Federation Of Family History Societies

Caring for our Collections

 

On 25 June 2007 a report entitled Caring for our collections was published by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.  A copy can be found on the Internet at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmcumeds.htm.

To put this in context, the introduction to the report explains that in 2005 the Committee decided that the time was ripe for an inquiry to raise the profile of heritage and to increase awareness of its wider values to communities. This decision was triggered by growing consternation throughout the heritage sector, which stemmed in part from a lack of confidence in the standing of heritage within Government priorities and uncertainty over the amount which would be available from the Lottery for heritage following the successful London bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.

Heritage, it went on to explain, is capable of wide interpretation, to include collections of cultural objects as well as built heritage and archaeology. The call for evidence for the inquiry elicited such a tremendous response that the Committee decided to address issues relating to built heritage and archaeology first, and then follow up with a new inquiry focusing on museums and galleries, cultural property and archives. The report on built heritage, Protecting and Preserving our Heritage, was published in July 2006. The latest report presents findings from the follow up inquiry.

Interested bodies and people were invited to make submissions and in our submission we stated “The FFHS urges the Select Committee to support the idea of creating an Archives Collection Fund which is topped up annually and which could be administered by small committee made up of representatives from TNA, BRA and NCA.”  We are therefore pleased to see in the report “It seems to us anomalous that archives should be excluded from the Designation Challenge Fund. The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council should work with the sector to develop an equivalent of designation challenge funding for the most significant archive holdings.”

The inclusion of the following paragraph is also welcomed: “We believe that increased visibility of the archive services provided by local authorities would strengthen their claims for adequate funding to enable them to provide high quality services and we recommend that the National Archives’ self assessment programme for local authorities should be included as a performance indicator under the Comprehensive Performance Assessment as soon as possible.”

We also stated “It has been a matter of great disappointment to the FFHS that the nine Regional Archives Councils which were set up in 1999 and the nine Regional Museums, Libraries and Archives Councils have largely ignored the views of users so far and the FFHS hopes this Inquiry will recommend more user involvement in decision making.”  It is therefore regretted that the Committee has not seen fit to support this recommendation.

We also referred to a lack of conservators and suggested that a national pool of conservators could be formed with conservators loaned out to Record Offices on one or two-year secondments during which local staff could be trained in conservation skills.  No mention of this has been found.

We welcome the statement that “It is a matter of regret that the Government, while recognising the cogency of the recommendations of the Archives Task Force for developing the sector to its full potential, decided in the short term not to provide any funding for their implementation. The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council should press DCMS and the Government to provide financial support—which need only be relatively modest—to enable the archive sector to take forward the recommendations of Archives Task Force, and generate its own “renaissance”.

While the report does not go as far as the archives sector would have wished, it is to be hoped that the recommendations of the Select Committee will be carried through in order to meet the growing demand for access to archives.