It was only two days later that I found myself, alone this time, heading up the imposing steps which lead to the Royal College of Physicians. Feeling incredibly spoilt to have been granted a whole shadowing day in its archive, I push open the doors to that impressive modernist building which overlooks Regents Park. The lobby is open plan, huge, and very cuboid. Two imposing men in suits hand me a lanyard before directing me to a waiting area. Felix, the assistant archivist, will be with me shortly. I take a moment to take in my surroundings, which is largely dominated by huge portraits of, well, dead white men. I discover later that they’re attempting to rectify this lack of minority representation by developing a wall of modern portraiture featuring women, men in more casual attire (in their living rooms), and people of colour – all prominent fellows of the RCP.
Felix arrives and leads me up to the reading room, where we will be spending the morning. It’s nothing like the RCN, and nothing again like the London Met. I’m so excited by the originality of every institution; it seems there is no singular way to go about things. The reading room is relatively old, contemporary with the building I imagine, but the walls are lined with texts from every era, from frayed and well-thumbed reference material to new social histories of Trans medicine and reimaginings of the body.
We make a hot drink – I’m getting the hang of this whole archive malarkey – and perch ourselves in the reading room while estate staff install a new coffee machine in the corner. It’s difficult, Felix says, to find the right balance between comfort and good reading room practice. Members are allowed a coffee in the more relaxed, comfy-chair zone, but readers are restricted to the standard closed-water-bottle, pencil-only rules you might expect. He tells me a bit about his career working in public archives before moving to the private sector and then pauses, as though remembering something. “Do you know Dawn?” he asks. Dawn is the book specialist at the RCN, and I work closely with her on projects. She moved from the RCP to the RCN a few years ago, and clearly is fondly remembered. I promise to pass on his well-wishes.
He’s a expecting a researcher, so I am allowed only a swift peek into the strongroom. I think I catch a glimpse of vellum and a handscribed Canterbury Tales before the heavy door swings closed behind us. The researcher arrives and it’s fascinating to be part of the invigilation process. She’s from Cambridge, and is looking into British doctors in Jamaica in the early modern period. Felix has retrieved the materials and prepared a trolley of RCP annals, in a mix of Latin and English, as well as some transcribed indexes.
We sit together and whisper while Felix shows me the front and back ends of the catalogue on his laptop. Digitisation is a contentious issue, and we discuss the differences in the RCN and RCP methods. I answer as best I can, but of course I’m not actually part of the archive team – perhaps I should talk to our archivists to fill in this knowledge-gap. Seeing the catalogue is extremely interesting; they’ve recently switched to a program called ‘Axiell’, which allows for easy editing and whole collections to be compartmentalised together like Russian dolls. Think of it like physical items inside boxes on shelves, Felix suggests, and then it starts to seem more intuitive. It’s also his job to capture contemporary RCP files, liaising with different departments and persuading them to upload documents to the sharepoint. This is also where the digital collections are stored. We look through the recent work on capturing doctors’ experiences of Covid-19, and it’s unusual in that they have put out calls for people to share their experiences directly. It’s an active process which means it’s also complex – how do they decide what to keep?
After lunch I am handed over to Pamela, the archive manager and data protection officer for the wider RCP. She also manages the obituary service for fellows. As we’ve been invigilating all morning, Felix didn’t get chance to show me around the building. Now is my chance. First we head into one of the stores. It’s much bigger than the basement space at the RCN with both mobile shelving and static storage for museum items. There are portraits in there just hanging out with the elephant folios! Then we get to return to the strongroom. It houses specially-made storage units to hold oversized items, like their impressive array of Royal Charters. Pamela shows me how to properly ‘feet’ books to prevent gravity from pulling the pages away from the binding. I see a first edition Caxon, touch vellum (it’s unsettlingly plastic-y), and am pointed out specific shelves lined with reflective tape. It’s so that in the event of an emergency (god forbid), the firefighters will know which precious items to grab first.
We head back to the main building, onto a mezzanine overlooking a large hall. Pamela points out portraits protected by UV filter glass and footfall barriers. I also get to see a 17th century human nervous system, laid out and fried onto a tabletop. No, this is not modern art. The exhibition space is bright and airy, and currently is showcasing an exhibition on Covid. She takes me downstairs to the more permanent displace space, where I get to see a huge collection of apothecary jars, stethoscopes, syringes, and a big pot ominously labelled ‘LEECHES’. She reveals she’s doing her midday walkaround – we’re watching out for any damage or disturbance to the items.
Another coffee later, we return to the office where I’m handed a large book of facsimile prints of botanic plates. The RCP’s next exhibition will be focused on their extensive recipe book collection, and they’re going to display some of these illustrations which correspond to ingredients. Can I find the plate numbers from this list? I spend a happy hour and a half buried in an index until the end of the day. I hand my lanyard back in and head out into the rain, tired but happy. I’m all archived-out! …Or am I?
RCN Library - Graduate Trainee Blog 