Esther Rantzen eat your heart out…

On 3rd October 2008, I attended the “Finding Archives Day” at The National Archives. I was very excited, I’d never been to The National Archives before and in fact had only really seen it on “Who do you think are?”, so I couldn’t wait to get there in person. As a trained librarian who has been working for the Archives Hub for only a year, I find this whole new world of archives faintly mysterious and fascinating. A little like one of the dark arts. As I walked into the building I realised that I had probably built it up in my mind a little too much. It’s a very large building and has a ‘lake/pond/water feature’ and some nice ducks, but it wasn’t quite as magical as I had anticipated. In fact it seemed pretty similar to the British Library. Functional and doing pretty much what it says on the tin, so I suppose I started my day off a little disappointed. The day for me was to be a mixture of ‘being on’ and learning. I was going to attend the sessions and in between I would be able to demonstrate the Hub to delegates. The day was opened by CEO Natalie Ceeney who explained that they’d had the idea to showcase all the good work that goes on at the National Archive and that this was hopefully to be the first of many such days. She also said that there were 600 National Archives staff, I was quite stunned. There are only 5 of us on the Archives Hub team…but as she went on to describe what some of this good work was and what the day was going to be about, I realised that TNA does…a…LOT. We kicked off with Alex Ritchie giving us an introduction to the National Register of Archives and the annual accessions exercise. The NRA was established in 1945 and is the UK’s oldest archival network. I was fascinated to learn that overseas archives contribute to the NRA and then I thought about it and was a little shocked by how this is actually quite an obvious source of archives considering the amount of emigration from the UK there has been historically. Since 1945, the NRA has made great progress especially since the advent of the Internet, and now has 310,000 index entries and 96,000 links to online finding aids and will obviously continue to grow. Anthony Smith then gave us a demonstration of how to use the NRA to find family and estates papers. Anthony commented that working with family and estates information isn’t simply about the history of the elite but is also a source of social history documenting the economic and political development of those who lived and worked within the estates system. We then had a coffee break and I got to chat to people about how great the Hub is and what a wonderful resource it is for archivists and researchers. After coffee we had an introduction to the Manorial Documents Register (MDR), from Liz Hart, and a description of the complexities of getting the Buckinghamshire and Berkshire MDR online from the project officer, Sarah Charlton. We then had lunch, which was also another chance for me to chat to delegates and show off the Hub. There was then the launch of “Bucks and Berks MDR Online”. This was celebrated with some specially created cupcakes, that I couldn’t help thinking might be a nice idea for a possible future launch of the Archives Hub re-brand – I had visions of chocolate cakes with Hub logos on. After lunch James Travers regaled us with tales of ‘Joe Public’ attempting to sell UK archive material on e-bay without realising that you need an export licence for material over 50 years old. I also was unaware that TNA monitored sales from the major auction houses and from specialist manuscript auctioneers. They provide archives with comparable price information and notify them of potential acquisitions and also make sure no-one is trying to illegally sell manorial documents. Ruth Crumey then went on to tell us about the wonderful new service ‘Your Archives’ which is currently in its beta version. Your archives uses the same software as Wikipedia and allows users to submit articles and comments that they have written about historical records held by TNA. These articles have links back to the relevant NRA records. As a huge advocate of enabling user generated content, I think this will add value to The National Archives site and the extra knowledge that users will add to the collections already exposed by The National Archives can only enhance the research experience. Amy Warner ended the day talking about current projects and future plans of TNA. Amongst other things Amy talked about being involved with the development of Archival Name Authority Files. Ro Cemm then explained about the NRA digitisation project where TNA have specifically targeted archives that did not have the resources themselves to digitise their finding aids. Amy also discussed how TNA want to pursue ways of making it easier to add new content the site and are hoping to take advantage of opportunities offered by new technologies with Google and People Australia. They will also be working on the development of a new Government Policy on Archives. So I could have sworn I knew what TNA did, but it turns out I had barely scratched the surface. A pretty magical place after all…