I was interested to note Pamela's comment that school admissions registers
are a bit of a 'grey area'. These tend to be pretty popular with family
historians and former pupils and I have known a few get upset when access
has been denied.
One way of getting around the access issues, which can satisfy some users,
is to simply allow access to the index at the front of the admissions
register and to tie off the remainder of the volume. The names in the index
could not really be considered sensitive information on their own and this
option may satisfy former pupils who simply want to look for the names of
former classmates. It can also potentially satisfy family historians who
want to search through the admissions registers of a number of schools to
find out which one their ancestors attended.
Obviously there will be always be researchers wanting access to the full
register and each office needs to have a procedure for this. While I agree
that each request needs to be considered on a case by case basis, I also
feel that some specific guidance on closure periods would be extremely
useful so that there is greater consistency amongst record offices. There
are clearly a wide variety of closure periods in use, some of which I
suspect would be hard to justify if queried. This must be quite frustrating
to researchers.
Alan Hayward
|