Resources
Throughout my consultancy career I have created a range of tools and methodologies to help archive services. Whilst some have been for a specific client, many are suitable for services of any size.
Archive Service Resilience Indicator
Created for the Archives and Records Association and the Archive Service Accreditation Standard partners, this tool is designed to provide you with a snapshot of the resilience of your service. Under the three Accreditation headings of ‘Organisational health’, ‘Collections’ and ‘Stakeholders’ the fast, tickbox approach enables you to assess the operational status and current and future resilience of your archives and/or records management service. It is also designed to help you think about possible areas to address for an Accreditation application.
Seeking Significance: a practical guide to assessing significance in documentary heritage collections’, UNESCO UK Memory of the World Committee
This is a practical guide to enable archivists to assess the significance of material in their collections. It is the first guide on significance specifically designed for archive collections. It considers how to define significance and then provides a very practical, easy to apply methodology for assessing significance that can be used for any archive collection in any scenario.
‘Impact of capital investment in archives’ research report
This unique research was funded by the Archives and Records Association. It was the first work to look at how major capital investment benefits an archive service including users, collections, depositors, staff and other stakeholders.
Heritage Change Programme
The Heritage Change Programme was funded by the London Cultural Improvement Programme of the London Councils. Its aim was to help heritage services become forward looking and re-envisage their operations. HCP included a range of tools to help services analyse themselves and plan forward. They included numerous resources: creating a vision; setting strategic goals; analysing skills and resourcing; identifying where the need for change exists; alternative governance models; stakeholder analysis.
Use of off-site storage by UK archive services
This report assesses how UK archive services use offsite storage. Its findings are derived from a bespoke survey across theUK archive sector as well as an analysis of Archive Accreditation data. The report analyses the types of storage scenarios, the drivers for using offsite storage, drive time distances, the usage levels stored at on and off site storage, the consequent service levels to users, and the benefits and issues for services. It also presents how different services define ‘high’ and ‘low’ use.