The Journey of our Archives Apprentice

My name is Matthew Bradley and I live in Choppington, Northumberland. I live with my Mam, Stepdad, Brother and our three dogs. I joined the council as a Digital Marketing apprentice with the team at Northumberland Archives. So far it has been very enjoyable to work with the team, get to know everyone and get involved in different jobs that we must do on a day-to-day basis. Some jobs that I have been doing so far are scanning archives and using infinity photo to jpeg them, photocopying, creating social media posts and more. I have got to grips with how to do some of these jobs comfortably, however, with others it may come with a bit more time, practice and experience.

I was given the opportunity to go to Alnwick Castle with my colleague John Thompson too. We went up there to collect some documents to bring back to Woodhorn and do work on. Their library is open to researchers, so we sometimes bring stuff back to make copies for the public. With regards to the scanning jobs, I have been able to work with a few different types of documents. To start off with I was scanning postcards to get used to it and since then I have been scanning negatives and glass slides. With the slides I must wear white cotton gloves because handling them with bare fingers could damage the slides and possibly harm myself.  

I enjoy lots of different things outside of work as well. Some of my favourite things to do are visit friends and family, walk the dogs and watch sports. I have a big interest in music too so going out with my friends to watch gigs and go clubbing is great fun. I have also recently passed my driving test so going out on drives with my brother is very enjoyable too.  

I had been looking to work as an apprentice since I left college and I saw that the council were taking on new apprentices, so I went onto their website and looked at what they had to offer. I saw that there was a digital marketing post which is something I thought I would thrive in due to my passion for creating videos and content with my friends when we were younger. It has been great so far being able to think outside the box and look at future possibilities for content creation with the archives team. We have been focusing on trying to gain more of a younger following recently so the use of Tik Tok has one of the bigger chances of catching a younger audience’s eye. We uploaded the first Tik Tok a couple of weeks ago which was “A day in the life of an archives apprentice”. In this I just got a few short clips together to give people an insight into what we do and it managed to get us around 10 new followers and 60 likes. I am going to keep coming up with ideas which will hopefully keep getting a positive response. Recently I suggested the idea of a Christmas themed Tik Tok where me and Alison would put up the Christmas tree and showcase other decorations around the site too.   

I have also been helping put stuff back into the strongrooms with Susan. This has given me the opportunity to familiarise myself with the process of matching the slips and using the location indexes. It is very important to fill out the slips carefully and make sure they’re secure in the place I have retrieved an item from. This is so that when I have finished doing whatever I need to do with that item it is easy to spot which box or shelf it needs to go back into. On Wednesdays me and Susan have been getting the requested items our customers want to look at and put them on the desks ready for when they arrive. After each session we have to take the items away and bring out the next lot of items. Once the day is finished we usually bring them back into strongroom 4 and put them on the tables relating to which specific room they belong to. This makes the process of putting them away much easier. 

It has been a great start to my job with Northumberland Archives and I have loved throwing myself into challenges and different jobs. I will continue to learn and improve my skills with the guidance of my colleagues.