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Toolkit – Local Studies in Scotland – Resources

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Back to Local Studies in Scotland – Organisations

Much of the guidance found throughout this toolkit is relevant to delivering a successful local studies service in Scotland. The aim of this section is to provide additional information relating specifically to the Scottish context. This section does not aim to be exhaustive, but to provide a concise account of the key information relevant to local studies throughout Scotland.  It focuses on organisations and resources that are relevant to all or most of Scotland. This does not include those with a narrower regional scope, excellent though they may be.

ScotlandsPeople

The family history website of the National Records of Scotland. The range of records to which it provides access, including some exclusively, make this a vital website for much Scottish historical research.

Statutory registration of births, marriages and deaths was introduced in Scotland in 1855. ScotlandsPeople is the sole online method of searching and accessing these records. The website is also the only comprehensive online source of digital images of pre-1855 church registers and census records. Additionally, the 1911 census, and the 1921 census in due course, for Scotland is only available from ScotlandsPeople.

The site also makes available a variety of other useful records from the collection of the National Records of Scotland: valuation rolls, legal records, poor relief and migration records, prison registers and kirk session documents.

There is currently no library subscription or discounted access available for the ScotlandsPeople website. There are however ScotlandsPeople Centres dotted around the country, including their main searchroom in Edinburgh, that provide onsite use of the website with a potentially cost saving day-rate – listed here.

It should be noted that transcriptions of some of the NRS held records may be available on other websites such as Ancestry, FindMyPast and FamilySearch. Including Old Parish Registers and Scottish census records (1841-1901), these transcriptions may fruitfully be used with existing microfilm holdings in libraries and family history societies.   

ScotlandsPlaces

This is a free-to-use website allowing access to a range of location-based historical records from three Scottish national collections. The site draws on the collections of Historic Environment Scotland, the National Records of Scotland and the National Library of Scotland. The records available on the site include maps, surveys and plans, photographs, archaeological records, drawings, tax rolls, Ordnance Survey name books, and publications. See here for a list of the records accessible on the site.

National Library of Scotland Map Images

An outstanding and immensely useful website from the National Library of Scotland. It provides free online access to a tremendous collection of digitised historic maps and plans, including large scale Ordnance Survey maps. The use of georeferencing allows for features such as the side-by-side viewer to compare historic maps with modern mapping or satellite imagery.

National Library of Scotland eResources

The National Library of Scotland provides all residents of Scotland free access to a variety of online subscription resources. These services can often be accessed remotely, though some can only be used at the Library’s reading rooms. Many of these are relevant to local studies, alongside a host of other subjects.

The NLS’s eResources and Map Images are part of a wider Digital resources offer. An increasing use of digital provision has made the National Library more accessible to residents throughout Scotland and of increasing significance and potential to local studies provision.  

CANMORE

Historic Environment Scotland’s website database catalogues archaeological sites, buildings, industry, and maritime heritage across Scotland. A crucial, first port of call when interested in a feature of the historic built environment. As tends to the case with websites of this nature, due to the number of entries on them, use of the “Search Map” option is recommended. The bibliographic references that accompany many of the websites’ entries can be particularly useful for those in the library world.

Scottish Listed Building’s Portal

Historic Environment Scotland’s website with entries for all listed buildings in Scotland. This is a vital companion website to the above CANMORE. The listed building entries often provide historic information and architectural description that is useful for enabling further research.

Local authority historic environment records (HER): Historic Environment Scotland CANMORE website draws upon, and works in partnership with, regional historic environment records that are typically maintained by archaeology services within local authorities. Local HERs may contain more detailed or differing information than the national equivalent and so are another vital resource for Scottish local studies. 

PastMap

Historic Environment Scotland’s PastMap represents a useful way to explore the country’s historic environment and discover information sources about it. It brings together in one interface access to some of the resources mentioned above.

Scran (also known as the Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network)

This site from Historic Environment Scotland provides educational access to digital materials representing Scotland’s material culture and history. It hosts images, movies and sounds from museums, galleries, archives, and the media. It is useful for searching across the collections of several services, particularly for historical images, and contains Scottish content that is not available elsewhere online.

The Dictionary of Scottish Architects (DSA)

A collaborative database providing biographical information and job lists for all architects known to have worked in Scotland during the period 1660-1980, whether as principals, assistants or apprentices. Highly useful for enabling further research on the built environment.

Statistical Accounts of Scotland

The University of Edinburgh Library’s website provides free online access to The Old Statistical Account 1791-1799, The New Statistical Account 1834-1845 and useful accompanying information. The site provides access to high quality digital copies of these most useful works for Scottish history in a reliable and understandable way.

