Archives, Records, & Information Management [MSc/PgDip] postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

When a woman came into the solicitors' office where I work and asked whether we still held her grandfather's will from the 1970s, the answer took me most of an afternoon. The firm had merged twice since then, and the old index cards gave the client's surname but not the right box. I eventually found the will in an envelope labelled with a partner's initials and a date. The answer depended entirely on decisions made by people who had long since left. That afternoon gave me a clear sense of why records management matters, and why I want to train professionally in archives and records.

I have worked as an office assistant at the firm for two years. Alongside reception and post, I look after the deeds room and process closed client files. Last year I helped the office manager review our closed-file storage against the firm's retention periods. This meant checking files individually, flagging any that held original documents which had to be returned or kept, and preparing lists for confidential destruction. The work was methodical rather than glamorous, but it showed me how retention rules, data protection obligations and the practical limits of shelf space pull against each other. I also drafted a simple spreadsheet log for deeds requests. Now, when a document leaves the room, we can see who has it and when it came back. It is a small system, but colleagues use it, which I take as the real test.

My interest in archives began during my History degree. For my dissertation I studied the magazines of a Methodist circuit between 1945 and 1970, held at my county record office. I wanted to know how chapels described their own decline as attendance fell. Working in the searchroom taught me to read a catalogue carefully. I learned to notice which issues were missing and to ask the archivist why some years had survived in a bound volume while others were loose. Those gaps became part of my argument: the surviving run said as much about who had kept the magazines as about the chapels themselves. I received a first for the dissertation, and my overall degree was a 2:1.

Since graduating I have read more on the professional side. Laura Millar's Archives: Principles and Practices helped me understand provenance and original order as working principles rather than abstract rules. I found the records continuum model, associated with Frank Upward, useful because it treats records as moving between contexts rather than simply passing from an office into an archive at the end of their life. That matches what I see at work, where a closed file can become active again overnight. I have also looked at the ISAD(G) descriptive standard. Comparing it with the record office catalogue I used as a student showed me how much structure lies behind entries I had once taken for granted.

Outside work I ring bells at my local church and help keep the tower's peal records. These are handwritten in a book going back decades, and I have begun typing them into a shared file so ringers elsewhere can check past performances. It is a hobby first. It has, though, made me think about how small voluntary organisations keep their histories, often in one person's cupboard.

I am now looking for postgraduate study that combines archival theory with the practical demands of managing current records, including digital ones. Our firm still relies heavily on paper, and I know my experience of electronic records management is limited. That is one of the areas I most want to develop. I would bring patience with detailed work, experience of handling confidential material responsibly, and a researcher's understanding of what users need from a catalogue. In the longer term I would like to work where records management and archives meet, such as a local authority, a university or a business archive. There, I could help make sure the next person asking a question like that client's finds the answer more quickly.