Explore our Collections
With the help of volunteers, we've catalogued and digitised much of the West Boathouse resident rowing clubs heritage collections, including photographs and minute books dating back to the 1860s, vintage boats, oars and onesies.
Hiding in Plain Sight: Why Sporting Heritage Matters
Sport is integral to our shared past - reflecting and influencing broader societal changes. It can also provide a gateway into conversations around colonialism, class, immigration, gender, attitudes to the body and many other aspects of our shared social history.
Once you start to look closely, sport is everywhere. It's in our archives - kirk session records complaining of football games in graveyards, suffragettes covertly distributing literature at roller skating rinks, and rowing rulebooks that forbade manual labourers (i.e. the working classes) from joining amateur clubs. It's in our national museums and galleries and proudly displayed on the walls of schools and sports clubs up and down the country. It's in our street names - 'Curling Crescent' and 'Bowling Green Road' and in the landscapes we inhabit, the buildings we pass by every day and the ground beneath our feet.
Taking A Punt on Sporting Heritage Collections
A key part of the West Boathouse project was working through the heritage collections of the three resident rowing clubs. Small sports clubs face many challenges and pressures, and while some clubs actively use their collections to engage with their members and visitors, others are unsure what to do with it all.
Getting clubs over the ‘fear factor’ when resources are tight is critical. Collections encompass objects and documents, and the professional divisions between ‘archives’ and ‘museums’ can be unhelpful for small groups trying to tackle a mix of the two. We aimed to find a middle ground, adhering to best practices where possible but with an emphasis on finding practical and affordable solutions.
With support and advice from the Scottish Council on Archives, Glasgow Museums, The Sporting Heritage Network and many helpful academics and specialists in sporting heritage, we developed a practical resource kit and ran online workshops to help small sports clubs and community archive groups to see the potential of their collections and share their sporting heritage.
Collections in the West Boathouse
The clubs are very proud of their long histories. Before its closure for renovations, the building was packed with photographs, vintage boats, oars, pennants, medals, and a wide range of rowing-related material dating from the 1860s to the present day. None of the collection had been catalogued or recorded, so the decant in advance of capital works provided the perfect opportunity to begin working through the material. With the help of volunteers from each club, we conducted a rapid inventory and photographed and recorded each room before the big move. Even at this early stage, the process of looking more closely at the heritage in the building helped club members begin to think about the material as a heritage collection rather than just an assortment of rowing memorabilia.
Volunteers
We relied on volunteers and interns throughout the collections care process - a few members of the rowing clubs, a core of committed volunteers from the University of Glasgow’s Archaeology masters course, our regular West Boathouse volunteers and three interns from the University of Glasgow’s Museums Studies and Information Management masters courses. Each cohort came with their own needs, motivations and interests.
All our volunteers were given training in handling, basic digital photography and lighting, using the cataloguing system, labelling and packing. Once they were confident and comfortable with the process, they were able to work autonomously and could pop through to our main office if they had any issues or needed advice. We regularly employed a buddy system, where a more experienced volunteer would be paired with newer recruits.
Cataloguing and Digitising
The West Boathouse will have limited public access and isn’t a museum, but we wanted to make our collections accessible. One of the main challenges was finding something that suited the diverse nature of our collection. We needed something that was simple, customisable and affordable. How to record and share the collections required a bespoke approach and no single system or set of standards quite fit our criteria.
In the end, we developed our own system, using a Google Forms user interface which publishes to a simple spreadsheet. This has made the cataloguing process more comfortable and intuitive for volunteers, allowing for a degree of control and standardisation of terminology and descriptions.
With a mix of objects and documents, some of which are definitely ‘outsize’ (8m long boats!), we used a mix of flatbed scanning for smaller documents and digital photography for everything else. A large format overhead scanner would have been ideal for larger photographs and documents, but these are very expensive. Instead, we rigged a makeshift overhead mount for the DSLR camera using a camera boom arm mounted on an old hat stand. Initially, we had some issues with camera shake, but with the aid of a mobile phone app, we could set up the shot and release the shutter remotely. The payoff was speed - setting up the shots and lighting was time-consuming and technically challenging for volunteers.
Sharing and Publishing
Sharing collections online was less straightforward. There are lots of options, and some great free, open-source projects. However, while the software might be free, you need a developer to integrate it into your website, and this can be costly. After evaluating various options, we plumped for eHive as a way to publish our collections: https://ehive.com/collections/9195/west-boathouse
Kit
Every collection is different, especially when it comes to storage and display, but there are a few essential bits of kit that will always be needed. Below is a list of the items we’ve found most useful on the West Boathouse project. Throughout the process, we kept a keen eye on the budget and experimented with workarounds and ways to reduce costs. This does not take into account costs for storage and/or room hire, tables and chairs or laptops and computers.