Internet Archive

Digitised versions of many copyright-expired works relating to Scotland can be found on the Internet Archive website. This can be tremendously useful for libraries and researchers but there are understandable limitations to this online collection. These limitations become apparent when attempting to consult multi-volume or multi-edition works. This highlights the importance of the more curated approach demonstrated by the Statistical Accounts of Scotland website.

Scottish History Society publications

Comparable to the above, the National Library of Scotland provide high quality access to digital versions of over 180 volumes published by the Scottish History Society. This is a hugely useful collection for Scottish historical research.

Society of Antiquaries of Scotland publications

This organisation have also digitised and made available a large collection of their previous publications. This includes Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (PSAS), Archaeologia Scotica, and various books released by the Society.

Union archive catalogues

It is important that librarians have a good understanding of the material available in archives and how this can be found. There are a number of online catalogues that are useful for searching Scottish archive collections.

The Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) is no longer an active project but its catalogue continues to be a useful way to search across collections held by Scottish local authorities and higher education institutions. It is maintained by the National Records of Scotland (NRS).

The National Register of Archives for Scotland (NRAS) is also maintained by the NRS. This catalogue enables the finding and searching of archives held in private hands.

The National Records of Scotland hold one of the most significant archives collections in the country and this can be searched on their dedicated online catalogue.  

Archives Hub is a UK-wide union catalogue from JISC and is another catalogue worth bearing in mind.

Much Scottish archival material can also be found on the UK National Archives Discovery catalogue. It can serve as a useful pointer towards external collections.    

Scottish Local History Directory

This resource was developed by the Scottish Local History Forum in partnership with the National Library of Scotland and LocScot. It is a useful tool for finding Scottish resources and the organisations that hold them. It can be searched in a variety of ways. Additionally, librarians can use the directory to promote their collections.

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Toolkit – Co-ordinating local studies across a service

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Though each authority is different, every service is likely to have a range of libraries reflecting the size of its population, each with local studies materials covering their local area. The authority is likely to have small libraries which would primarily hold publications, a county service will have larger divisional libraries which will collect material in their section of the county and would include maps, photographs and newspapers, and there will normally be a central collection, often now housed with the county archive. These different tiers often mean that there is some duplication, whilst rarer material could be held in one of a number of places.

The role of co-ordinating local studies in a county library service has been traditionally carried out by a County Local Studies Librarian sitting at Library HQ, however the role is now also being undertaken by staff in County archives, shared between several officers or as part of a wider role.

Whoever co-ordinates local studies activities, there are core duties and responsibilities that need to be undertaken:

Leadership, planning and creating a vision

Co-ordinators should have a vision of where their local studies service should go in the longer term. Consideration should be given to the council and library/archive service’s objectives together with specific objectives relating to improving your collections. It will take time for those new to a co-ordinator’s post to evaluate the current situation, in terms of collection strengths and weaknesses, and the extent of resources and opportunities available.

It is important to keep up-to-date with the changes in technology and new innovations. New innovations may be able to work for your collection but also consider the robustness and longevity of emerging technologies and concepts to ensure you don’t waste resources unnecessarily.

Once a way forward has been found, the vision can be sold to those above, broken into sections for the annual library/archive plan and into short-term targets and individual tasks.

More information on this topic can be found in the planning and priorities sections of the toolkit:

Leading projects

Often the most effective way to meet organisational priorities is to create a project that attracts external funding. Through project work you can engage specific target groups within the community and employ a project officer. Outcomes of the project, whether they are oral histories, displays, booklets, films or photographs can be added to collections and members of the community invited to view the resources and continue to deposit material after the project has ended. See the Creating & running large projects section of the toolkit for more information.

Consistency

Whilst acknowledging that divisional and central local studies centres will have larger collections and may have library professionals to undertake local studies work, it is important to ensure that, as much as possible, local studies work and collections are consistent across the county as:

  • customers should get the same level of service wherever they go
  • it enables library staff, who increasingly tend to work at several library locations and who are less likely to build-up stock knowledge, to reuse their local studies skills
  • it ensures that best practice is consistently applied.

However, the person co-ordinating local studies should be pragmatic. Since many local studies collections were not under county council control until 1974, there may be several different ways of organising material and, whilst several collections may be extremely well arranged, others may be poorly catalogued and indexed and have no finding aids at all. As it is a challenge to effectively use a badly arranged and listed collection, it should be a longer-term priority to improve the finding-aids and listings in weaker collections, however the days of reclassifying all book stock are over. In authorities where even getting local staff to create indexes is impossible, you can be creative when putting together project bids, after all a photographic digitisation project, perhaps using volunteers, must also be accompanied by cataloguing and indexing material.

