I've just had an opportunity to do some number crunching of my own on the
visitor figures for West Sussex Record Office over the past three months. Our
visitor numbers have increased by 26.5 per cent over the three month period
January to March compared with the same period in 1999. Breaking these figures
down by month we had 12 per cent more visitors in March, 13 per cent more in
February and an incredible 71 per cent more in January !!
As to the reasons for the increase we did acquire the GRO indexes in January and
also the 1881 census index on CD-ROM but this can only be part of the answer.
Bearing in mind that nationally 43.2 per cent of visitors to British archives
are aged 60 or over (according to the recent CIPFA Survey) could the mild winter
have anything to do with the numbers?
Richard Childs
County Archivist
West Sussex Record Office
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