| ITEM | MAIN USE | PRACTICAL NOTES | COST (2020) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper, pencils, pens, sharpener and eraser and tweezers | Recording and labelling | A chinagraph pencil will write on plastic, glass, paper, film and metal. Stabilo wax/graphite pencils will write on film, plastic, glass, metal & paper Use 2B pencils for writing lightly on paper surfaces and objects. Use a plastic eraser to avoid tearing and discolouration (e.g. Mars Plastic Eraser). For note-taking and recording, or use a laptop/PC if you have one. Use tweezers to help position labels. | £15 |
| Soft bristle brushes, lint-free cloths, cleaning pads and smoke sponges | Cleaning | A selection of soft bristle (e.g. goat's hair) brushes for very gentle cleaning and dusting. Use smaller paintbrushes for applying adhesive before labelling. Cloths, cleaning pads and smoke sponges should be used with extreme caution and for light cleaning only. | £50 |
| Ruler/measuring tape | Recording | A cord-backed ruler is ideal. Guage callipers aren’t essential but can make measuring 3D objects much easier. | £10 |
| Camera, memory card, tripod, boom and scales | Recording | A basic DSLR will cost from around £300 upwards (cheaper if you buy second-hand). A good quality, sturdy tripod is essential. You want to minimise camera shake to get crisp, clear photographs. You can print out your own scale bars from online sites and glue them to card or foamex to make them a little more robust. We used a set of 5cm, 10cm and 20cm scales. | £500 |
| Photography backdrop + lighting | Recording | We experimented with plain white curtain lining and an old offcut of white foamex board as an affordable backdrop for photographing objects. Two lights positioned on either side of your object will produce an even, diffuse light and reduce shadow and shine. You can pick up a softbox kit with 2 positionable lights for around £50-60. | £60 |
| Tyvek Tags | Labelling | Tyvek tags for labelling artefacts. Tyvek is very strong, tear proof and waterproof. You can use the tags to attach to artefacts, or use offcuts for labelling. | £10 |
| Wheat starch paste | Labelling | Used as an adhesive for Tyvek labels. Works well on wood, metal, stone and ceramic materials, however, we had less success with plastics. Wheat starch paste makes a good non-chemical alternative to Paraloid B-72 adhesive, which requires careful storage and use. | £10 |
| Gloves | Handling | White cotton, Latex or Nitrile – essential handling for photographs and some metal objects. | £10 |
| Acid-free tissue paper | Packing | Versatile and relatively cheap – use this to wrap and protect, or as a buffer between documents and photographs. You can buy tissue in rolls or as pre-cut sheets. A 13m roll will cost around £25 | £10 |
| Boxes | Storage | Ideally, any boxes or containers will be made from acid-free card or polypropylene plastic (chemically stable and safe for use on archives and collections). Sizes and quantities will depend on your collection. Plastic boxes offer protection from damp and dirt, but not potential UV damage from sun exposure. Really Useful Boxes are great - sturdy, waterproof and stackable. | £200 (cost for approx 10 medium sized boxes) |
| Polyethelene pockets and bags | Storage | Archival polyester pockets and sleeves are a good way to store photographs and slim documents. Bags can be used to store larger or more awkwardly shaped objects. Both are available in a wide range of sizes. | £100 |
| TOTAL | £900 |
Interpretation, Redisplay and Long-term Care
We also needed to consider how the collections would fit back into the building once renovations were complete. The building continues to function as a working boathouse, which needed to be balanced against best practice for the collections.
In discussion with the clubs and volunteers, we developed a set of key goals and considerations to guide us in the redisplay and interpretation of the boathouse heritage. With a large, diverse collection and a combined history of 350+ years, identifying a set of simple goals and messages has helped us work through the stories we want to tell.
Interpretation Goals
- Signal a welcoming, friendly and inclusive space
- Commemorate the reopening of the boathouse
- Engage new audiences
- Celebrate sporting heritage
- Encourage behavioural and attitudinal change towards the river and banks
Key Narratives and Stories
- The story of rowing on the Clyde and individual club histories
- The growth and success of women’s rowing
- Caring for the River Clyde
On the face of it, the narratives are straightforward, however, sports clubs are very proud of their specific histories and triumphs, and this needed to be balanced against the wider context of rowing on the Clyde. Women’s rowing was also highlighted as a priority - an area that had previously not received much attention. Over the past few years, we’ve gathered oral histories, objects and items from former rowers, trawled the archives for evidence of early pioneers, and celebrated the contributions made by grassroots coaches to Olympians such as Dame Katherine Grainger and Gillian Lindsay.
We were also keen to tell the story of the river along the 6km ‘rowing reach’ from Glasgow Green to the Cuningar Loop, a stretch of the River Clyde that is often overlooked. As it meanders through the east end of the city, the upper reaches have a rich, fascinating history of textiles, water management, pollution and popular protests. This also tied in with the West Boathouse ‘Green Policy’ and a drive to encourage the rowing community to actively advocate for the river and its wildlife. Much of the research and archival content around this work was integrated into the main project publication, ‘An A-Z of Rowing on the Clyde’, by Ingrid Shearer and Morag Cross. This book was produced as a limited-edition hardcopy print run and is also available digitally via the website.
While most of the material has been returned to the boathouse and is on display or carefully stored in archival boxes, the question of what to do with some of the older and more fragile material was an issue we needed to address in consultation with the clubs.
Following consultation with members, the decision was taken to deposit items pre-dating the Second World War with Glasgow City Archives based at the Mitchell Library. This ensures the most fragile and rare parts of the collection will be professionally cared for in the long term. High-quality reproductions stand in for the originals. While this will inevitably impact the feel of the building and doesn’t have the same authenticity as the originals, club members were in agreement that this was the best strategy to ensure their survival.
