the photographers’ least favourite jobs
and that’s why not all the “X”s are filled in!)
No doubt we’ll all be in touch during the coming week but I’d like to take
this opportunity to wish you all the compliments of the season – Happy
Christmas and I hope you all manage to celebrate safely in one form or
another, virtual or real, with family and friends. Thanks for the marvellous
work you’ve already done on this project.
Chris
The photograph is probably a Herald one taken on Longbridge in March 1954 –
is it in your section Patsy? Let’s hope we don’t get too much of that on top
of everything else!
Chris Shepheard
Chris.shepheard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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