| Back in June 2016 I wrote a note for the PETT Trustees about the work the website was doing on our behalf, without our beng aware of it. This gives an indication of what was lost when the PETT website was taken down four years later, in June 2020; by which time it will have grown in various ways. |
A great deal of the work of the Archive, and the contribution it makes, is not immediately apparent, because it takes place online, involves digital files, and draws on labour largely carried out in the past. My quarterly reports to Trustees on the website give an indication of what is going on in the background but there is a deeper story in the statistics on the downloads of files. Downloaded files - pdfs, audio, video - are the equivalent of students and researchers physically coming into the Archive and browsing among books and articles in the library, and sitting down to read or listen to recordings.
Digital Library: Of these, 1,673 were from the digital library:
-
850 downloads of newsletters (Joint Newsletter 9 was downloaded 131 times, for example);
-
400 downloads of theses and dissertations. Most downloaded was Lisa Burns' 2008 dissertation on "Traumatized and At-Risk Adolescents", at 84; followed by Polly Shield's 2007 "Finding a place for Forest School (1929-1940) in the history and future of education" at 54, and Karol Keenan's 2006 University of Reading dissertation, "Food Glorious Food", at 53. Altogether, 12 different theses and dissertations were downloaded. Those with the least downloads - Michael Bennett's 2003 "Managing to be a Clinically Effective Therapeutic Community" and Robin Johnson's 1981 "In Search of the Enabling Environment" were each downloaded 5 times.
-
397 downloads of original Archive publications (in which I include the Carlow Conference papers - Linnet McMahon's being downloaded 12 times, and Deborah Best's 22. The main source of downloads was Dennie Briggs' publications, written specifically for the Archive, which were downloaded a total of 356 times);
-
26 downloads of reprints (Q Camps and Marjorie Franklin publications).
Oral History Library: Audio and video files, and a transcript, were downloaded 595 times:
-
443 downloads of conference talks and other presentations (The Psycho-Social Therapies and Care Environments conference recordings were downloaded 300 times; and five years after they were originally presented and uploaded, the Other People's Children conference recordings were downloaded a total of 42 times).
-
116 downloads of oral history recordings (Hazel Powell's were downloaded 19 times; John Coleman's 28 times; Mr. Garner's 8. In total, 9 different interviewees are represented).
-
17 downloads of the transcript of an interview with Dennie Briggs.
-
16 downloads of archive recordings (e.g., David Wills' recordings for his niece).
The extent of our invisible service is therefore significant, seen simply in terms of downloaded files. But these figures don't include publications, theses and transcripts which are in html format, rather than pdf, and therefore don't register as downloads; nor do they include downloads of recordings and other files from the Other People's Children website; nor material from the Archive which is housed on other websites, such as Wennington and Caldecott.
