Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Minutes of Evidence


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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