I would like to point out that quite a number of archivists working in the HE sector are well aware of the services provided by JISC, but their ability to do anything with that awareness is severely limited. 

 

I have worked in three Oxford Colleges at various times and have become aware that in most people’s minds “Oxford” equals “money and privilege”.  There is little understanding that the colleges of the University are self governing bodies, wholly responsible for their own administration.   The younger colleges do not even have past endowments upon which to call.  Ruskin College is an entirely independent institution which happens to be based in Oxford.  Ironically the location is likely to have been chosen to give additional prestige, which now produces unjustified expectations.

 

Only a handful of the colleges of Oxford University has full time archive staffing, and only a small proportion of this handful has a full time archivist.  Most college archivists are employed for one, two or three days a week and many work in more than one college to create full time employment for themselves.  These lone archivists look after all the enquiries, researchers, production, cataloguing, boxing, storage, publicity and internal use.  Most Oxford colleges have only introduced professional archivists within the past ten years, so many are coping with a backlog of several hundred years.  It is very difficult to sell JISC toolkits to an organization which has only just become aware that archives need professional care at all and has other priorities developed over decades.  Especially one maintaining buildings which are 90% Grade I and II listed and which is suffering from public spending cuts.  Some college archivists have no direct access to a decision making committee; one is currently fighting the abolition of its committee and another was recently told in committee that ‘we know records management is important but we have too much going on to make it a priority at present’.  Having taken the question to the relevant committee several times and finally received this reply the archivist has nowhere to go.

 

All over the country people are reading this and saying ‘but that applies to me as well – Oxford colleges aren’t unique’.  No, of course they aren’t.  Specialist repositories are particularly vulnerable because their professional archivists often fight alone;  in my 31 years as an archivist I have spent precisely 1 year working alongside other professionals.  But many county record offices have also been hampered for years, usually by unsympathetic politicians whose only priority is gaining votes by cutting Council tax.  It is a pity that an institution with very few resources to deal with its distinguished history has become a focus for attack from professionals, rather than a opportunity for drawing attention to the poor resourcing and inadequate legal protection of archives.  In a country which loves to watch history on television and assumes that ‘they’ fund everything, the publicity generated for this story could have been put to much better uses

 

Elizabeth Boardman