Local authorities have discretionary powers under the Local Government (Records) Act 1962 (LGRA 1962) to provide archive services. Most councils have taken up these powers and provide public archive services at either a county or city/town level. Since the 1980s/1990s, the tendency has been for archives services to operate jointly with local studies services, particularly in unitary authorities.
Some smaller unitary authorities have not taken up the discretionary powers to provide archive services themselves, in which case there may be an agreement with a neighbouring authority to provide archive services. The library service may hold some types of archives as part of its local studies service.
Archive collections
Libraries are empowered to hold archives under the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964, provided that this does not become their dominant function. Typically, archive collections held by libraries include personal papers, records of local organisations, and records of the council such as minutes of meetings.
Libraries may also create “artificial collections” of material. These collections comprise items that have deliberately been collected according to format or subject rather than records that have accumulated as a result of particular functions or processes. Examples of “artificial collections” often collected by library staff include photographs, newspaper cuttings or maps. In many cases, these items have lost details of any provenance and original order so care should be taken by library staff in adding to these artificial collections. Archival integrity should be a paramount consideration.
Archival integrity
Archival integrity means that records are identified and maintained according to their provenance, not intermingled with records from other creators, and maintained in their original order (this is known as the principle of “respect des fonds”). Ideally, there should be documented evidence of an unbroken chain of custody.
Public records
Unless the library service has been appointed a place of deposit, any archives held by libraries must not include records such as public records or most manorial courts records. These are covered by specific legislation.
Public records are records created in central government departments or agencies, the courts and the National Health Service. Where these are administered locally or regionally – e.g. hospitals, courts, coroner’s service – it may be that the National Archives has authorised local record offices as places of deposit for these records.
The Keeper of Public Records has responsibility for the day-to-day management of public records, which may only be held by The National Archives or by a place of deposit appointed under the Public Records Act 1958.
Where local authorities have not taken up discretionary powers to provide archive services and/or have not been appointed a Place of Deposit, responsibility for relevant public records, including those created locally, is retained by the Keeper of Public Records.
The Archive Service Accreditation Scheme is used to ensure appropriate standards are maintained by Places of Deposit.
Further information on public records, including a list of Places of Deposit, is available on The National Archives website:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-sector/legislation/approved-places-of-deposit/
Archival Description
Staff in libraries holding any archive collections should be particularly mindful of archival principles of provenance and arrangement by original order. Archival collections must not be catalogued or classified as if they were library materials. The usual terminology is that archives are listed or described, rather than being catalogued.
Library cataloguing typically treats materials as individual items and classifies them according to subject, regardless of where they originated. By contrast, an archive collection needs to be listed as a whole, with its provenance and custodial history recorded, and the arrangement of items reflecting the context and hierarchy of the collection.
The General International Standard for Archival Description (ISAD(G)) defines the elements that should be included in any archive listing. Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is closely mapped to ISAD(G) and uses mark-ups or tags to distinguish elements of archive descriptions in a way that can be interpreted and processed by computer systems. ISAD(G) is a structure standard, not a content standard, so it defines which fields should be included, not what the content of those fields should be.
There is no archival equivalent of a library classification scheme because archives are arranged as far as possible in the order by which the creator kept the records, rather than having an arrangement imposed by an archivist. As each individual creator of records is likely to have a different way of organising records, it is not possible or desirable to have a standard scheme of arrangement by archives.
In practice, many archive collections may arrive as unstructured piles of documents in boxes or bags, but the principle remains that the arrangement should not be imposed by an archivist but should reflect the organisation, functions and processes that produced the records.
The closest to a standard scheme of arrangement is the Local Government Functional Classification Scheme (LGFCS), which was developed by the Information & Records Management Society in February 2019 to replace the previous Local Government Classification Scheme (LGSS). This is often used by records management staff in local authorities as the basis on which to organise current council records. In this case, the LGFCS may be a useful starting point. Check with your authority’s Records Manager if you find yourself in a position of having custody of local authority records. The 2019 version of LDFCS is available to IRMS members only, but the 2006 version of the LGSS is freely available:
https://irms.org.uk/resource/collection/1F3924BE-78BA-49E2-906B-1E5B672687A2/lgcsword2.03.doc
Most library management systems are unable to cope adequately with archive collections and attempting to include archives in a standard LMS should be avoided. The National Archives has a list of suppliers of collections management systems (CMS) and digital asset management systems (DAMS) that are suitable for listing archives and storing/managing digital assets:
If you are a librarian responsible for looking after archives and do not have access to a professionally qualified archivist, then it would be advisable to consider undertaking a basic archives awareness course. Training courses and other events are often advertised on the Archives-NRA mailing list.
The Community Archives and Heritage Group has developed a set of guidelines for community archives, which have been designed to meet the minimum standard for archival description whilst being straightforward and accessible.
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