Valuing Photographs

Today I had a meeting at TNA, as project partners in my PhD regarding the issue of values and heritage. It was my first meeting there with a group of people besides my supervisors. Besides the discussion being very useful for my research, it was also highly enlightening to observe how topics are discussed within the institution. In particular I feel I gained a lot due to the way they question things, challenge each other’s ideas and are in general up for really thinking an issue through.

In light of that, one of the meeting participants, following the meeting where we discussed so much about photographs, particularly colour photographs, sent us all this comic. I thought it was hilarious! So here are Calvin and Hobbes discussing photographs!

If you’re interested here are a few resources about heritage values you can look through:

Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage (The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles)

Values and Heritage Conservation (The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles)

Significance 2.0 (Collections Council of Australia Ltd)

Representation and Intervention: The Symbiotic relationship of conservation and value (Taylor, J. and Cassar, M.)

Filed under: Research Process, Calvin and Hobbes, colour photographs, Getty Conservation Institute, heritage values, significance, values

Making Money as a Student

As a full-time student I have no regular income. Living on my savings, however, is definitively not the most productive, so I try to grab any opportunity from which I can support myself.

The most logical way is probably to work. If you have a supportive supervisor you can probably get some jobs from within the university itself. In my case I have so far worked on a project which was being carried out in the centre I am based in. This meant that besides putting some of the skills I have gained during my research into practice, I also gained some relevant experience within a research project besides my own.

However, there are other ways in which a student can get some money to support themselves, which may not always be the most logical.

So far the most lucrative possibilities have probably been applying for posts offering fixed grants. For some reason I always manage to come way under budget for these events, which means that besides gaining quite a lot academically, I also manage to support myself for that bit longer as a student.

Another way of making some money is then from participating in focus groups and/or research experiments. These opportunities mean that for giving up some of your time you are either paid in cash or vouchers. If I am paid in vouchers I normally try to choose vouchers from places I know I need something, so that the money can go towards something I really need.

I have been lucky to have managed to save some money during my previous degree from working and stipends. However, these small amounts have definitely built up to mean that I feel less guilty of treating myself every so often.

Filed under: General, Research Process, fixed grants, focus groups, moeny, research experiments, research skills, student work, work

Christmas time in geekland!

In the geekland formally known as ‘my department’, Christmas has definitely arrived early this year!

Why?

Up to now the lab we had access to was a tiny room with a big chamber in the middle of it, leaving a small L-shaped corridor around it to work in…shared by around 5 people at one go. Let’s just say that this was not ideal set-up for a lab! It was really much more than a room with bench-space rather than a lab as I understand a chemistry lab to be.

The day finally arrived when we got our new lab last weekend! While I was busy enjoying the Cheltenham Science Festival, some of my colleagues made a start on getting the lab all nice and ready for Tuesday. Why the deadline? Well, we had an important delegation coming to our department then so we needed to make sure that the lab was all nice and ready for their visit.

I entered the lab first time on Monday morning. I was definitely impressed! The lab is much bigger than I ever imagined! And there is so much space to move around in, bench space to work on, and storage space for anything needed.

Up to now going to the lab has been a not-so-pleasant experience…a descent into a windowless, crowded basement room. Now? I think I just might find any excuse to go their. Experiments here I come!

Filed under: Experiments and Methodology, General, Research Process, bench space, Cheltenham Science Festival, laboratory, new lab, science laboratory

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

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

The Research Meetings Continue

Around a year ago I had mentioned that we had started research meetings in the department. I haven’t mentioned them since, but this is not because they have been forgotten. Far from that! The research meetings are still being held once a month during the winter months (the June meeting is planned as a visit outside the department and then we stop for summer). The research group is constantly growing larger, with two PhD students and a researcher joining the group since the last time I wrote about these meetings, so the group is definitely growing.

So what happens during these meetings? There are generally two sections to the meetings, which may proceed in any order depending on the day.

One section consists of everyone giving a brief update of what they have done since the last meeting. This keeps everyone up-to-date and in a way also allows everyone to give some input on each other’s work if this is required.

