Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol 7, No. 5 June 21, 1944

Records

page 5

Records

Although a student body has been in existence at V.U.C. since 1899, it was not until 1935 that a records officer was appointed to carry out the neglected task of collecting the Association's past records and classifying them in a manner suitable for permanent keeping and use. Association correspondence for those years was stowed away in musty bundles in odd corners of the Gym—in lockers and cupboards, in the roof, beneath the stage. Piles of the College newspaper and magazine were similarly stored, without effort at order or continuity.

Harry Sansum, an ex-student who undertook the tremendous task of collecting and dealing with student records, found that whereas large stocks of "Spike" might have been preserved in one year, there were no copies of the following year's issue to be found. Between 1935 and 1940, when he went into overseas camp, Sansum as Records Officer sorted all back correspondence and drew up a schedule of classification for filing it. This system is now in use at V.U.C, N.Z.U.S.A., and Canterbury.

He drew up a schedule of publications issued by V.U.C-S.A., showing what we possessed and what we lacked. Students and ex-students who possess back copies of publications and are willing to help fill some of the gaps on our shelves, are asked to apply to the present Records Officer, Shirley Grinlinton, for a list of issues we require.

This was the most important part of Sansum's work, but his other activities in those years included beginning collections of pictorial student records, and Extrav, scripts. In 1941 after his departure overseas, the student body marked its appreciation of Harry Sansum's services to the Association by making him a Life Member.

His work is being continued and completed. Since 1939 the Records Department has also undertaken the keeping of lists of students on active service, and of casualties and decorations among our students and ex-students. Names for these lists will be welcomed by the Records Officer, who also invites club secretaries or others interested in records work to visit the Records Room upstairs in the Gym.