Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 118)
TUESDAY 31 OCTOBER 2006
INSTITUTE OF
CONSERVATION, NATIONAL
COUNCIL ON
ARCHIVES
Q100 Chairman: Do you think it would
help if there was one government department with overall responsibility
for all aspects of archives? If so, should it be the DCMS?
Mr Pepler: From a position of
relative ignorance, I would not have thought that would be a particularly
helpful approach. Probably the more important thing is co-ordination
between departments. To try to encompass the whole of the archival
sector within one would be unrealistic and lead to further strains,
tensions and stresses in other bits of the structure.
Q101 Mr Hall: To look at the other
side of the coin, you focused on what are perceived as the failings
of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to recognise the
value of archives and the work that is going on. What about the
sector itself? Surely, the sector should take some responsibility
for taking a lead on this issue?
Ms Savage: The sector has taken
a certain amount of lead within its small amount of resources.
Obviously, you are talking about a number of people who see as
their primary loyalty the continued existence of the collections
within their care. If you are asking me why we do not have a larger
body of evidence to present to you on what has and what has not
happened it is because given the choice of spending the extra
£250 on preserving this or that collection or investing in
a small amount of research on the user base they would choose
the conservation of their collections.
Q102 Mr Hall: But one of the gaps
in the evidence that you have put before the Committee is the
lack of a real advocate or prominent champion. Who is to develop
that role as a prominent champion?
Mr Pepler: This is a conundrum
that we have been facing for some time. Obviously, TNA plays a
leading role in setting the agenda for the archive sector, as
does MLA. We could do with a third champion. This sector is very
fragmented and, in many cases, involves very small players. It
is split across charities, higher education, local authorities
and businesses and it is very difficult to find a single united
candidate for this championship role, but there is recognition
of that lack and the sector is trying to address it.
Q103 Mr Hall: Why cannot the National
Council on Archives do this job?
Ms Savage: The answer is that
we would love to be able to do so. However, I am one of only two
paid officers in the national council who can dedicate their time
to this. My colleague who works with me is engaged full time on
advising archives that apply to the Heritage Lottery Fund for
funding to assist them in getting the money that they cannot get
from other places. That leaves me. I do my best but I am only
one. I have tried to balance the needs of the depositors, the
users and the professionals themselves in the way the council
has been set up to do. We try to balance those interests, for
example as far as concerns support for the Archive Awareness campaign.
We work with the BBC to try to gather in more money for events
tied to "Who Do You Think You Are?" and so forth to
broaden awareness among the general populace that these are their
collections and they are entitled to go in and look at them in
a way that family historians have grasped with both hands. It
is incredibly welcome that they are taking out that knowledge
to all sorts of people and telling them that these things are
there for them and they can be used not only for family history.
There are other difficulties. In an ideal world we would say The
National Archives will be our great champion. TNA has taken the
responsibility within the national advisory services to give voice
to the concerns of the wider sector. Their primary purpose, however,
is the preservation of government archives. The DCMS similarly
would want to consider the cultural and heritage impact of archives,
but the spectrum runs right from information management of present
records, which may well come under DTI that might have more expertise
in that area, right the way along the spectrum.
Mr Pepler: I think the answer
comes back to the resourcing of the NCA. If the NCA is to play
a full championing role it will need much more infrastructure,
lobbying resources and a full-time advocate, etc, to do that role
effectively.
Q104 Mr Hall: Basically, there is
a plea for more funding in terms of allowing an organisation to
be the advocate on behalf of archives or to have a co-ordinator
in order to bring the sector together so it can speak with one
voice to government?
Mr Pepler: I think that the gathering
together within a united voice is a matter within the NCA's present
capacity. It is the presentation, lobbying and positive day-in-day-out
advocacy that is missing at the moment.
Q105 Mr Hall: I want to take you
back to one matter that you mentioned earlier: the archive task
force and the concept of "Written in the past, speaking to
the Future" and the wonderful idea of a gateway to all the
archive material. Do you want to say a little more about that?
Ms Savage: I think that is a matter
to which The National Archives as the lead body that came out
of the UK body, which was a coalition of providers, would be able
to give a much better answer. Would it be within protocol for
me to pass that question to Mr Kingsley for him to answer it?
He would give a much better response.
Q106 Chairman: I am sure we can allow
it.
Mr Kingsley: The National Council
on Archives produced the original report in 1998 which recommended
the creation of a national archives network. That vision has been
partly pursued by a series of projects that has operated over
the past 10 years. One of them is called Gateway Access to Archives
which has been run by The National Archives and largely funded
by that body and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The archives task
force report really envisaged the creation of the archives gateway
as a souped-up version of The National Archives network to which
a considerable range of additional things were added that would
give substantially greater public benefit than just the online
access to archival catalogues envisaged by the original report.
