Deborah Watson: DW Research & Archiving services

Meeting with Deborah Watson

Deborah Watson is a self-employed researcher and freelance archivist who discovers the undiscovered about people, places and subject and find new information about well-known aspects of heritage of Plymouth and the south-west of Devon and beyond.

Deborah used to work in the Plymouth& West Devon Record Office now part of THE BOX. We spoke about how she uses her knowledge and experience from working in the THE BOX to investigate and find new information about people and places.

Deborah also spoke about how I can use archives and research methods to find

narrative and history in orphan photographs (found discarded family photography) with no annotations.With my collection of 1500 orphan family photography, I should use an affective magnifying glass and look at the clothing on the subject and also look at what is around the subject. For example, Broches, name badges, names on shop signs, names on bouts and street signs. Deborah also said about using what has been printed on the photographs to place where the photograph has been taken.

Deborah and I also discussed about copyright around found orphan photographs. she said that I should read the book Copyright for archivists and think about this diagram.

Overall the meeting with Deborah Watson was successful and she gave me a lot of ideas and direction to add to my practice.

Here is a link to Deborah Watson’s website https://www.dwresearchservices.co.uk if anyone wants to discover anything about their family history and narrative.

Emails between myself and Deborah: