Memorandum submitted by the National Archives
The National Archives (TNA) was created in 2003
by the merger of the Public Record Office and the Historical Manuscripts
Commission. The organisation plays an important leadership, preservation,
monitoring, standard-setting and information-gathering role in
relation to the whole Archives sector.
Of the various sectors under consideration by
the Committee, we believe that the Archives sector faces the most
pressing challenges. As our attached submission shows, funding
for the archive sector as a whole is a fraction of the funding
for the Library and Museums sectors, and has been so for decades,
with the result that the archive sector has a relatively poorly-developed
infrastructure. While considerable work is underway to disseminate
good practice and make more material available to the public,
particularly supported by The National Archives and by MLA, this
relative under-funding has led to significant disparity in quality
across local authority archival services, backlogs of the preparatory
work necessary to make archives accessible and a proportion of
records that are now too damaged and unstable to be handled. And,
in parallel with the Museum and Arts sectors, archives are facing
the challenge that with the rising number and value of sales,
collections of major significance are likely to leave the country
or be lost through dispersal at auction, making the situation
worse.
Over recent years, there has been a huge amount
of work by MLA, The National Archives and others to develop improved
support for this sector, with some considerable success. Our collective
priority now should be to protect our archival heritage for the
future and embed good practice consistently across the sector.
This involves raising the profile and support for archives (both
financial and non-financial), To achieve this, we need the concerted
support of our stakeholders and colleagues across the sector:
support for The National Archives' self-assessment programme for
local authorities and its inclusion as a performance indicator
under the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (as has now been
achieved for local libraries); support for the work of the UK
Literary Heritage Working Group's advocacy of wider tax breaks
and incentives to retain our contemporary archival heritage; and
recognition of the parity of the archives sector alongside museums
and libraries, reflected through adequate and comparable funding
arrangements.
1. THE PATTERN
OF PROVISION
IN THE
ARCHIVES SECTOR
A high proportion of the nation's archival heritage
is held by some 300 archive services across the UK that actively
collect material. About half of these are provided by local authorities
in England, Wales and Scotland; the remainder by national institutions
(including some of the national museums) and universities, royal
colleges and other professional bodies, and a small number of
charitable trusts. Local authority archives focus on material
relating to their area of responsibility; other institutions usually
have a subject focus. The core mission of all publicly-funded
archive services, however, is to acquire and preserve archives
and to make them as accessible as possible for public use.
Public expenditure on museums, libraries and
archives during 2004-05 was approximately £1.6 billion. This
is broken down as follows:
— Museums—£619 million
(£469 million DCMS museums and galleries, £150 million
local authority museums).
— Libraries—£913 million.
— Archives—£75 million
(£39 million local authority archives (net), £36 million
The National Archives).
2. DELIVERING
QUALITY SERVICES
IN LOCAL
AUTHORITY ARCHIVES
Local authority archive services provide the
backbone of the network of archival provision in England, Wales
and Scotland. Although the legislative framework of such services
differs in the countries of the UK, there is no unambiguous statutory
duty for such authorities to provide archive services. Although
in practice almost all do so, either singly or in partnership,
the level of provision varies widely from place to place. One
of the biggest challenges of the sector, therefore, is to set
and raise standards—and we believe that we can best do this
by bringing to the attention of local authorities the importance
and value of their archive services through a robust assessment
process.
In 2006, The National Archives has piloted a
self-assessment scheme for local authority archives in England
and Wales, which it is intended should become a performance indicator
for Comprehensive Performance Assessment, in the same way as DCMS
and MLA have just achieved for Libraries. Our pilot assessment
data is currently being analysed, but initial indications confirm
the rigour of this approach as well as the existence of huge disparities
in quality of service between authorities. We believe that inclusion
of this data in CPA assessments would raise the profile and importance
of archives to local authorities, and therefore help support their
development.
I should be pleased to provide further evidence
to the Committee when the detailed results of the survey are available,
if this would be helpful.
3. IMPROVING
COLLECTION CARE—THE
"PLACES OF
DEPOSIT" REGULATIONS
The National Archives has a specific duty to
inspect institutions which have been appointed by the Lord Chancellor
as "places of deposit" under section 4(1) of the Public
Records Act 1958. The vast majority of collecting institutions
are brought within The National Archives' inspection regime, either
as places of deposit or because they have opted in to the regime
by subscribing to our voluntary Standard for Record Repositories.
