Actually, Jan, I do rather take offence at your describing Ellie as the
media babe, given that while you were on your pre-course experience here I
was running a weekly programme on Radio Oxford and doing about 90% of the
other media slots. But perhaps that makes your point - you remember the
elegant archivist, not the County Archivist who wore (and wears) his hair
down to his collar and regards a tie as the infallible sign of a saddo nerd.
In fact it all depends on the cliché you want to confound. Round here the
media all expected grey-suited, short-haired types to be involved in
archives; someone who was recently described by an education class as
looking like Rickman playing Dr Snape (wow, cool) confounded expectations
rather nicely.
Carl Boardman
Oxfordshire Record Office
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-----Original Message-----
From: Hargreaves, Jan [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 2:06 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: How we are perceived
Is it something about March and April? Seems like this time every year we
get a collective bee in our bonnets (the ones we wear with our trendy cardis
and NHS specs) about how the media portray us.
Both Eleanor and Nigel H are right. It is the inner archivist that counts -
if we're doing a good job, we'll get that across by the way we interact with
the media, and in turn they will report what we do more accurately (I
hope!). But it doesn't hurt to confound their image cliches with what we
wear. When I did my pre-course experience at Oxfordshire, Eleanor was the
"media babe" (I hope she doesn't mind me saying that! I hope none of the
other staff there at the time take offence, either) and always put the
archive service across professionally. She sometimes wore cardis, but they
were always smart.
I've only ever seen Nigel wearing a suit, so I don't think he needs to worry
too much.
Jan Hargreaves
Lancashire Record Office
[These are, of course, my own opinions and not those of LCC]
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