Dear Colleague
The Explore Your Archive Campaign begins on 16 November.
Hundreds of archives from all over the UK and Ireland are taking part.
This is the biggest public awareness campaign ever undertaken by the sector.
It’s not too late to join in:
• Print off posters from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/yourtoolkit
• Ask for some Campaign badges – for you, your colleagues and your archive users - send an email to [log in to unmask]
• Publicise the Explore Your Archive website and the film clips from our ambassadors: http://www.exploreyourarchive.org
• Let your local media know about your campaign activity – there’s a template press release in www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/yourtoolkit
• Use and follow #explorearchives
• Tell people, with pride, about the work you do and the importance of archives.
Key messages:
• Archives in the UK and Ireland house extraordinary collections. Each collection is unique.
• There are thousands of archives in the UK and Ireland: local authority archives; university archives; archives in national collections; business and organisation archives; private archives; school archives….and family archives.
• Archives contain manuscripts, books, film, sound recordings, photographs, works of art and other artefacts. And, increasingly, they hold material stored digitally.
• Archives enable all of us to discover the stories, the facts, the places and the people that are at the heart of our communities
• Whatever you’re interested in, there will be something to inspire you in archives.
• While only a small percentage of material held in archives is available online, you can now start your family history online. ‘Births, marriages, deaths’ …thanks to the sector, there are millions of records online.
• Even if you choose not to visit an archive, you can take pride and comfort that archives hold unique and vital records which underpin education, heritage, business and identity.
• Archives are our memory. The works of great writers, the details of lives lived, the records of our wars, our democracy, our weather…without archives, we would have no memory.
• Those who work in archives have an exceptional range of skills and expertise. They make decisions on what is collected and kept, they catalogue, preserve and keep safe. And they make material available to a wide range of users.
To help our evaluation process, information about visitors would be really helpful. If you are holding special events for the campaign do ask your visitors to fill in an evaluation form. To make this easier, there is a draft ‘visitor questionnaire’ available for download on the Campaign toolkit site at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/yourtoolkit. We will be collating the information in December.
Please try to keep a record of what happened generally, particularly in terms of your users’ and colleagues’ responses to what you did and any media coverage you achieve.
Have a great Campaign!
Emma Markiewicz, Marie Owens and Angela Owusu
The National Archives and The Archives and Records Association (UK & Ireland) Explore Your Archive Team
Contact the list owner for assistance at [log in to unmask]
For information about joining, leaving and suspending mail (eg during a holiday) see the list website at
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=archives-nra
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