The National Archives uses its periodic inspection of these institutions
as a key lever to raise standards. Specifically, The National
Archives, through these inspections, provides advice to their
governing bodies on the improvement of their archive services,
which is usually taken very seriously, even if financial considerations
mean that it cannot always be acted upon immediately. The National
Archives also provides advice to archive services on request about
professional standards, legal requirements and other aspects of
service provision.
4. PROTECTING
OUR HISTORY—ISSUES
RELATING TO
THE ACQUISITION
OF ARCHIVES
The National Archives works actively with collecting
repositories to align their acquisition policies, so as to avoid
competition and to try and ensure that a place of safety is available
for every archive in need of a home. Despite these efforts at
co-ordination, there remain four main areas of concern:
(a) some archives—especially business
archives—are difficult to place because of their size and
lack of any specific local or regional affiliation. The National
Archives is currently working with relevant partners to develop
a suite of national strategies for the records of particular sectors—business,
charities, religious bodies etc—which will try to provide
a clearer framework for the preservation of such collections.
(b) archive services frequently run out of
space for storing new collections and have to turn important material
away. The National Archives uses its advisory service to encourage
the providers of archive services to plan ahead so as to avoid
getting into this situation.
(c) the transition to digital record-keeping
in government, business and other sectors has taken place very
quickly, and most archives are not yet in a position to receive
or preserve digital records. There is no active, large scale digital
preservation infrastructure in any library or archive in the world—in
fact, The National Archives is leading the field in digital preservation
by having a working prototype, and is only 12 months from a long
term full-scale solution. However, other archival repositories
have barely begun the transition, given its cost, and the lack
of an off-the-shelf technological solution. The National Archives
is working with other leaders in the field, such as the British
Library, to establish effective techniques which others can adopt,
and to map the new landscape of digital archives.
(d) the growth of a market for historical
and literary manuscripts in recent years has not been matched
by an increase in the resources available for the purchase of
such collections. Entire archives are now increasingly often offered
for sale, although more usually by private treaty than through
the saleroom. Most importantly, the owners of collections which
have been on loan in archive services—often for decades—are
seeking more often to realise the commercial value of these assets.
In many cases these are the core foundation collections of the
archive services concerned, and archivists have had to raise six-
or seven-figure sums to purchase them, often at short notice.
The National Archives notes with concern that the rising number
and value of sales is not being matched by a growth in the funds
available. In our view, it is inevitable that in the fairly near
future an archive collection of major significance to the UK will
either leave the country or be permanently lost through dispersal
at auction.
5. PROTECTING
OUR HISTORY—TAX
INCENTIVES FOR
THE TRANSFER
OF ARCHIVES
TO UK INSTITUTIONS
In some cases, the desire to realise the value
of archives is triggered by the need to meet inheritance tax liabilities,
and in these cases the Acceptance in Lieu (AIL) scheme has proved
invaluable to archive services, since it enables institutions
to acquire pre-eminent material without having to finance major
purchases. The proportion of AIL cases each year which concern
archives has risen steadily. The conditional exemption from capital
taxes which is available to the owners of pre-eminent archival
and other cultural heritage material provides another cost-effective
means to ensure the survival of collections intact within the
United Kingdom. It continues to encourage private owners to preserve
such assets and make them publicly available and has helped to
prevent the dispersal of major collections of family and estate
papers in the salerooms.
The National Archives is aware of and supports
the proposals that have been made recently by the UK Literary
Heritage Working Group to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which
have advocated wider tax breaks and incentives to preserve our
cultural heritage. At very modest cost to the taxpayer, these
proposals would ensure the retention in the UK of important elements
of our contemporary archival heritage.
6. THE CHALLENGE
OF STORING
AND PRESERVING
ARCHIVES FOR
THE FUTURE
To fulfil their core purposes, archive services
need not only to have the space and facilities to accept new acquisitions,
but also to provide accommodation that offers a good standard
of protection against fire, water, theft and environmental hazards.
In the last 10 or 15 years some archive services have made great
progress in this area. A number of new buildings, such as the
Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York; and
new County Record Offices in Norfolk and Devon have been part-funded
by the Heritage Lottery Fund, while others, such as the Wiltshire
& Swindon Record Office have been funded by committed local
authorities. Unfortunately, there are all too many services that
remain in highly unsuitable premises, or which are in good accommodation
that they have now outgrown. 50% of archives are stored in inadequate
accommodation that poses a long-term threat to the preservation
of the records. Therefore, to prevent further deterioration of
local authority holdings, there is an urgent need for continuing
capital investment in new and improved buildings for archive services.