As well as having less-developed local studies collections, weaknesses and inconsistencies can be more widespread. For example, it is becoming increasingly apparent that many collections do not adequately reflect the community they serve. LGBTQ, BAME and traveller communities are under-represented in many collections. Details of any such stock gaps and how to fill them should be incorporated into your collection development policy.

Though you should be pragmatic in tackling past problems, it is important to be consistent with new projects going forward, for example, you should have a consistent approach to outreach activities, such as those that build links with underrepresented communities and image projects [link to image section of the toolkit] should use the same rules to ensure that the material created can be easily re-used in future.

Staff training

Local studies users in branch libraries are often assisted by non-specialists so it is important to increase local studies knowledge at a local level, especially where specialist local studies posts have been lost through budget cuts, retirements or in areas of high staff turnover. Opportunities for physical countywide meetings are increasingly rare, so local studies librarians need to be innovative in how they deliver training. Training notes, quizzes, short induction films that can be viewed when staff have time off the library floor or at quieter times when on enquiry duty are all useful tools. E-learning using interactive PowerPoint presentations also work well and are relatively simple to produce.

Though innovative solutions are valuable, “What is where” tours of local collections will have the biggest impact and an induction tour of the central archive and local studies collection(s) will emphasise the key message for any staff training – making staff confident to refer customers onto specialist staff in local studies hubs at the appropriate time. 

Centralised duties

Some areas of local studies work are more efficient if undertaken centrally for example:

  • Preserving access to local newspapers through microfilming and/or digitisation – see newspaper section of the toolkit.
  • Stock work – Purchasing material published in small print runs, self-published books or discovering unpublished written research is another key aspect of the role. A key is raising awareness of this amongst non-specialist staff across the county as it is they who are often better placed to identify publications produced by authors and organisations in the towns and villages across the service. The co-ordinator should also dedicate time to building contacts with local authors and members of the public who ask for help with their research – see users section of the toolkit, together with the sections concerning the collections policy and book stock.
  • Conservation – this is another area of responsibility which requires specialist knowledge.  See the conservation section of the toolkit.
  • Policy work such as Emergency planning.

Marketing 

Promotion of the collections is increasingly important, so having good working relationships with the media/communications teams working for your library authority and at the town/county hall are essential. During the pandemic many libraries raised the profile of their collections considerably by being active on social media sites and producing special online exhibitions and talks. Demand for such activities continue post pandemic and this may be a challenge in some libraries as normal services resume.

It is critical that you build links with the local community, local and family historians and other professionals around the country so that you can identify potential partners for project working, enquiries can be referred on, expertise or good practice shared or sought and links made to ensure the highest level of service locally can be provided. 

Raising the profile of the collections internally within your service’s parent organisation is essential. This is partly to increase the perceived value of the collections and the service to the community when major budget decisions are made, but also to encourage colleagues to see that you are successfully addressing the authority’s priorities, the collections are a source of information for their own work and as a potential partner for future projects . As such, evaluating the impact of your work and of your collection is also important so that you have the ability to prove to stakeholders that your service matters.

For further details, see the following sections of the toolkit

Management responsibilities

The local studies co-ordinator may also be a member of an archive and local studies management team and groups of other senior librarians. In such forums you should champion local studies and take up opportunities to demonstrate how local studies ‘makes a difference’.

As a manager, you may line manage local studies librarians and other library staff.

The key?

Helping customers to find answers to the questions they have by making sure that material is available, accessible, knowing where the answer may be located, letting people know about the services available to them and working with others and your collection to forward the aims of your parent organisation are the ultimate aims of any librarian, and no more so than the officer charged with co-ordinating local studies.

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Toolkit – Friends Groups

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Volunteers and users can very quickly become your unit’s most enthusiastic advocates and, by working together to form a Friends Group, their support can be grown in different ways.

What can a Friends Group do for you?

They can support your local studies service and your parent body as:

  • They can raise awareness of your service and its wonderful resources
  • They are a vehicle for recruiting able volunteers
  • They can be vocal and active advocates for your service. They can lobby on your behalf.
  • They can help with fund-raising and accessing funding streams
  • They can assist with outreach and engagement

Be clear about your service’s relationship with your Friends

  • Establish parameters: what Friends do with you, what they for you and what they don’t do
  • Underline that suggestions and assistance are welcomed but that it is library staff and the parent organisation who make policy decisions about your local studies service
  • It is wise to encourage your Friends to set themselves up as a separate independent group with a constitution and a committee
  • Discuss what they will do. Will they have their own events, projects and fundraising activities?
  • Will they have charitable status?

