Congratulations to Eden Swimer, winner of the Staff Student Member of the Year Award at the 2024 ISG Staff Recognition Awards.

Eden was employed by the OER Service in 2023 to help organise and run our Digital Collection Day as part of the University of Oxford’s Their Finest Hour project, which aimed to collect and preserve everyday stories and objects of WW2 before the pass out of living memory.  

Managing the Digital Collection Day, one of only a handful that took place in Scotland, was a huge logistical challenge, which Eden took on with enthusiasm and dedication. He was responsible for recruiting and organising 24 staff and student volunteers, coordinating with the venue and caterers, setting up photography and interview stations, ensuring data was recorded securely and consistently, curating an exhibition of WW2 artefacts and experiences, communicating with local history societies and community hubs to promote the event, and liaising with the press. Eden was interviewed on STV News, positively promoting the University, the project, and his experience of working as an ISG intern. This programme is broadcast to an audience of over 1.5 million.   

The Digital Collection Day organised by Eden was one of the biggest in the country. Over 100 members of the public came from all over Edinburgh and the Lothians, 50 interviews were recoded, and thousands of photographs taken of artefacts including memorabilia from the “Dambusters” Squadron, silk escape maps, and a child’s drawing of soldiers returning from Dunkirk. The event uncovered stories of significance to the University including the diary of an Edinburgh graduate who kept a daily record of his imprisonment in Stanley Internment Camp.  Eden orchestrated the collection day with skill, checking volunteers were comfortable with their role, and ensuring visitors were welcomed and interviewed with sensitivity and care.  

Eden with volunteers Fiona Buckland and Paul Smyth at the Digital Collection Day at Rainy Hall, University of Edinburgh. Photograph by Fiona Hendrie.

Eden was so indispensable to the project that the OER Service extended his contract to collate and upload data to Their Finest Hour Archive at the University of Oxford.   This was a significant undertaking requiring excellent data organisation skills and attention to detail.  Their Finest Hour Archive hosts over 25,000 previously hidden artefacts from the WW2, which have been shared under open licence, enabling stories and experiences of the past to move into research and education today. 

In keeping with the University’s commitment to sharing open knowledge, Eden created an open educational resource (OER) for schools, Recording Everyday Social History, based on artefacts and stories recorded at the Edinburgh collection day. The OER introduces social and oral history and encourages students to reflect on their family and community’s place in history, and the meaning of history more generally – who makes it, how and why. Recording Everyday Social History has been shared as part of the OER Service’s award-winning collection of OERs on TES Resources.  

Eden shared his experience of his internship on Their Finest Hour blog where he reflected: 

Seeing the archive uploaded online and free-to-access gave me an incredible feeling that we have preserved a hugely important section of history…Observing how happy contributors were to share stories and material remnants of the war showed me how the space that we created brought fulfilment to so many people. People who were happy to be heard, and for their stories to go down in history.