What has happened in the past few years is that since the task
force reported the lack of new money to support that vision has
made it very difficult to find a way for the profession to take
forward the concept. A proposal was made to the Heritage Lottery
Fund for substantial support to enable us to build the major plank
of the archives gateway. That bid was unsuccessful. The grounds
on which it was rejected made it fairly clear that the Heritage
Lottery Fund would not be the major source of funding for a project
in this area. We have really struggled so far to find alternative
ways to take it forward. We are currently considering how the
essential elements of a national archives network can be delivered
with a range of other primarily academic funding sources contributing
to it, but I have to say that it is not at all certain that that
will work either. We are casting round for a way in which this
important element of the vision can be addressed. The funding
outlook for the next few years in central government does not
give one much encouragement to think that this is something which
is about to be magically sorted out.
Q107 Helen Southworth: I want to
ask you about the magic of local archives. We have benefited from
some very good presentations from the British Library and The
National Archives, but the odds are that the places where my constituents
can gain access to information are locally. I am not talking necessarily
about Warrington but when people visit other places. I remember
that when I was at school I benefited phenomenally from the fact
that over 100 years local administrators had every year bought
a painting at the exhibition. That meant I could access paintings
from books and catalogues from art galleries all over the world
or I could go to my local art gallery and see Turners. That is
the same for archives, is it not? You can go in and find out about
your local community and the stars over the past 1,000 years.
You may not be able to see Magna Carta but you may have a lot
more interest in the charter for your town.
Ms Savage: In most local archives
you can see things that are older than those available in the
national collections.
Q108 Helen Southworth: For many,
archives are not just information that can be accessed through
the Internet; they mean indentations on the paper, the colour
of the ink, the weave of the paper, the smell of it and so on.
Mr Pepler: I think that promoting
the magic of it is part of the trick, and it is something which
historically local archive services have not been particularly
good at. In many cases one comes back to the issue of buildings.
Many of the buildings which are now occupied were designed simply
as large blocks of storage with a room at the front where people
could come and look at documents they had asked for. There are
no facilities for interpretation, presentation and exhibition
which ideally one would like to have. Equally, one needs to get
out into the community and put on exhibitions in that way. The
magic is something that people experience once they have seen
it; it is like an infectious disease. Once they have seen it it
tends to work, but the presentation and reaching out to them is
a very tricky thing.
Ms Savage: This leads to the telling
of stories to illustrate the magic. To give just one example,
a person who had lived at the back of my house was in an old people's
home. She had been a concert violinist. As a result of Alzheimer's
disease she had lost that ability. Someone from the local history
society had gone round recording local memories and learned of
her story. She went back and found a recording of her playing.
She went back to the old people's home to play it to her. She
cried and then took out her violin and played again.
Q109 Helen Southworth: Archives are
about who we are and how we relate to one another, are they not?
Accessing archives gives local communities the opportunity to
learn things about themselves and each other, so what is the message
to government?
Mr McCapra: We need to get over
our embarrassment about talking in these terms. There was a period
beginning in the 1980s when cultural heritage institutions were
compelled to talk about what they did in economic terms and they
we only allowed to talk about how they helped tourism and, a bit
later on, how they promoted regeneration. If you look at a lot
of the language that comes out of MLA or DCMS at the moment, it
is all about social cohesion, mental health or other things which
almost make it appear that cultural institutions are an arm of
social services. Nobody disputes that they have these qualities,
but what we have become embarrassed talking about is the intangible
intrinsic things and what you call "magic". Interestingly,
the public still talks about things in that way. A couple of years
ago DEMOS did a survey in which people were asked what they thought
about cultural heritage and why they valued it. They talked in
exactly the same terms that everybody has been using in the past
few minutes. We on the supply side, if you like, have got out
of the habit of talking that kind of language. If we want to re-engage
the public and make them believe there is a lot of potential in
local archives and it is an interesting place to go to we need
to rediscover that language and talk to people in terms which
they already use themselves and readily understand.
Q110 Helen Southworth: I want to
ask about the relationship between local archives, local museums
and the nationals in terms of my constituents in Warrington being
able to access at a local museum examples of excellence which
can be held only by the nationals or by another local archive
because it is out on loan. How is that working? Is it functioning?
Are we getting that kind of access to the national stuff in the
regions? Is that relationship working?
Mr Pepler: In terms of the resources
which The National Archives is putting on line, you have all the
censuses and that sort of thing available locally in whatever
place you happen to be. Is that the point about which you are
inquiring?
Q111 Helen Southworth: I am referring
both to online access and the ability to go somewhere. My school
children cannot come to London and look at something in the way
they can go into the local town centre, or into Liverpool or Manchester.
Therefore, in Warrington for the majority of the people learning
the magic is dependent on something happening within the geographical
area to which they have access.
Mr Pepler: Are you talking mainly
about museum collections or archive collections?
Q112 Helen Southworth: Archives.
From your perspective is there now an interrelationship and is
it working satisfactorily, or is it under threat?
Mr Pepler: Between museums and
archives locally or between national institutions and regional
ones?