Having Friends is a responsibility

  • Don’t take your Friends for granted! Their status must be recognised in some way: remember to thank them as you would any other volunteers.
  • Hold regular reviews. Attend their events and report to their committee and to each AGM
  • The Friends must get something out of the relationship. Devise joint projects. Ask for help with funding specific projects and purchases.

Establishing and running a Friends Group

In order to be able to apply for funding, a Friends Group needs to be officially constituted. The Community Archives and Heritage Group has some excellent advice on setting up and running volunteer led voluntary organisations, whilst if you decided to become a registered charity you will need to register with the Charity Commission and their website has the most authoritative guides on how to take the process forward.

After the group is established, the Friends might find some of the Lottery Heritage Fund’s pointers on organisational sustainability and planning of use and there is also a lot of useful information from Brighton and Hove’s Resource Centre.

However, running a Friends Group is not all about structures, as AIM points out, it is about having a good spirit and ethos.

Further Reading:

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Toolkit – Why local studies matters

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Public libraries are at the heart of many communities and their existence is an important opportunity to engage people with their local heritage. Local history documents, books and secondary sources are unique assets owned by local authorities. They have been collected by specialists for over a century and the vast majority of this content is not yet on the internet nor likely to be so for some decades. Every civilized society should be preserving books and other published sources on the history of local communities and employing Local Studies librarians is the only way to insure this material is collected comprehensively.

An appeal to Heads of Library & Archive Services

Local Studies librarians are among your most committed and knowledgeable staff members. We know our users, we know our sources and we know our communities.

An appeal to Councillors and senior local authority officers

Local Studies make a difference to individuals: the young couple in their first house who visited because they had chopped down some trees which were inside their fence only to find that their neighbour claimed the land and the trees; the schoolteacher who said that her students’ A level results had improved as a result of class visits to the local studies library; the family who were helped to find essential evidence about a local company and were able to obtain compensation for the loss of a loved one.

Local Studies projects have the power to engage people from widely different backgrounds and generations. Interesting and creative projects have the power to motivate individuals to overcome barriers to learning, to experience digital technologies, to build new social networks (combatting isolation, depression and related health issues) and to rekindle an in interest in life through informal learning opportunities. Librarians working creatively, and in partnership with a wide range of educational providers, facilitators and artists, and others, can ensure that opportunities exist to engage different levels of ability and ranges of interest.

An appeal to Local Studies librarians

Congratulations in gaining one of the best jobs in our profession. However, in these difficult days of public spending reviews and staffing cuts, never has there been more of a need to prove our worth to our employers. We need to seize the day, be proactive, imaginative, try to make time for external funding bids and really prove our value. We need to analyse how we envisage how our services can develop, and find out not just what our current users want, but what non-users may want, now and in the future. Once funding is in place and staff are running projects, it becomes possible to make real improvements to our services and engage the public as users and volunteers.

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Toolkit – Volunteers

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Volunteering in public libraries has become mainstream in recent years with many libraries around the country now offering general volunteering opportunities for specific events or projects, for example assisting with the children’s Summer Reading Challenge. The biggest exception to this rule has been local studies collections, which have harnessed the power of volunteers for decades.  Classically helping with indexing newspapers and census records, the variety of opportunities have mushroomed in recent years.

See the following sections of the toolkit for examples of how volunteers can play a role in local studies projects:

Though running projects with volunteers can unlock material within collections, aid collecting and help you to find new audiences, whilst making a real difference to those who give their time, it is also a big commitment to any organization, as recruiting, managing and celebrating volunteers is very time consuming.

When to use volunteers and not to use volunteers:

In 2012 CILIP released the following policy statement:

CILIP believes that society benefits from the contribution that trained and skilled library, information and knowledge workers make to developing and delivering services. We do not believe that volunteers should undertake core service delivery or be asked to replace the specialised roles of staff who work in libraries.

Volunteers have long supported and provided highly valuable additional support, working alongside qualified and paid staff, and they should be acknowledged and valued for this role. They should also be given appropriate role descriptions, training and management.

CILIP is opposed to job substitution where paid professional and support roles are directly replaced with either volunteers or untrained administrative posts to save money. This applies to all library and information services in every sector.

If this happens services will suffer and will be unsustainable. What remains would be a library service unable to serve the community comprehensively, support people’s information needs or provide everyone with the opportunity for learning and development.