This point links to the earlier reference to CPA assessments;
when local governments are not measured on the quality of their
archive holdings, there is evidence to suggest that the issue
can slip to the bottom of the pile when competing for resources.
Recent research by the National Preservation
Office at the British Library has demonstrated that a small but
important proportion of the records in most repositories are physically
too damaged and unstable to be safely handled. Overall, 13% of
the archival holdings surveyed are in an unstable condition, largely
because of damage sustained before the document entered the archives;
and active conservation of this material is required if it is
to be made available to the public. Like cataloguing, active conservation
is a highly-skilled, labour-intensive and therefore expensive
process, and not all archive services have the facilities and
skills to carry it out, or even a budget to pay for the work to
be done elsewhere. The National Manuscripts Conservation Trust
(NMCT), which The National Archives supports with administrative
assistance and expert advice, has made a significant contribution
to tackling this problem, raising some £1.8 million in endowments
from private sources and triggering expenditure through its relatively
small grants of well over £2 million since its establishment.
Until 1999, DCMS provided matching funding to support NMCT grants,
which was an excellent example of how the private and voluntary
sectors can be stimulated to help address a significant public
policy challenge.
7. BRINGING HISTORY
TO LIFE—MAKING
ARCHIVES ACCESSIBLE
AND TRANSFORMING
LIVES
At the heart of public access to archives is
allowing people to find what they need to look at, which requires
the unglamorous task of preparing appropriate lists and indexes,
and making those lists available online. Many aspects of this
work are labour-intensive and require complex skills. Typically,
archive services have large backlogs of this work: around a quarter
of their total holdings on average and much higher proportions
in some repositories. In most services, backlogs are growing,
as more new material is being taken in each year than is catalogued,
and because core staffing resources have been diverted to other
priorities, such as expanding and widening the audience for archives
through innovative access projects. This is a challenge facing
the whole library, museum and archive sectors, but the nature
of the material makes the challenge more acute for archives than
for other cultural agencies.
The National Archives has been working hard
to address this issue, and has secured £200,000 funding from
the Pilgrim Trust and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation in
2005 and 2006 to support cataloguing work in archive services
on a modest scale, but far greater resources are needed if the
backlogs that already exist are to be seriously reduced. The National
Archives and MLA have jointly funded a Grants Advisor post, to
support archives in developing bids to HLF for increasing access,
which has also had some success. Approximately 45% of all catalogue
descriptions (some 20,000,000 records) are now available online,
and increasing bodies of digitised images of archives can be accessed,
not least on our own website and through our commercial partners,
such as Ancestry.com and Genes Reunited. However, much more remains
to be done in these areas. It is nearly 10 years since the archives
profession first articulated the vision of having all catalogue
descriptions online, and searchable from a single point. Completing
this task was the principal recommendation of the Government's
Archives Taskforce in its report, Listening to the Past; Speaking
to the Future in 2004, which, unfortunately, remained unfunded,
and it remains the goal that many archivists would put at the
top of their list of professional objectives, to ensure that archives
remain accessible and relevant to future generations. And, in
a Google world, where people expect to be able to locate whatever
they need at the click of a button, this is increasingly also
the expectation of archive users.
The focus of many archive services in recent
years has been on developing and improving the accessibility of
their archives, and encouraging wider use of the material. Archives
are incredibly rich sources of history, and can not only "bring
history to life" but unite families and communities. Great
progress has been made with making archive buildings less intimidating
places to visit and physically accessible to the disabled; with
developing programmes of outreach that have introduced a wider
range of users to archives; and with beginning to exploit the
educational potential of the collections. Projects such as "Connecting
Histories" at Birmingham City Archives have shown how archive-based
initiatives can play a significant role in supporting personal
and community identity and social justice. Similarly, The National
Archives own partnership project, Moving Here, which has
charted the personal stories of immigrants to the UK, has played
a significant role in community development across the UK. Never
has the use of archives been so popular: the BBC's Who do you
think you are? series in 2005 achieved a regular audience
of over 5 million, and caused a surge in the on-site and on-line
use of archives. Archives are the poor relation, in terms of funding
and support, of the cultural sector, yet are probably the fastest
growing in popularity as a result of recent media interest, and
potentially those cultural sources most likely to transform lives.
September 2006
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