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Your Name: |
Hannah Reynolds |
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Community Group Name |
Glasgow Disability Alliance |
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Focus of Community Group |
To promote equality, rights and social justice with and for disabled people |
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Type of Records held |
Photographs from events and materials created by members were scanned and digitised wherever funding was available. This would include artwork, artefacts, poems, photographs, scrapbooks, collages, etc. Animation, podcast episodes, Physical materials that have been created such as bulletins, leaflets, flyers, reports, |
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Size of collections in GB |
Impossible to say because GDA is unable to retain all collections, and this is not something that they have measured. |
How did you get involved with your community group?
Having always worked with charities, Hannah applied for job with GDA because she liked the ethos of the organisation. When speaking to their CEO during the interview, she valued GDA’s approach to community development which is very human centred. Although GDA is focussed less on showing what has been created but more about what the members get out of their experience via capacity building.
How do you collect material for your collections?
Since GDA seeks to promote diversity by showing how activities can be accessible to a range of disabled individuals, the priority is the process of creating materials and how the individuals feel while doing it rather than the finished outputs.
Where funding is available, these materials will be collected and are often for the purpose of writing funding applications, monitoring and evaluating reports for applications, documenting member testimony, etc. All sessions conducted by GDA will have PAs to help participants. The PAs take photographs as well as tutors and these are saved as a collection, often for the purpose of putting together their Learning Bulletin.
What processes are in place to manage and process your collections?
Since the outputs aren’t as important as the activity itself, GDA tries to encourage their members to take things home with them. Specific projects are documented because they are relevant to funding received. GDA store this in their digital database while they encourage members to retain the original. Unless the materials have a particularly strong message or have been provided funding to retain them, these will not be kept.
The materials in the digital database are always clearly labelled with named folders and are often arranged by location and year. GDA often cross reference the materials in their database with the register of those who attended sessions.
How do you preserve your collections?
GDA have a server held in their office – the Digital Learning manager/co-ordinator will make sure that all relevant materials that are in scope are saved on the Cloud.
The digital database is for internal use and not accessible externally since its primary purpose is for report writing.