CILIP will not assist in recruiting or training volunteers who will be used to substitute the role of qualified, trained and paid library and information workers.

We acknowledge the difficult times that we live in, but now more than ever, high quality information services are vital to people’s lives, and local communities, learners, workers and businesses need the support of a trained and skilled workforce to thrive.

A local studies unit should clearly define what is their core local studies service and, by extension, which activities should be undertaken purely by professionals and what activities are open to volunteers. For example, stock selection and cataloguing books are core roles for a local studies professional, however the extent of photographic collections means that volunteers are often asked to help catalogue and digitize photographs.

Volunteers as a resource for meeting your objectives

Using volunteers is not an end in itself, but a very powerful tool in helping you meet your objectives. Unsurprisingly, once a local studies unit has decided its priorities and examined the projects open to them, many activities will involve volunteers. For more information on deciding your objectives, please see section 6 of this toolkit.

  1. Linking in with LA priorities
  2. Community engagement planning
  3. Budgeting

Running a project which involves volunteers:

As volunteering has become more central to the work of public libraries and local authorities in general, you are likely to have to ensure that your procedures are in line with the wider organisation’s volunteer processes and policies. However, there are still key stages that should be followed whether it is part of your wider volunteer process or not:

  1. Defining a project: The running a large project and evaluation sections of this toolkit highlights the importance of a having a clear plan.
  2. Defining a volunteer role: A project requires tasks which need to be performed, whether by paid project workers or unpaid volunteers. Roles will be of different durations, with some requiring a few hours or days of help whilst others will be decades long. A volunteer should be appointed to a project and, when that project comes to an end, they should be considered for another project and only appointed if they are right for the role. Consider putting together a short description of a volunteer role, which can then be used for advertising. For example: Volunteer at your library or archives | Hertfordshire County Council
  3. Appoint a named contact:  Volunteers should have a named person to whom they can raise problems, concerns and questions. In some organizations with a larger number of volunteers, there will be a specific member of staff dedicated to coordinate volunteer work.
  4. What skills, knowledge and abilities do you need for your project?  
    • Consider working with people from the community who wouldn’t naturally see libraries as a place for them.
    • Work experience students looking for a career in heritage. This group of people should be given experience in some areas normally reserved for professional staff.
    • Many younger people who volunteer do so as part of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme. They may be required to undertake a particular number of hours and so a formal method of recording hours maybe relevant. 
    • Those seeking work, whether they are short-term or long-term unemployed. As staff may be asked to act as a referee, making a note of punctuality and absence should also be considered.
    • Those with specialist knowledge and skills, such as those from the local family history society who could help with family history IT support and members of the Art Society with conservation skills. See section on working with partners.
    • Approach a local company which releases groups of their employees to volunteers for local good causes – especially good for short sharp projects such as re-boxing material into conservation grade materials.
    • Remote volunteering is becoming increasingly popular, for example indexing projects, with material being emailed out to volunteers. This extends the scope of the project to reach volunteers unable to leave home, or those with an interest in the subject from around the world, in addition to those living locally. See the Crowdsourcing part of the indexes and transcriptions section of the toolkit.
    • Mix the groups, perhaps look towards an intergenerational project linking younger and older people.
    • The recently retired looking for a new challenge – including those who have recently retired from your own library – some of the finest volunteers are retired librarians!
  5. Recruitment: As with recruiting for a paid position, you are looking for the right person to fill the right role, so do not feel that you have to accept everyone who asks to become a volunteer. The potential volunteer may also feel that the opportunity is not right for them. It is useful for a potential volunteer to come in for a tour, an explanation of the volunteer roles available and an informal chat. Most authorities are likely to have their own application forms and volunteering agreements, though a checklist is also useful to have.
  6. Induction: It is important that new volunteers receive a good induction, covering
    • Bread and butter issues, such as a health and safety briefing, location of the toilets and tearoom.
    • Introducing them to staff and other volunteers.
    • It is also important to point out that volunteering is not a permanent position and that it is fine if volunteers change their minds and decide that the position is not for them.
    • You should also point out that volunteering is a two-way process and that, if problems occur, you can work together to try and resolve them and, in the worst case scenario, end the relationship, subject to the procedure laid down in your volunteer policy.
    • A check-list can be useful to ensure that all items are covered.
  7. Training and Supervision: Support given to volunteers by library staff may involve specialist staff in training and explaining the role and in giving ongoing support.
    • Written guidance is often useful for more detailed roles, such as photograph scanning and cataloguing.
    • Many roles may not require any close supervision, however an element of checking work should be built into the process, some of which can be done by fellow volunteers. Some volunteers enjoy this additional responsibility and are invaluable for managing large projects. For projects that produce large amounts of data, such as indexing projects, staff can sample data and use searches and filters on spreadsheets or queries on databases to identify and remove common problems and, if significant problems are identified, another volunteer could be asked to review the work line by line.
    • It is very easy for volunteers to deviate from the way they were taught to undertake their project, especially as they quickly become the expert in their section of the collection. You should keep an open mind about whether you should take on board their changes or not but remember that results need to be consistent.
    • Some authorities will require volunteer coordinators to hold appraisals, but even if they do not, it is worth taking opportunities to discuss how things are going on a one-to-one basis with individual volunteers and take on board positive suggestions on how things could be improved.
  8. Recognise why a volunteer gives their time to you:
    • As with everyone working with your organization, you need to ensure their contribution is valued and you need to demonstrate that they are making a positive contribution.
    • Ensuring that you are offering well thought-out projects that the chosen volunteer can do well. Though the importance of choosing volunteers to meet the requirements of projects are listed above, you should build on the strengths of potential volunteers. After all, if you have a volunteer with a passion for images and has already scanned and catalogued their own photos at home and you have boxes of fascinating unsorted photos, it would be tempting to start an image project or if you have a volunteer who just likes inputting data, them creating a digital version of a card index could be invaluable.
    • Volunteers often enjoy the social side and make new friends.  Working on computers or other jobs around the same table can provide this opportunity, as does working together on group projects. The importance of tea breaks and an occasional slice of cake can never be overestimated.
    • Celebration: Thanking your volunteers is the most important thing anyone running a volunteer project needs to do. Social activities maybe popular including trips out to different locations, summer garden parties and talks on relevant subjects.
  9. Measuring impact: As with any other project, those involving volunteers should be reviewed, and impacts measured. See measuring impact section of the toolkit for more information. As well as helping to develop your collections and your audiences, volunteering does have a positive impact on the volunteers themselves. Volunteering can tackle loneliness, raise community cohesion and pride, give people additional skills that they can use in the workplace and more. Local authorities will ask you to collect statistics on the number of hours that volunteers help you, but also supply those above with stories about how volunteers and volunteering has made a difference.

