Form Filling: A Course

You might not think that form filling is an integral part of a PhD. However, it definitely is, and is very important at that. Why? Because there are always forms to fill, from forms to apply for courses, to grant application, as well as registration forms for attending conferences, together with abstract writing. Before breaking up for the Easter holidays I wanted to finish off all the applications I have pending, so the last few days have seen me doing quite a lot of form filling.

I realise however that form filling is definitely not my forte. Maybe I think that people should give me what I am asking for – because I said so? I also realise that I am not always too good at expressing myself and targetting the audience I am addressing. Take today’s case in point:

One of the forms I was filling was an abstract template for a conference next year (yes – that’s right – September 2011). The first problem I ran into was that I wasn’t exactly sure who my audience is. At first I assumed that the audience was a scientific audience. However, unfortunately, this is often not the case in my field. In fact the audience I should have planned was actually more for heritage professionals such as conservators. This meant that the aim of the abstract had to be turned on its head: from focussing on the nitty gritty of the scientific aspects of my work I needed to focus more on the usability and relevance of my work.

The second problem I ran into, and which my supervisor very helpfully pointed out as well, was that I needed to give more information about why my work is important and how it is so novel in the field. Since I still don’t have the results I aim to present (remember that the conference is around a year and a half down the line!), and what I was writing was mainly projections of what I hope to achieve, I was being very tentative in what I wrote. However, my supervisor sort of lambasted me for that and told me to get on with the job of writing a good abstract.

Before I finished my work for the day I sent off the abstract to my supervisor. Waiting for his response now. Hope I did a good (or at least better!) job!

Form Filling

Filed under: Rants, Complaints and General Malaise, Research Process, abstract writing, abstracts, application forms, applications, audience, conferences, form filling, forms, grant applications, PhD, registrations, targetting the audience

Happy Birthday Blog

It’s been one year since I started this blog! Cannot believe that I am already half-way through my PhD (time seriously flies!), let alone that I have been writing about it for over a year. I thought that on this anniversary I will give you some stats about how it’s doing (I am a scientist after all…numbers make me happy ).

Total views: 603

Number of posts: 30 (around 2.5 a month…not much maybe I should blog more?)

Happy Birthday research blog!

Filed under: General

Papers…Photographic and Otherwise

This week has been a pretty busy week, where besides the ongoing research experiments there were a number of other things going on, keeping me occupied. I have already written about the public engagement event at The National Archives. However, there were two other things that are worth mentioning…

The first is a webcast from the Library of Congress Topics in Preservation series I followed yesterday on Development
and Research Applications for a Reference Collection of 20th Century Photographic Paper by Paul Messier. I’ve come across a number of materials from Paul Messier online, so when I heard he was giving this preservation I thought it would be good to listen in (I am spending quite a good amount of time in the lab right now working alone, so it also gave me some company while working there).

I was impressed by the work he is doing on dating of photographic paper. He has worked hard to collect a significant reference collection of photographic papers (which is great to have as it is not that easy to obtain) and has proceeded to get it characterised in as many ways as possible, while collaborating with various people and institutions knowledgeable in their fields. One hour was quite short I think to give an in-depth view of the work, but he succeeded in giving a broad overview of the work, while highlighting specific interesting instances.

You can access the webcast here: https://sas.elluminate.com/mr.jnlp?suid=M.A2FA39C02893E145EF65A1CC5A862C

What about the other paper?

Well…I have been working on a paper on ‘Volatile Aldehydes in Libraries and Archives’. We submitted the paper to the journal Atmospheric Environment on the 23rd of December and last week we received a reply with minor revisions to go through. We looked through the reviewer’s comments and sent back the reply on Tuesday, and by Wednesday evening we already had a reply: it has now been accepted…*pat on the back*.

This will be my first paper regarding my PhD work so it is quite exciting to see that. It concerns the environmental monitoring work done at The National Archives and at St. Paul’s Cathedral, together with measurements done at the National and University Library in Ljubljana and the Nationaal Archief in The Hague (NL).

If anyone is interested in reading it…let me know!

Filed under: Events and Activities, General, Research Process, atmospheric environment, environmental monitoring, libraries and archives, Library of Congress, paper, Paul Messier, Public engagement, Reference Collection of 20th Century Photographic Paper, The National Archives, TNA, Topics in PReservation Series, Volatile Aldehydes

Should we Save it?

To Save or Not to Save?

That was the question being asked at a workshop organised at The National Archives this week. The workshop, which was part of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Festival of Social Science which is ending this weekend, was aimed at GCSE/A’level students studying subjects such as history and humanities to think about the decisions that occur on a daily basis in heritage institutions on what is worth keeping, and why.

The workshop was concerned about 4 main objects: The Domesday Book, Picasso’s Still Life with Guitar, an Ipod, and a Tiffany Necklace. Which one would you save if you had to choose one (or none at all?). The students got the opportunity to vote for their preferred item (using quite useful voting devices). After their initial reactions were taken more information started being given to the students slowly.

Picasso: Still Life with Guitar

The first sets of information was given by what were called ‘guest experts’ about a variety of subjects which may influence what you decide to keep or not. These ten minute presentations were on the issues of value, material science, economics and the environmental impact of collections. It was an interesting way of getting the students to think beyond the emotional attachment to an object or ‘what they think they should save’ to other factors which they probably would not have factored in. After every step the students also got to vote for their choice, so that variation in voting depending on what has been said could be observed. e.g. The Domesday Book always had the highest number of votes, but as the economic and environmental cost of maintaining it compared to the necklace were shown, the votes of the book started decreasing and of the necklace increasing.

The Domesday Book

What happened in the afternoon sessions was then that twists started being introduced into the story as well: What if the Ipod had Michael Jackson’s last playlist? Or if the Picasso was a fake? Or what if the necklace was of a very rare type of diamond? Which one would you choose now? At every step that new twists were introduced the students got to vote again and again. In this part of the event it was quite impressive how the values changed e.g. when it was said that the Ipod had Michael Jackson’s last playlist, the votes for saving that obviously increased.

Which one would you save? And why?

I must say that I was also quite impressed by how coherent and eloquent most of the students were when discussing the reason for their choices, and especially when they were divided into groups to make the case for what they wanted. They were also very much engaged and well-behaved. Hearing all the discussions about how unruly English kids are in the newspapers it seemed to me that there is still the ones who make up for all the rest.

Ahh – and one final thing..if this was an event for school students why was I there? Well, having done some work on environmental monitoring and working with TNA they asked me if I would be willing to give the presentation on the environmental impact of collections. I said sure! So there I was…a guest expert on the environment . Here is a basic copy of the presentation. Unfortunately you don’t get my reel (or is that fortunately?)…

Filed under: Events and Activities, Domesday Book, Economic and Social Research COuncil, economics, environment, ESRC, Festival of Social Science, Ipod, material science, Pablo Picasso, Picasso, Public engagement, Still Life with Guitar, The National Archives, Tiffany necklace, TNA, value, workshop