Lancashire Record Office, Monday 18 March 2002 at 2.00pm

Present: Jim Grisenthwaite, (ACALG), Chairman

Marian Hewitt (Film Archive Forum)

Bruce Jackson (Society of Archivists, NW Region), Secretary

Kevin Mulley (Greater Manchester Archivists Group)

Lesley Owen-Edwards (BAC)

Jonathan Pepler (NW County Archivists Group), Treasurer

Brenda Smith (Federation of Family History Societies)

David Stoker (Merseyside Archivists Group),);.

Ian Taylor (NW Museums Service)

Janice Taylor (NW Regional Archives Development Officer)

Frances Thomson (CURL and NW Regional Library System)

Caroline Williams (LUCAS)

 

Alan Crosby (BALH), John Gurney (HMC); Richard Hoyle (Royal Historical Society); Chris Lewis (BRA); Colin Phillips (co-opted); Catherine Redfern (PRO); Dawn Routledge (NCA Archive Development Officer)

The chairman (JG) welcomed Lesley Owen-Edwards (LOD), Senior Archivist at Unilever Historical Archives, who was attending her first meeting as representative of the Business Archivers Council (BAC). The name of the future representative of SCONUL is not yet known.

 

The minutes of the meeting of 4 February were agreed as a correct record.

The following matters arising were raised:

Item 2 (Point 4) The post of Director of Libraries NW had now been filled, and the appointee should be in post by 1 April.

Item 3 The Regional Archive strategy was now available on the website. No comments had yet been sent to Janice Taylor (JT) about the content of future seminars.

Item 6.2 . JT will write to the Offices in the NW region who had participated in the last National User Survey for their agreement for their results to be released for to the RAC in a structured regional form.

Item 7.5 £80,000 had been allocated by Resource for the study to be carried out, and it was due to be completed by the end of the year. Margaret Turner would be leading the project, with Sheffield University carrying out the research.

Item 9.1 Bruce Jackson (BJ) had responded to the Bury Heritage Plan on behalf of the RAC.

Item 9.2 The Regional White paper had not yet appeared. There were rumours that it might be delayed for several months.

Item 9.7 An initial meeting had been held at the NW Sound Archive at Clitheroe to discuss the options for extending its operations throughout the Region. A paper will be brought to the RAC later in the Spring. Similar issues will need to be addressed in the context of regional film archive provision. NW Vision will be a key body in any discussions, and there is a possibility of a funded study being carried out. Some money was already available for Merseyside, including a contribution form NW Arts. A national conference on Film material to be held in October by the Film Archive Federation will now also cover Sound Archives.

There is also scope to bid for "project funding" to a combined total (including core) of £1.044M. A list of priority projects will be prepared by NWMS staff and JT over the next few weeks for submission to Resource. Any money uncommitted at the end of the year will be carried over as an addition to the 2003/04 budget. There will be some changes to the VAT status of the Area Museums Services, which mean that not all VAT will be recoverable, and this will have a negative effect on the budget.

The required changes to the 2002/03 budget had been reported to the NWMS Board meeting on 15 March, when they were approved.

KM asked about the grants available in 2002/03. IT stated that the grant policy would be distributed before Easter, and will go to archives and libraries in addition to museums (a draft of the letter to be circulated is appended to the minutes). A registered museum with membership of NWMS would be an essential partner is all bids, and would need to complete the application form and handle the grant money. There was discussion about how the appropriateness and standards of potential archive partners could be dealt with in the absence of an equivalent of museum registration, and it was agreed that the JT as the Archive Development Officer would provide guidance on services. IT stated that NWMS intended to carry out a review of grants and their effectiveness in year 2002/03, similar to a review recently carried out by NEMLAC. It was unlikely that the future cross-sectoral grants policy would be identical to the existing one for museums.

 

JT reported that there had been 3 response to the press release on the launch of the strategy, which she felt was good. On investigation, print costs for a reprint of the main strategy document were prohibitive so she had produced a one sheet summary document which she circulated. JP felt that this was a very useful step, as it would allow wider distribution of the key information.

