In this post, long-term volunteer Philip James thinks about some of the practical issues in project work, particularly under Covid. This helps us both appreciate what it is project volunteers are doing, and how they do it – important if we’re to be transparent about how the data is created and the choices made along […]
Tag Archives | Methodology
Data Analysis and Issues
In this week’s post, project volunter Philip James looks at some of the challenges of working with large quantites of data across a team of many people – and back to some of the potential problems with how the data was created in the first place. Philip is one of the team based with the […]
Use of Databases and Statistics in Historical Research
By Mike Esbester on January 11, 2021 in Blog, Family History, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Local History
This post was contributed by one of our anonymous volunteers, who has been doing the fiddly but essential job of going over the data and trying to spot and correct issues. This means that they’ve seen pretty much all of the project data (including the 1000s of cases currently being prepared for public release). As […]
Accidents, brakes, couplings & other questions
With the news just in that our excellent NRM volunteer team have finished transcribing the final batch of state accident reports, covering 1900-1910 and amounting to over 8000 cases, it’s good to be able to share a guest blog post by one of our longest-serving volunteers, Philip James. In it he draws upon his experience […]
Project work – and an accident at Chadwell Heath
By Philip James on June 8, 2020 in Accident reports, Blog, Guest contribution, Linking sources, Local History, Non-company employee
In this week’s post, National Railway Museum volunteer Philip James outlines more of what working on the project involves, and one case from our current extension, covering the Board of Trade inspectors’ reports for 1900-1910. Philip has been working on the project since we started in 2016, so must now have seen well over a […]
Emotion in the archive
When we started the project, we knew we’d be finding details which took us down to the individuals involved in the accidents. We’d long known the top-level figures: the hundreds who died each year and tens of thousands who were injured. Those numbers were almost too large to grasp, to feel a personal connection with. […]
Co-production & collaboration in the archive
Last week, Karen and Mike took part in this year’s Gerald Aylmer seminar, a day-long symposium themed around ‘co-production & collaboration in the archive’. Jointly organised by The National Archives (TNA, the venue for the day), the Royal Historical Society (RHS) and the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), it was a fascinating gathering of people […]
On the Scope and Methods of Transcription
By Mike Esbester on December 30, 2019 in Accident aftermath, Blog, Guest contribution, Transcription Tuesday
The majority of this post was contributed by one of our anonymous volunteers, who had been doing the fiddly but essential job of going over the data and trying to spot and correct issues, as well as add in the historic counties in which accidents took place. We’re extremely grateful to the volunteer, both for […]
