On Thursday, Andrew and Ann attended a day long workshop arranged by the Scottish Council on Archives in collaboration with Historic Environment Scotland, National Records Scotland and Culture Perth & Kinross. The purpose of the exercise was to learn about conservation and cataloguing and to discuss C&SM's aims in these respects.

The event attracted delegates from all over Scotland, including: Undiscovered Angus, Glasgow Building Preservation Trust, Comrie, The Carse of Gowrie Sustainability Group, Breadalbane Heritage Society, The Dunkeld Archive, East Renfrewshire Culture & Leisure, The Save Wemyss Ancient Caves Society, Hospitalfield, South Lanarkshire Leisure & Culture, Milngavie Heritage Centre and Auchtermuchty Heritage.

Speakers included: Dr. Alison Rosie, Registrar of the National Register of Archives for Scotland, Hazel Devere, Conservator at the National Records of Scotland, Ishbel MacKinnon, Archivist at the Perth & Kinross Archive, Robin Urquhart, Head of Digitisation at National Records of Scotland and Tim Gollins, Head of Preservation and Information Management at the National Records of Scotland. The whole event was expertly wrangled by Audrey Wilson of the Scottish Council on Archives.

It was a fascinating day which also yielded opportunities for networking and further discussion. Indeed, we were pleased to meet with members of the Comrie Development Trust and to talk about their plans for a museum at Cultybraggan. The meeting with Jack and Frances was opportune because Andrew had with him the POW handiwork which had been donated earlier in the week. More on this anon.

We had a tour of the A K Bell archives section and we each individually got to try out cleaning of a 19th century document and had interesting and useful demonstrations from Hazel on how to store and handle materials.

We came away better informed and with access to a host of useful contacts and ongoing help.