The scheduled Collections Development seminar in February had been postponed due to difficulties over speakers, and was now taking place on 21 May. A seminar on Access would be held on 15 April. JT felt that a seminar on Records Management would be useful, and there was general agreement about this. It was important to try to reach the non-archival audience for this, and information distribution would need to be done carefully. It was suggested that the NWRDA might be interested in this. There was discussion about including a Freedom of Information (FOI) element in the programme, which may well have an impact not only on public bodies, but also those who do business with them. Data Protection might also be an appropriate theme.

JT is preparing project briefs for A2A and the Logjam projects identified as priorities in the Regional Strategy, and would be seeking funding from Resource/NWMS towards these (see 3.3 above). KM inquired if there was any possibility of funding might be available to assist some of the smaller repositories to participate in the next National Visitor Survey. JT hoped to secure some funding towards this, as the fuller collection of data would be beneficial.

 

JP said there was nothing really to report on "Our Mutual Friends in the North". Material was now appearing on the website, and marked-up lists were being returned to participating offices to facilitate checking. A second draw-down of £21,00 was about to be submitted. There was some discussion of how it was to be launched, with funds being available to employ a consultant. The Project Management Board will be looking at launch proposals.

JT reported that work was progressing on the preparation of the main regional 2^nd round bid – provisionally titled "Mills, Mansions and Cornershops". Over 20 repositories were involved, with about 56000 pages of catalogues for conversion. Already £2500 had been committed by Resource and £900 by the Business Archive Council. At present the Project Team are still working up the bid, which will then be sent to the Archive Lottery Advisor for comment. It is thought that a team of 4 should be appointed to carry out the marking-up etc. Final cost per page is still unclear, as this will depend on external funding, such as that discussed above. Overall project costs are likely to be about £172000.

Other bids from individual archive services are likely, such as that form GMCRO for the catalogue of the Documentary Photographic Archive.

 

6.1 Regional Consultative Consortium. JG continued to attend this on behalf of the rAC, but at the moment there was nothing to report. The annual conference involving archivists and academic users had taken place at Edge Hill on 25 January with over 60 attending. The event had gone well, and much of the content was very useful. It was suggested that future events might be held at a different time of year as changes to semester patterns had now made late January more difficult in many institutions. It was also suggested that the event be more widely advertised – to include, for example, university and academic libraries. Wider involvement and participation form academics was to be encouraged.

6.2 LUCAS. Caroline Williams (CW) reported that LUCAS had been commissioned by Resource to carry out a "Snapshot Diagnostic of information collected in the Archive Domain" by May. Similar exercises were being conducted in the Library and Museum domains.

6.3 HLF Regional Offices. There was discussion of the up-coming re-location of the Heritage Lottery Fund Regional offices to within the regions. The precise stage of development in the NW was unclear. It appeared that HLF were looking to be more involved in outreach and bid development.

7. Resource

7.1 BJ reported that it now looked likely that Resource would continue to provide limited funding to the RACs until 2004 (or the establishment of the SRA, whichever was sooner). This would be distributed through the NCA, and would probably be at the same level as in the last two years.

7.2 JG reported on the current status of the "Renaissance in the Regions" report, and its possible funding. The process of seeking applications from possible regional museum "hubs" was now well under way, and decision were likely by early summer. The financial position would not be clearer until the autumn.

8. Budget report

JP reported verbally that there was a balance of about £2700 after payment of bills.

9. Any Other Business
1. BJ reported that RAC Chairmen and Archive Development Officers would all be invited to the Parliamentary event organised by NCA to take place on 22 April. All MPs and members of the Lords would be invited, and supplied with targeted information based on their region/locality.
2. There was a brief discussion of issues arising from the proposed changes affecting Civil Registration records. If they were given Public Records status this may create problems in some areas.
3. KM asked about the current status of the ACALG benchmarking document circulated at the ACALG AGM. Several present had attended the meeting and said that the status of the document was still unclear.
4. IT noted that NWMS had now involved JT in the process of commenting on archival bids to HLF (a role NWMS already carried out). He suggested that it might be appropriate to draft some basic guidelines, which was generally felt to be useful.

 

10. Date and time of next meeting

The next meeting will be held at Lancashire Record Office on Monday 13 May at 2.00pm

 

 

BJ/20/03/02