Our numbers have dropped steadily over the last three years. There seem to
be a number of factors involved in this:
(on the negative side) we are increasingly directing people towards the
larger repositories in Central London which hold a wider range of
genealogical material than we do;
as space has gradually run out, we are taking in less new material, so there
is less for researchers to see that they do not already know;
many of the more general and school project enquiries are now apparently
being dealt with by Interenet searches
(on the positive side)the drop in numbers of physical visitors is to an
extent balanced by an increase in e-mail enquiries
Andrew Mussell
Archivist, London Borough of Barnet
>From: Richard Childs <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Richard Childs <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Decline in Record Office Visitor Numbers
>Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 12:12:16 +0100
>
>About 12 months ago there was a brief discussion on this list about record
>numbers of visitors to repositories.
>I have just been doing some comparative statistics for the financial years
>2000/2001 and 2001/2002 for West Sussex Record Office and find that we have
>had a significant decrease in visitor numbers in the past year, namely a
>ten per cent fall from our record high in 2000/2001.
>I would like to know whether other local authority record offices have
>experienced a similar decline and if so what the reasons for this may be.
>My initial thoughts are that the extra interest in local history and record
>offices that was generated in 2000/2001 by the millennium was not sustained
>and that foot and mouth disease curtailed record office tourism during the
>Spring and early Summer 2001 and possibly was exacerbated by September 11.
>Richard Childs
>County Archivist
>West Sussex Record Office
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