She spoke to Gill Kay:
ALAN Whicker’s home office is jam-packed with books, a whole host of mementos and a selection of precious photographs propped on his desk and on the windowsill.
On the floor are innumerable cardboard boxes in which paperwork and photographs accrued over nearly six decades in journalism, TV presenting and broadcasting have been archived.
In the room next door there are more archived boxes piled from floor to ceiling. And there is still work to be done.
The mammoth task of cataloguing and archiving the mass of material is in the hands of Catherine Kirby, who helped to set up the Jersey Archive and is now the only freelance archivist in the Island.
This is one of a number of commissions that she has undertaken; over the past few years she has organised and catalogued private family collections and has also worked on the archives of Seymour Hotels, Voisins and Ann Street Brewery.
Catherine is particularly excited about the Whicker archive, however, which she has been working on for the past 18 months.
‘I’ve been sorting out all the paperwork and photographs from the whole of his career from the 1940s,’ she explained.
‘There are receipts, telegrams, all his research for every programme, which he mainly did himself, endless news cuttings, and there are things like the Commonwealth Office paperwork, as they used to issue information about certain places and all the kind of detail about a country that he needed.
‘He was always writing to them for information. It was before the internet, of course, so it’s such a different way of working from how it is all done now.’
Mr Whicker was meticulous with his files, which she found were all labelled so that he could refer back to them when he needed to and keep them updated.
‘He had to have everything organised to refer back to, because obviously he wrote lots of books and he would want to get all the details right. He was meticulous about that.’
However, Catherine found that Mr Whicker did make a few mistakes when it came to looking after his paperwork, especially in his use of paperclips.
On his desk, where Catherine inputs all the information, is a big tub full of rusty paperclips, which she is going to add to the two big bags of metal she has already taken from the collection.
Where they have been removed from certain items, there is the tell-tale rust mark left by the clips.
When Catherine started on the project, the room was filled with papers and files, so it was a matter of picking up one file and starting from there. And so it went on as she packed the boxes and catalogued the collection on her computer.
‘Gradually I just built up the years as I came across something and entered as much information as I could that would be of help to anyone doing research. I’ve got a list of the boxes which is 26 pages long, of every file, of everything and which box it’s in. It’s all in order, so it’s very easy to find what you want to see. So far there are about 70 boxes of files!’
When Catherine’s work is complete, the collection will go to a national archive, but exactly which one hasn’t been decided by Mr Whicker’s partner, Valerie Kleeman.
Now the end is in sight, as Catherine has finished with the paperwork and is starting on the photographic collection.
‘I’m nearly there, but Valerie keeps finding more!’ she said with a smile.
CATHERINE KIRBY has the following expert advice on how to look after precious family photos and papers in the long term:
- Do not use elastic bands, metal paperclips or sticky tape to attach things together. Over time they can cause marks and irreversible damage.
- Be aware of the environment that photos and papers are kept in. Archive material is much happier in a cooler place, not near radiators or in hot attics.
- If the photo or paperwork is precious, consider investing in acid-free or archive-grade materials.
- Many photographs gradually lose their colour when they are kept in direct sunlight, such as on sunny window sills.
- Name, locate and date all photographs. Far too often people have boxes of photographs inherited from grandparents or great grandparents and have found it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to identify anyone.
- People tend not to be very good at filing information digitally, such as the date or a file name that they can refer back to. Be meticulous about naming your files.[/breakout]
