....and does this move comply with the Public Records Act?
Deborah Watson
Archivist
Economic Development
Plymouth City Council
Plymouth & West Devon Record Office
Unit 3
Clare Place
Coxside
Plymouth
PL4 0JW
T +441752307587
E [log in to unmask]
www.plymhearts.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Archivists, conservators and records managers. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Caroline Walter
Sent: 27 July 2017 12:28
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: FW: Northamptonshire Archives Services
Regardless of the ethics of charging for access to archives, my worry is the attempt to justify reduction of working hours with a proposed focus on digitising records (‘the service’s limited staff resources will be redirected to the work of digitisation and developing on-line access to archives’). While increased digitisation is certainly a laudable goal and will help increase access, I would be interested in whether Northamptonshire Archives have an adequate digital repository and digital preservation plan in place, or whether they plan to use the extra money gained from the charges to implement these. We have seen numerous examples in the sector of digitisation projects from which the results are unusable after a few years due to lack of long term planning.
I’m sure that digitisation leaders within the sector could weigh in far more eloquently with comparative costs and damage to documents of digitisation vs. physical access, but if this is to be the case at Northampton then my personal view would be that they would do far better to focus on maintaining opening hours for physical access rather than using digitisation as a quick fix.
Caroline Walter
Project Archivist, University of Exeter
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