Q113 Helen Southworth: I am referring
to national institutions and regional and local areas.
Mr Pepler: There are certainly
no schemes for loans of materials, if that is what you have in
mind.
Q114 Helen Southworth: Yes.
Mr Pepler: I think we would rely
on digital access to these things.
Q115 Helen Southworth: Is that because
of the nature of the material?
Mr Pepler: It is not good principle
to shuffle documentary artefacts hither and yon. I think my colleagues
would confirm that most damage to archives occurs in the handling
process, as a statement of the obvious. The more you handle and
transport these things the greater the risk. Given the quality
of digital reproduction nowadays, one can almost get the feel
of the parchment, if you like, through the digital surrogate.
Q116 Helen Southworth: I did not
understand. I thought you were talking about digital access by
computer, but you mean reproductions of equal quality in many
ways?
Mr Pepler: Yes. Without question
a lot more can be done. Certainly, various local authority archive
services are working with children's services to develop materials
which can be used directly in schools and put together learning
packs that include reproductions of documents. They can be used
not just in an historical context but in literacy, numeracy, citizenship
and all those other areas of learning. A lot of work is going
on to develop that sort of material, but again in many cases it
is a resource issue. The will is there to do it, but the resource
to capture that pack and trial it in schools and with teachers
to see whether that is what they need and then refine it takes
resources which are not always available. Some very successful
projects have been carried out at local and regional level to
provide that resource. The Learning Links project in the North
West has done some very good work with schools in developing that
kind of material.
Ms Savage: The Learning Curve
provided by The National Archives also talks to teachers and the
curriculum authorities about what would fit in with what they
need, but again it is not the same as going to see, feel and smell
it.
Q117 Helen Southworth: I ask finally
about purchasing. The British Library made very clear representations
about purchasing. What is the picture for local archives? Is there
a purchasing fund? If not, does there need to be one? What are
the issues and concerns locally about the Comprehensive Spending
Review?
Mr Pepler: There is no central
dedicated fund for local authority archive purchases. Individual
authorities make provision. I think that the last figure I saw
indicated that the total across all local authority archives was
something like £400,000. I believe that that was distorted
by one particular case involving £170,000. Generally, one
is talking about a quarter of a million pounds across the whole
of England, Wales and Scotland. This morning somebody gave me
a cutting about a family collection that has been in the Warwickshire
Record Office for many years. It is now being asked for £150,000
to buy it back. Purchases are becoming an increasing problem.
Ms Savage: That particular case
is indicative of the common problems faced by local record offices,
in that often it is material that has been deposited with them
and has been cared for by those offices for many years on loan,
but because of increased interest in these collections and people's
greater awareness of the value of them it comes down to a simple
matter of economics. The monetary value of these things goes up
and the depositors are hit with a big inheritance tax bill. What
do you do? Do you give up your ancient pile or sell that pile
of papers that your great-grandfather deposited at the local record
office, or ask that office to pay for them? Because of the way
that system has grown up historically the vast majority of local
record offices have marvellous collections that enable local people
and the public at large to see them, but, unlike the way that
The National Archives is able to digitise things and put them
on the web, quite often the terms of the deposit can mean that
local record offices are not able to do that with these particular
collections.
Mr Pepler: From the local authority
budgeting point of view, one of the problems is that these demands
are largely unpredictable. One cannot say that year on year one
needs to provide x thousand pounds for purchases because
one can suddenly receive a demand for figures of up to £2
million which are charged for individual collections. That is
an enormous amount. There are external sources of funding and
in that regard the Heritage Lottery Fund springs to mind, but
there is a considerable amount of resource required to make the
bid and prepare and present it in the right way. There is again
a capacity issue in this case. It is a long-term threat to many
archive collections.
Q118 Helen Southworth: We have been
told that there are issues around collecting archives from creative
people who are still alive. Is there a perspective here to do
with locality? I am a North West-type of person and I believe
that if something goes to my local area that is okay; if it goes
outside I can understand why people think that it does not matter
too much as long as it is kept within the country. If it is to
have global internet access you will not necessarily regard it
as being a big issue. Lots of people have a sense of local roots.
Is there a relationship between local archives and local writers,
poets and musicians in terms of getting them to provide their
archives, and how can that be developed?
Ms Savage: That touches on the
skills of the curator, conservator and interpreter of the archive
as well as various other issues to which you have referred. Yes,
a collection from a local person, whether he be a creative individual,
local politician or whatever, within a local setting where people
have an understanding of the local context can bring that completely
alive and give interpretations that are inaccessible to other
people. An example given to me this morning was that the job of
deciphering the handwriting of census-takers can be extremely
difficult. However, if one has somebody from the local family
history society on one's side helping he or she may point out
local names and say where they come from, and flesh can then be
put on the bones and the matter can be put in context, thus bringing
it alive. From that one gets not only the emotional context but
the academic and research context.
Chairman: We have to call a halt; otherwise,
we will not have time for our next session. I thank you very much
for your evidence.
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