Archive Progress

9th and 10th March

Two new volunteers came in to the archive office to meet everyone, and they will start as regular weekly volunteers from next week.

This week Toby updates on Archive progress, there is a humped camel in the visual archive, where's the missing Dodo and contact with NSSAW.

Archive Progress
 The Archives are rolling along. Toby has made good use of the volunteers this week and that looks set to continue into next week and beyond as he pushes on to meet the timetable of sorting digitalising and boxing.

The Monday and Tuesday evening volunteers have already completed the initial search and sort of photos.

One interesting phenomenon is the transition to digital in recent years means there is a dearth of actual physical copies of photos to hand over to the archive.

So the digital copies will need to be studied and a selection printed of each show and event, to be paid for out of the project budget.

The Humped-Camel Effect in the Photo Archive

Meaning not so many photos for the earlier years, a bulge from the mid '90s to the mid-naughties as home producing became facilitated by improved cameras, then virtually none for the last ten years, as they remain on digital storage.

Newspapers have been sorted into date order, and a spreadsheet database produced, alongside digital copies for reference and new website. So far over 250 have been photographed, which need labelling and indexing.

So now the programmes are complete, and the posters very nearly. Both the posters and programmes are near complete, as in one each for every main show in the 30 years.

They do do don't day do 

Finally the reason for the one missing programme, for Dodo Island, has been discovered. There wasn't one! We have it on good authority that it never existed! (Taken from NoFit State friends and family Facebook)

"No there was no programme for Dodo Island due to lack of funds" Gregoire Care

Linda and Gregoire

"Thanks! So I can stop hunting for that! Now I just have to track down tour dates and crew roles etc" Toby

"I can give you synopsis and crew!" Gregoire

"Excellent! For archive stuff I am using toby@nofitstate.com" Toby

All contributions highly valued as we try to piece together a coherent past, and we need as much help as we can get in fitting together the many jigsaw bits together, so please contact the archive office or Ali, Toby or Liz with any aspect you feel you can add. NoFit State was always a collective endeavour, and that's the only way we are going to get the best archive we can together.

Contact has been established with the Screen and Sound Archive in Aberystwyth

National Screen and Sound Archive

They are keen to take the film and music side of the No Fit State Archive.

The great news is they have the technology to convert old material. But there is a waiting list and they would want to keep the old media if they do it for free.

For people with stuff they don't want to part with we might be able to find a different way to get digital copies.


Current tasks for Archive Team and Volunteers

• Finish extracting tour and cast data from programmes - into spreadsheets
• Work on contact lists
• Go through digital newspaper images, rename pix with date order title, and trim if necessary
• Add the digital images to master Excel spreadsheet
• Download video from YouTube etc - search elsewhere (Vimeo etc)
• Search websites - juggling conventions, newspapers' archives
• Go through the rest of Tom's shelf (leave tidy!)
• Remove pictures from Now.Here folder and collect in box file
• finish newspaper sorting
• Prepare server room so we have a tidy corner for finished Archive boxes