The other section, which is normally the meeting’s main reason, is a presentation by someone in the group. The presentations can take a number of forms. First of all, when a new person joins the group, they normally give a short presentation about their planned work to introduce the rest of the group to their project. This helps everyone to know what is going out while a the same time allowing people to think about how their project might interact with the new person’s and what help may be offered. When no new people have joined (which is the norm), one of the group presents the work they have been doing over the past few months in more detail. This may be done either to ask for input from the group about some issue they are having problems with, or to prepare for an upcoming presentation, or just to keep the group up to date.

The last research meeting was held last Thursday. It started off with the new PhD student giving a short introduction to her project (she only joined last week so she will give her main introductory presentation next month), followed with an update by each of us. Then Dr Irina Spulber updated us all on her experiments and her results. As her background is electrical engineering it is not that similar to mine, but I still find her work interesting. Particularly I found her presentation so engaging…she managed to make her work accessible to all…I’m particularly jealous of that skill as I know that I am not always successful in that. Hopefully practice makes perfect!

Filed under: Events and Activities, Research Process, departmental meetings, electrical engineering, experiments, Irina Spulber, meetings, PhD students, presentation skills, research assistant, research group, research meetings

Progress of Work

I realise I haven’t written much about how I am doing in my research. However, don’t worry, this has not meant that I am not doing anything.

One of the things I have been working on has been a paper on the results I have obtained from environmental monitoring as well as data I have been provided with from other sources which I could include in this paper. This paper, which we have been working on since the summer, has finally been submitted last week or so. So now we wait for the comments from the peer review process, and hopefully they will be favourable and I will see the paper in print.

Apart from that my work has been on a stop-start situation. Being in a quite new centre has meant that there is very few pieces of equipment available. This has meant that I need to order most of the equipment and material I need myself. This has been both positive and negative. It is negative because it means that time is ‘wasted’ waiting for the equipment to arrive, putting it together, figuring out how it works etc. However, it also means I get new equipment which hopefully is not continuously breaking down!

Well, last week I think (! I don’t want to jinx the situation right now) I received the last of the equipment I need, at least for the time being. Thus, for the past week I have been busy getting my samples ready and the equipment ready to be able to start the experiments next week. I have set up most of the equipment, and done around half of the pre-ageing measurements of my samples. Hopefully next week will see me starting the experiments and then I will have results to look at and admire (and discuss!)

Will keep you updated!

Filed under: Experiments and Methodology, Research Process, environmental monitoring, equipment, experimentation, paper, publications

PhD Upgrade :)

In the UK most PhD students are registered in the first instance for an MPhil degree, upgrading to full PhD status during their programme. Up to last year students in my department could upgrade any time after the first year. However, from this year all students have to upgrade at the end of the first year. So we were all given the date of upgrade and the documents we needed to submit. These included a document explaining your research, including your methodology, contribution to the field, background, as well as a chapter-by-chapter outline of your thesis, one of your best pieces of writing (I submitted a paper I am in the process of submitting), and the relevant sections of a research log book all UCL research students fill in at regular intervals. The last requirement was a presentation, which I had done a number of throughout the past year, including the monitoring meeting.

I realised about this requirement in August when we received an e-mail reminding us. Luckily I already had most of the research document done in bits and pieces during the year…the only thing I didn’t have was a chapter-by-chapter outline (hadn’t started thinking about THAT!). However, that was a pretty OK thing to do as I just got out the literature reviews I have been working on and put in their titles as sections and subsections, together with sections on forthcoming results and discussions. The next part, the piece of writing, I had quite a bit to choose from, and was in the process of writing the paper, so that was submitted.

All in all, working slowly over the weeks I got everything together. After a bit of rushing collecting papers from my two supervisors (one paper got lost somewhere in the internal mail system for around 4 days or so!), I had everything ready on Wednesday, and I submitted in preparation for Thursday (when I was involved in monitoring at St. Paul’s Cathedral).

Yesterday morning I received an e-mail from my supervisor telling me that I was approved for upgrade…YIPPEEE!…I am officially a PhD student now Now all’s that left is the tiny matter of getting the work done .