Further reading:

  • Local Studies Toolkit – Friends Groups

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Case Study: Friends for your library? The Friends of Medway Archive

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Norma Crowe, former Local Studies Librarian at Medway Archives Centre
Elaine Gardner, Friends of the Medway Archive member since 2006 and current Chairman
Amanda Thomas, Friends of the Medway Archive member and Editor of FOMA’s journal, The Clock Tower

The foundation of a Friends group attached to and supporting Medway Archives was the brainchild of the Archivist, Stephen Dixon, in 2005. It was clear that the Centre needed to explore mechanisms and methods to raise the profile of the Centre and to assist with fundraising.

The Friends group was set up and fortunately a good number of folk with recognised communication skills and also with a firm interest in Medway’s local history became founder members.

The Friends of the Medway Archive (FOMA) operates as an independent organisation with a constitution and a committee. The Society lends its support to the Centre by helping with Centre activities but also by organising their own events, fundraising, promotion and research. FOMA has its own website which includes an index of Medway men who fought and died in the First World War. It publishes a quarterly journal, The Clock Tower, which includes articles about Medway local history, forthcoming events and letters. Articles are written by Society members, staff of Medway Archives and other organisations with a local interest. Past journals, the FOMA De Caville Index and other information can be accessed via their recently upgraded website: http://foma-lsc.org

Image 1 training for a reminiscence project, image 2: the importance of tea and cake for any event! Image three: A MAC letter transcribed by a FOMA volunteer.

View from the Local Studies Librarian: Norma Crowe

I am fortunate to have had the support and assistance (not to mention the friendship) of many members of the Friends of Medway Archives. It can be a lonely job, trying to compete for recognition, notice and funds in the fraught world of local government. The backing of our Friends was helpful and reassuring in many ways. I had been in post for 10 years when the Friends came into being, so I can compare what it was like with and without them!

Here are some of the ways in which the Friends have assisted Medway Archives:

Events

Friends help at Centre events, stewarding, refreshments etc. They are also supportive, attending talks and other Centre events. Joint FOMA/ Centre events and initiatives are also possible. FOMA members sign up as volunteers if they offer their services in this way.

Exhibitions

Committee members have devised displays for the Centre, providing research and using Centre resources.

