From: Dr Elizabeth Hallam Smith,
Director of Public Services, Public Record Office

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ARCHIVAL MAPPING PROJECT FOR ENGLAND PHASE TWO

In 1997/98 the first phase of the Project succeeded in placing the
development needs of the local authority archive sector high on the agenda
of the grant-awarding bodies. The unprecedented 100% response rate from all
130 local archives throughout England lent the Project's results
considerable authority. The main findings were summarised in the report Our
Shared Past: An Archival Domesday for England, published in March 1998,
copies of which were sent to grant awarding bodies, central Government
Departments with an interest in archives, local authorities, as well as to
participating record offices and all the leading archival bodies. Evidence
from the Mapping Project provided much of the factual underpinning for the
strategy document produced by the National Council on Archives, entitled
British Archives: the Way Forward, which has now been endorsed by the
Heritage Lottery Fund.

Since the completion of phase one in England, the Mapping Project
methodology has been applied in Wales under the auspices of Archives Council
Wales and in Scotland by the National Archives of Scotland in association
with the Society of Archivists, which is also taking the lead in exploring
the possibility of running a separate survey covering specialist
repositories in England.

Earlier this year the organisations represented on the Archival Mapping
Project Board for England (PRO, Association of Chief Archivists in Local
Government, Society of Archivists, Historical Manuscripts Commission) agreed
that it was essential to launch a second phase of the Project. It was
recognised that the completion of the 1997 questionnaire represented a
considerable effort by head archivists, but that the results needed to be
updated if they were not to become increasingly out of date. One of the
Project's main aims is to provide benchmarks of levels of provision at
different point in time, against which changes can be measured and general
trends discerned.

There are other powerful reasons for running a second phase of the Mapping
Project in 1999/2000: the establishment of the new Museums, Libraries and
Archives Council (MLAC) in April 2000 and the interest of its prospective
Chairman, Matthew Evans, in statistical information; the setting up of
Regional Cultural Consortia by DCMS and the Regional Archive Councils by
NCA; and the advent of the New Opportunities Fund as a major distributor of
Lottery grants.

The Phase 2 questionnaire is a comparatively modest eight pages, compared
with the twenty pages which was sent during Phase 1 two years ago. Its
content and layout have been approved by the Mapping Project Board. Our two
main objectives are to update the 1997 results and to obtain new information
in the key areas of IT cataloguing, the digitisation of popular records,
cross-sectoral working with libraries and museums, and the management of
electronic records. In addition, the PRO is using this opportunity to
update its knowledge about the total quantity of public records held by
approved places of deposit outside the PRO. It is currently reckoned that
about 20% of all public records are held by places of deposit and that on
average 10% of the holdings of local archive services are public records,
but these figures may need to be adjusted in the light of this survey.

As in 1997/98, the Mapping Project Board will play the central role in
validating the provisional results which will be generated from the
assessment of the completed questionnaires by the PRO Project Team.
However, there will also be validation at a regional level, which should
help in the identification of any provisional results which need to be
revisited. We propose to send the provisional results to the Chairs of the
shadow Regional Archives Councils in each of the nine Regions, who will
consult with colleagues in the Region as appropriate. Significant weight
will be attached to comments from the Chairs of the shadow RACs when the
Mapping Project Board meets to agree the final results.

Although reaction to the 1997/8 Project from organisations outside the
archive profession has been overwhelmingly positive, it has become very
clear that the confidentiality restrictions on the availability of results
relating to individual record offices has worked against the Project
achieving the maximum effect. Accordingly, with the approval of the
National Council on Archives and the encouragement of the Heritage Lottery
Fund, the Project Board has agreed that the final individual results of
phase two, in terms of priority bands, should be in the public domain, as
well as national and regional averages. These results will be available in
an Appendix to the Project Report in the form of nine regional tables,
listing the various bands of each record office in alphabetical order - but
it should be stressed that, as before, there will be no published ranking or
league tables. The individual results will be available to the Regional
Archives Councils as they begin work on the development of regional archive
strategies. The Project Board's unanimous view is that the sector has
little to lose, and potentially a very great deal to gain, by being more
open about the final results than was the case in phase one.

If you have any questions about Phase 2 of the Archival Mapping Project,
please do not hesitate to contact either David Leitch, Project Manager (tel:
0181-392 5262), or Justin Frost, Project Board Secretary (tel: 0181 876
3444 x2751).


DR ELIZABETH HALLAM SMITH
Director of Public Services

Public Record Office
Ruskin Avenue
Kew
Surrey TW 9 4DU
UK



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