Harriet Wheelock / Tuesday 21 September 2010 A lot of letters… Since completing the cataloguing of the Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital archive, I have started on the next collection on my list – the archive of the College itself. This collection is the single largest collection in the archive, with over 300 boxes of material. It covers the history and development of the College from its foundation in the seventeenth century right up to the present day. As the College is still going it's also an ongoing series with material being added recording the current history of the College. At the moment I'm working thought the voluminous correspondence of the college over the last nearly two hundred years. The letters deal with everything relating to the College from the management of their large estates in county Waterford, to the opinions of doctors on proposed medical legislation. (There are also the letters relating to doctors putting their names to advertisements mentioned in a previous post.) The nineteenth century letters are generally in fairly good condition, if a bit dusty, the biggest problem being the use of metal paper clips and pins to hold pages together. These have rusted over time and are damaging the paper. Which means I have spent the last week surrounded by piles of dusty letters trying to carefully remove rusty metal fastening, without tearing the pages! It's one of the less glamorous, if more common, tasks of the archivist. Once all the pins and clips have been removed the letters are arranged chronologically, thankfully they are mostly bound in letter books so the arrangement is already done, and entered into the catalogue. There then ready to be made available for readers, with the rest of the College collection, once it has been fully catalogued.