Outreach and education

FOMA volunteers have assisted Centre staff and colleagues from other departments of Medway Council with education and outreach projects, notably with the World War One-related Medway Soldiers Stories on our Streets project. They have assisted with research and with delivery of projects in schools and to interest groups. FOMA members have assisted with reminiscence events and with local history open days and talks.

Promotion/ Awareness raising

FOMA, as an independent body, is able to raise matters of concern with MAC’s parent body (Medway Council) and with other institutions. It can get articles in the local press; it can express opinions and criticise when important to do so. Centre staff are effectively prevented from doing this. The opinion of the electorate (sadly) has more clout!!

Grant applications

Working closely with the Archivist and centre staff, FOMA submitted a grant application to the Heritage Lottery Fund for funds to catalogue part of the Rochester City records. An important and fund- securing part of the HLF application was that the project archivist would work with volunteers. The selected volunteers (all members of the Friends) were trained to read old handwriting and to sort and repackage documents in the collection. And at the end of the project volunteers helped with outreach to local schools, promoting the use of the Rochester’s fascinating Archives in historical research.

Fundraising

Through its annual events and its subscription FOMA has raised funds which have supported the Centre. FOMA has, over the years, funded digitisation, microfilming, exhibitions and exhibition boards and the purchase of documents for the archives and local studies collections.

Support

It is good for the Centre to have the support of people with an interest in the local area and its history, knowing that they are on your side and are prepared to stand up on your behalf.

Images 1 & 2: FOMA exhibition. Images 3 & 4 Material purchased by FOMA from Ebay and elsewhere and donated to MAC.

View from the Friends: Elaine Gardner:

Having heard of the launch meeting via the City of Rochester Society and an ex-colleague who was involved with the County History for Everyone project I went along and signed up as a member that evening. I did not really get involved with any specific activity until I was co-opted on to the committee a year or so later as Stephen, the Archivist, wanted someone involved in education to help with the education side of the Heritage Lottery bid. Pointing out that I taught Maths and knew very little about the History curriculum carried no weight!

Once the bid had been obtained and was underway, I took on the education aspect that any HLF project demands, delivering the programme both in schools and through talks to adult groups highlighting the material in the City of Rochester Archive over the three years of the project, something I’d not done before. I also helped as part of a group repackaging the archive material to help with its conservation once it had been catalogued.

I was not involved with collating the FOMA De Caville Index of Medway’s First World War casualties, but once it was launched in 2014 and Norma asked the FOMA committee if we could stage exhibitions based on the casualties, I finished up working with the then FOMA chairman producing an exhibition each year, from 2014 to 2018 inclusive, highlighting the men who lost their lives and the First World War events in which they were involved. Much of the content of these can be seen on the FOMA website. This led to involvement with Medway Councils 1918-2018 Heritage Lottery Project Soldiers Stories on Our Streets, where I again went into primary schools along with the Guildhall Museum education team.

Whilst I’d always had an interest in local history, 40 years of teaching secondary mathematics hadn’t really developed many research skills! Being involved as a volunteer gave me new interests as I retired, and I have enjoyed helping Medway Archive and Local Studies in a variety of ways as well as being involved with fundraising in FOMA.

Finding member volunteers to get involved with the committee, especially as many of us get older, isn’t always easy but I think that this is something many societies find and events of the last two years [Covid-19] have not helped. It is very satisfying to be able to support the work of our Archive and Local Studies service and provide a voice and funds where they are limited.

http://foma-lsc.org/journal.html

View from the Friends: Amanda Thomas

I joined FOMA in 2006. Prior to this, I had visited the Medway Archives Centre for historical and family research purposes and already felt I had a relationship, especially with the staff who were always very friendly. However, not living locally, I was concerned this might be a barrier to becoming more involved; I need not have been concerned.

I was not a founding member, but I was one of the earliest. I responded to an appeal by Stephen Dixon, the then Archivist, who was looking for someone with writing experience to set up a FOMA journal, later named The Clock Tower. Having taken time out of full-time work to raise a family, this was a wonderful opportunity to ease back into my career, and what I love doing most. It also gave me a reason to spend more time in the Medway Towns, where I was born and have many happy memories. One of the joys of the Friends is that everyone shares the same passion for history and for raising the profile of Medway’s heritage. It was this coming together of like-minded people, many of whom were women, which was so exciting and – most important of all – beneficial for the Archive.

Over the years we Friends have taken on the role of ambassadors for the Archive and local Medway heritage. We are always looking for helpful and promotional opportunities and some of us have even travelled overseas, for example with the Live Bait Squadron Society, to the Netherlands during the World War One commemorations. In addition, we are constantly listening to the needs of the Archive and their customers, and are also able to liaise with the local council. We have most definitely created both a bridge – and a conduit – for better practice.

