Original Message
From: Caroline Sampson
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 10:24 AM

<<From April 2009, Warwickshire County Record Office ... will be closed to
the public for the first full week (starting on a Monday) of every calendar
month ... The change has been prompted by an internal review ... in which we
looked at the extent to which the way we allocate our resources correlates
with the ways in which people use our services.  We found that visitor
numbers are at best steady, and if anything slightly in decline, that web
use continues to rise, and that customer expectations with regards to
availability of information and services on-line continue to grow ... During
the closure weeks ... staff who would otherwise have been involved in public
searchroom duty ... will be working instead on a number of collection based
tasks.  The tasks that we undertake will be selected in order to help us
address our collection-related backlogs and to develop our on-line services
and resources.>>

* * * *

I can't help wondering whether this is the general direction in which many
more record offices will inevitably be going in future years?  Certainly it
appears to me that expectations regarding online access are increasing all
the time.  Developments such as
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/ and the
http://cityark.medway.gov.uk/ project in Kent/Medway (which seems to be
quite successful), together with the release of the 1911 census (despite
protests from certain quarters at the realisation that images from the
latter need to be paid for), will only serve to heighten such expectations.

Any thoughts?  Ideally on list - but offlist if the whole issue is thought
confidential and it all seems too politically sensitive.  Is anyone else
likely to follow before much longer?  Could it work successfully elsewhere?
Or should such moves be resisted at almost any cost?

Do people see scope for greater collaboration between neighbouring archive
services (or at a regional level) in the delivery of further online access?

Aidan Jones.