Wick oral history volunteers join Archive Afternoon session at Nucleus
Oral history added an extra dimension to the latest in a series of Archive Afternoons at Nucleus in Wick.
The weekly sessions began on January 25 and are running every Wednesday from 1pm to 4pm in the public searchroom at the centre.
At the fifth in the series, Doreen Leith and Alan Hendry from Wick Voices were on hand to explain the aims of the Wick Society's online oral history project. They played extracts from some of the hundreds of interviews they have carried out since the project began in 2016.
They also brought the Wick Voices telephone – which looks like a typical old-fashioned rotary phone but contains a credit-card-sized computer that allows oral history recordings to be stored and then called up on demand, by dialling a three-digit number and listening to the receiver.
The device was repurposed by Chris Aitken, computing science teacher at Wick High School and a supporter of Wick Voices. The phone has been loaned to local daycare centres and care homes.
Doreen, who leads Wick Voices, said: "We were delighted to go along to the latest of the Archive Afternoon at Nucleus. It was a nice opportunity to share Wick Voices and encourage potential interviewees."
Recordings for Wick Voices freely accessible on the Wick Society's website at www.wickheritage.org/voices.php
There are 364 oral history interviews in the collection, and there have been more than 372,000 individual listens.
It is hoped that members of the public attending the Archive Afternoons may be inspired to start their own historical research and become regular users of Nucleus. There is no need to book.
Tea, coffee and biscuits are available in the hub at the front of the building during the Wednesday sessions, alongside displays of digitised videos and photographs showing Caithness in the past.
Valerie Amin, archive assistant at Nucleus: The Nuclear and Caithness Archives, said: "This is the fifth of our Archive Afternoon. It has been a good mix.
"We've got some people that have come every week, and then each week we've always got new faces as well. Every week we'll have something different out."
Old copies of local newspapers are proving particularly popular. "It doesn't matter when they're from, there's always something of interest," Valerie said. "Even if it's before you were born – the shop adverts, just the news, whatever was happening in the county... They are a big draw."
There is also a keen interest in war-related information, from the Bank Row and Hill Avenue air raids of 1940 to plans for the Wick RAF base and the story of how James Mowat, from Lybster, escaped from France during World War II.
"It's a fantastic story, it really is," Valerie said. "We've got his mum's diaries here, and his own account [a booklet called A Far Cry From Caithness], plus there are things like the escape map he used and the telegram his dad got to say that he was missing."
James Mowat came from the family that owned the Portland Arms Hotel. His wartime experiences were described as part of a "Learn with Lorna" series of online educational films presented by High Life Highland community engagement officer Lorna Steele, showcasing material from the archive collections held in the Highlands.
