Day 15: National Archives

For our last official day of class, we went to the National Archives, and the visit was a nice way to finish out the class. The National Archives of England are massive (as they should be!) and were surprisingly accessible. The archivists gave us a presentation on the history and scope of the archives and let us view a few different materials from the collection. Once again, I appreciated being able to talk with the archivists about their preservation practices and their digital archive collections. One thing I wanted to note was that many of these documents had these little yarn strings strung through them, called tether tags, and honestly, I feel like there couldn't possibly be a worse way to compile documents together!

After our National Archives visit, we went to a cute little cafe nearby for our final coffee house chat, and I wanted to say that I really appreciated being able to talk frankly with the professors about our experiences and feedback for future years! Overall, I am so happy that I attended this study abroad program. It was such a nice way to finish out my MLIS degree and I can't wait to take back what I learned from this and apply it to my work in the archives!

One of the documents we viewed. Note the tether tag.