July 2005
The ideas behind the failed Linking Arms bid to HLF have been
given a new life. TNA is leading a new programme called aUK, which
aims to implement the majority of the projects within Linking Arms.
More details are available at
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/press/pdf/20_jul2005.pdf
From Monday 13 June the registration page at
www.archiveawareness.com/contributors/register/form.html
is ready and waiting for you to register your archive events as
part of this year's Archive Awareness Campaign. You can
register events which are taking place throughout the year but if
you are still planning, the main activity period for Archive
Awareness Campaign in 2005 is September to December.
Beginnings is the theme that has been chosen to
assist you in directing your events and publicity. The Archive
Awareness Campaign website will be linked to from a variety of
other sites and featured in publicity material so your event stands
to be well-noticed.
To tie in with the Beginnings theme the Archive Awareness Campaign central team is organising Victorian Voices, a short story competition aimed at Key Stage 2 children (P4-P7 in Scotland and equivalent in Republic of Ireland) to run through schools in November and December. Usborne children's publishers and Adobe are working with us on this project, providing prizes and endorsing the competition. The short stories will be based on source material about Victorian childhood which will be collected onto one resource pack and will be available to download from the Archive Awareness Campaign website in September (there will also be paper and CD versions available for schools without internet access). The AAC central team is currently bringing this material together and we want to include as wide a selection from as wide a range of archives across the UK and Ireland as possible. Please help support Victorian Voices and AAC by sending archive material relating to Victorian childhood and we will try to include it in the resource pack, crediting your organisation. Some of the great sources we have received so far include a statement relating to a group of children who left Liverpool for Canada in 1894 under the sponsorship of the Canadian Catholic Emigration Committee; The Master's Notes from the Second Annual Report of the Boys Ragged School, 1849; a plan of Wolverhampton Union Workhouse; images of Victorian school children. If you have documents to send please email them to lucy.fulton@nationalarchives.gov.uk as jpgs (minimum size 500px wide (any height), and 72dpi). If written documents require a transcript, please include this, along with as much interpretation material as possible, reference numbers, links to electronic catalogues if available and details of your organisation.
You can also support Victorian Voices by
promoting it to teachers in your newsletter or on your website. You
can also support the competition by putting on Victorian themed
events this winter. Do you have Victorian documents that you can
put on display for visitors, or do you already put on Victorian
re-enactment sessions for children that could be tied into the
competition? Register this at
www.archiveawareness.com/contributors/register/form.html
as a Beginnings event and we will be able to
advertise your event with the Victorian Voices
resource pack.
The second series of Who Do You Think You Are? will be broadcast through January and February 2006 and will consist of six episodes. Archive Awareness Campaign is encouraging you to organise family history events to coincide with the series or to brand your existing events in this period as Who Do You Think You Are? - Archive Awareness Campaign. In 2006 the BBC will not be supporting the series with large roadshow-style events but we have negotiated with them and the production company that the posters from last year will be updated and available for use in promoting family history events. We will be able to give you information about the themes (e.g.. migration, war, etc) and filming locations by mid September to allow you to tailor family history events to tie in with the programmes more closely.
The Community Archives Development Group (CADG) has been affiliated to NCA, in a similar way to the Public Services Quality Group. This enables NCA to make progress with this important area of its work.
Adam Green will stand down as Treasurer and Margaret Turner as Honorary Secretary at the AGM in October.
The digital preservation handbook and advocacy document will be published in September 2005 and launched at the Society of Archivists conference.
The re-organised NCA Conference on the theme of impact assessment which will be in Birmingham on 21st February 2006.
It is hoped that local government's Comprehensive Performance Assessment culture block will include archive services. The National Visitor's Survey is almost complete: the next will take place in spring 2006 and full results for each office will be published from 2006.
The Business Archives Council has secured funding for a business records development officer post, in partnership with TNA and MLA.
The Society of Archivists has set up a working party to revise its code of ethics and is reviewing its mandate and future.
FARMER held the first ever research conference for PhD students in archives and records management at Liverpool University in June 2005, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. UCL and TNA have just launched a diversity internship, which will provide a year's work experience at TNA and a place on the MA in Archives and Records Management at UCL for a candidate from a minority ethnic group, as part of a programme to encourage a more diverse workforce.
TNA's first National Archives Lecture will be held on 24th October 2005 and will be given by Justice Albie Sachs from South Africa.
The Royal Historical Society will host the Gerald Aylmer seminar on 6th October 2005 on the theme, historical research: the role of the national museum collections.