Filed under: Events and Activities, General, Research Process, logbook, MPhil, MPhil vs PhD, PhD, PhD upgrade, thesis outline, UCL

Seminar at the V&A

Some time back my supervisor had forwarded on to me (and the rest of the research group) an e-mail about a seminar to be held at the V&A where Emma would be presenting part of her PhD work. I knew her through the National Archives (she had worked there for a while, but has now left for a post abroad), while Linda (a research assistant in the centre) knew her through conferences etc., and in Emma’s new job they will be project partners in different institutions. So yesterday we both decided to get ourselves to the V&A (none of us had ever been before ) to hear more about her work (and also maybe in a way support her?…she has her viva next week…if I was her I would probably be quite stressed to say the least ).

Emma’s PhD was concerned with ‘Investigating the Characterisation and Stability of Polyamide 6,6 in Heritage Artefacts’ (Polyamide-6,6 is better known as Nylon for those non-chemists out there). She went through the statistical/chemometric analysis she went through for using a non-destructive technique (NIR) to get a classification method for these materials in textiles. Then she went on to discuss methods for characterising aged and un-aged nylons and the results she obtained.

The work was of course great…but I had heard her speak at a workshop in Ljubljana I attended in November, and of course had spoken to her when I visited the TNA for my work (she was a great supporter there…I will miss her help ), so it wasn’t new to me. However, the main thing that impressed me was her language. I’m so envious! One of the problems I am encountering with presentations is that often you are presenting to an audience with such a variable background that you cannot assume anything. This means that targeting your audience is a balancing act on a very tight rope between going over your audience’s head, or not telling your audience anything new. Both these approaches could easily alienate them, making your presentation quite ineffective. However, with Emma, the situation was quite different. She manages to explain the most complex things in the most simple of words which while everyone understands are still explaining the idea/theory/method correctly such that a person in the field would not consider that any corners are being cut.

I still have not found this balance…I tend to try to make sure that everything I am saying is technically correct, but this often means that my audience finds it hard to understand (or at least parts do). On the other hand when I see that people are not understanding I tend to dumb it down too much, at the same time compromising the correctness of what I am saying. I must say I was enthralled by the definitions and language she was using, and on the way back I was surprised that also Linda commented on this. Hope I manage to get somewhere close soon…I wish I could find the words to explain to people what I am doing simply but correctly, without getting the blank stares I normally get!

In a way however sometimes I also get the feeling that the people I am talking do not even try to understand…they think that this being a PhD should make the subject matter beyond them and that they will never understand, or if they understand for some reason they are undermining the importance of my research…that often infuriates me inside. I DO want people to know what I am doing…and to discuss what I am doing with other…you don’t have to be an expert in the field to be able to discuss things. Sometimes all I need is the ideas from someone who is looking in from outside, and can see the complete picture. Cannot wait till I acquire the skills to pitch my language at the right level!

Filed under: Events and Activities, Research Process, Chemometrics, classification, Emma, language, National Archives, NIR, Nylon, PhD, Polyamide 6, presentation skills, statsistics, TNA

Pisa…A Research Visit

In the last post I left you with my arrival in Pisa. Now, having completed my time there, I am back in London. But how did it go, and why did I go there?

The first aim of my visit there was to determine a method for the extraction of the dyes from my photographs, followed by their separation using chromatographic methods. Thus, the majority of the first two weeks was spent trying out the methods mentioned in literature for similar methods (since none were found for my exact requirements), and then depending on the results obtained modifying the methods to obtain the best methods we could. This is proably one of the most tricky parts of a research project, since it can take a very long time till the best combination is determined. Luckily, we found something we could work with, and thus could get on to the next part of the work. This involved analysing aged photographs using chromatographic and colourimetric methods and correlating the two. What about the  results for this? I must say not all the results are perfect, but at least I proved what I was there to do.

What about the other aspects of the research trip? I must say it was great! I enjoyed the work, the people, the lifestyle…everything. Being in Pisa also meant I could get to other parts of Tuscany quite easily…so I visited Florence, Siena, Lucca, Cinque Terre, Certaldo etc. I also had people visiting me, which was nice.

I think that it is not enough from these research trips to take only the work, but it is so much better if you can experience a bit the life in that place…you really do gain a lot…not just in friends, and results, but also in other skills such as project management and time management (since you are there for a limited period of time).

Filed under: Events and Activities, Experiments and Methodology, Research Process, Travel, chromatographic methods, colourimetry, Florence, London, Pisa, project management, research visit, Siena, skills development, Tuscany