Hear from our trainees

Eight trainees standing in a row in front of large windows

Cohort 3 of Bridging the Digital Gap

Trainee blogs

In these blogs, our current and past Bridging the Digital Gap trainees describe their various projects and what it’s like to work in an archive.

Jacob Bickford, Erin Liu, Ellie Peng and Ash Ullah

‘DIY’ digital preservation: a collaborative trainee project on personal digital archiving

Ben Barber, Manasseh Boyd and Isabelle Reynolds-Logue

Bridging the Digital Gap trainees showcase: activists for digital preservation

Gavin Bambrick, Warwickshire County Record Office

Joining Warwickshire County Record Office
An update for World Digital Preservation Day
Tinkering with the programming language Python

Ben Barber, King’s College London (KCL)

The Interior of a Tank Factory
Chapel Preservation Project

Frances Bell, Explore York

Trainee Thursday
Anne Lister
19th-century family newspapers and how to make your own
Archives under quarantine – accessing archives from home
Announcing launch of Explore York Images
Missing York? Information on our ongoing caption challenge

Jacob Bickford, University of Westminster

Bridging the Digital Gap at Westminster
Digital sources in the archive

Web archiving at Westminster
Providing computational access to the Polytechnic Magazine (1879 to 1960)
Managing your personal digital archive

Manasseh Boyd, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Bridging the Digital Gap

Sam Brenton, University of Bristol

Introducing Sam Brenton, digital archive trainee
Collecting web crawls for the University of Bristol’s archive

Marco Brunello, University of Leeds

Bridging the Digital Gap
The South Bank Show Production Archive Transcription Project
Celebrating 50 years of Northern Ballet: quoted in an article in ARC Magazine, June 2020, page 14
A year and three months as a trainee in Leeds

Jim Costin, University of York

Bridging the Digital Gap
Preserving emails – how hard can it be?
To reorganise or to not reorganise
Bridging the Digital Gap to ARA professional registration

Eimear Coyle, Dorset History Centre

Meet our new Bridging the Digital Gap trainee
Keeping your bits safe
The Internet, the environment and storing records
Goodbye from our Digital Archives Trainee

Tasdiq Dewan, The Guardian Foundation

A year in the Bridging the Digital Gap traineeship

George Jukes

Preserving digital records for the future at the LSE Library

Erin Liu, University of the Arts London (UAL)

Bridging the Digital Gap with UAL
Learning with Joy Cuff
Enriching access to the Camberwell ILEA Archive
Preservation planning for born-digital student artworks
Steering digital preservation ambitions at University of the Arts London: article in ARC Magazine, October 2020, pages 16-17 (co-authored with Elisabeth Thurlow)

Michael Norman, East Anglia Film Archive

Reflections on Bridging the Digital Gap: article in ARC Magazine, July 2020, pages 6-7
Catching up with two former Bridging the Digital Gap trainees

Trainee Olivia Northrop examines a record at East Riding Archives

Trainee Olivia at East Riding Archives

Olivia Northrop, East Riding Archives

Engaging the public with archival material at East Riding Archives
Reflections on my traineeship
Beat the ‘dead-line’ and haunt the archives with a chilling tale
East Riding staff case studies

Jack Quinlan, Hull History Centre

Basecamp at The National Archives
What I wish I knew before I started

Ellie Peng, Transport for London (TfL) Corporate Archives

Bridging the Digital Gap: one year on

Isabelle Reynolds-Logue, University College London (UCL)

Bridging the Digital Gap: Part 1
Bridging the Digital Gap: Part 2
Reflections of a Bridging the Digital Gap trainee
Catching up with two former Bridging the Digital Gap trainees

Noor Safi, Amnesty International

120 days in an archive

Cade Simpson, South West Heritage Trust

Bridging the Digital Gap trainee
Working with audio recordings, and the importance of oral history to local culture

Ash Ullah, London Metropolitan Archives

Through the eyes of a Bridging the Digital Gap trainee
Bridging the Digital Gap opens up new career routes: interview with Ash Ullah in ARC Magazine, September/October 2021, pages 22-23

Natasha Young, Gloucestershire Archives

Our Bridging the Digital Gap trainee, in her own words
Cotswold Roundabout collection goes digital
60 seconds with Natasha Young
15 months at Gloucestershire Archives

From the hosts of the trainees

Elisabeth Thurlow and Zoe Fullard (cohort 2 supervisors): ‘Supporting New Career Routes: Bridging the Digital Gap’, ARC Magazine January/February 2022 issue, pages 11-12

Bryony Hooper, Emma Hancox, Fabi Barticioti, and Philippa Mole (cohort 3 supervisors): ‘Bridging the Digital Gap Trainees: New Assets to the Sector’, ARC Magazine May/June 2022 issue, pages 24-27 (on Issuu)

From The National Archives

Bridging the Digital Gap traineeships bring new skills into archives
Bridging the Digital Gap: technical trainees in archives

Previous traineeship programmes

Transforming Archives was our traineeship programme between 2014 and 2017, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The programme provided 37 paid traineeships for people new to the archive sector in England and provided an introduction to archives, training and on-the-job development. Hear from past Transforming Archives trainees about how they used the skills they had learnt to find rewarding jobs.