All images courtesy of the Friends of Medway Archives (FOMA)

Toolkit – Digital Preservation

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Background

The bulk of local studies and archive holdings have so far been received in traditional formats, such as paper, parchment and photographic material, and this may well continue indefinitely. However, an increasing quantity of decisions and transactions are now being recorded in electronic format thus creating digital records to transfer to Local Studies and Archive collections. In addition to these so-called ‘born digital’ records are digital copies of hard copy originals, but these are being created as facsimiles to enhance access and should not be seen as a substitute for maintaining the original.

The challenges of digital preservation centre on how best to preserve not only the information itself long-term, but also its associated evidential value, without which it is not necessarily worth preserving. Challenges include: the rapid obsolescence of hardware, software and storage media.

Services should seek to create a digital preservation strategy to address both short-term and long-term solutions to these challenges.

Examples of digital material and their sources

Transfers from your own local authority departments mainly relate to archives and records management, for example, databases in a variety of formats, CAD drawings, Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets, e-mails and so on. Some of these records will be held in other software packages such Sharepoint; some on network drives. Neither Sharepoint nor network drives are suitable for long-term storage of electronic archives (i.e. records selected for permanent preservation), due to limitations on space, obsolescence of software formats, and problems caused by staff accessing out-dated information.

Acquisitions from many and varied external sources, including other local authorities, official organisations, groups and individuals, can include: e.g. digital photographs, millennium scrapbooks, e-publications and so on.

Records created in-house as accessible surrogates for use in and beyond the local studies library for example the TIFF and JPEG digital photographs created as part of projects.

Audio-visual material kept in digital form, such as cinefilm or sound recordings which have been transferred to DVD or CD.

Preservation of electronic records

Short term strategies  

Some of the fundamental challenges for Local Studies collections and Archives include:

  • Preserving not only raw data – the ‘bits’ – but also the contextual information (metadata) vital to their interpretation.
  • Preventing tampering or distortion (whether deliberate or accidental), in order to give evidential value to the electronic data, which will act as the modern equivalent of the seal or the signature on a hard-copy record.
  • Inability to access material, whether through media failure, lack of compatible hardware or lack of compatible software, especially for complex specialist software such as CAD drawings etc.

Ideally a digital preservation system should be considered. Without this there is no guarantee that records once received by the Local Studies collection or Archive will have the necessary audit trail of access and usage required for legal admissibility and historical authenticity.

In the absence of a reputable digital preservation system an interim policy might be to copy records from portable storage media onto the relevant dedicated read-only drive where they can be backed up by the corporate back-up system, but this is purely a short-term solution as it will not tackle the evidential value issues mentioned above. However, this does not address the needs of more complex digital records such as databases or websites.

The portable media on which the records were received should be kept short-term to give access to them for the public, but they will not be able to be kept permanently in that format due to obsolescence of hardware and software. 

For digital records created by the local studies library gold-quality DVDs should be used and stored in optimal temperature and humidity conditions, (18-22 degrees centigrade, 35-45% RH), but again this cannot guarantee longevity beyond 25 years.

Longer term strategies  

Investment is required by a parent authority or usually an archive service in a digital preservation system which can manage the complex needs of digital records and ensure their integrity and authenticity over time. The system needs to comply with the ISO standard Open Archives Information System (OAIS) model for the acquisition and storage of digital records and to facilitate public access to electronic archives via the internet. Such a system will ensure that when records are received into the system (ingest) metadata is captured to help with their long-term interpretation, and that once ingested the records can be monitored to ensure they have not been damaged or tampered with. Public inquiries such as the Hillsborough disaster inquiry show how important such transparency and reliability of record-keeping is. The system will also flag up when record formats are becoming obsolete and suggest pathways for onwards migration.

There are various solutions now available on the market which could fulfil these requirements. Most also have a secure public front end. This is important for public access and it means that the public do not need to have access to your organisation’s internal systems to access relevant information.  For local studies libraries it is worth considering whether your archive service or parent authority has invested in a digital preservation system and if so, how might you be able to contribute to the content?

Recommended formats

For images, it is recommended to use TIFFs (for master copies) and JPEGs (for access copies). For audio files it is recommended to use WAV files (for master copies) and MP3 or MP4 (for access.)

For other documents, Microsoft formats are recommended at present, as this is usually a preferred supplier, but this should be discussed with relevant ICT teams. Therefore, any upgrade or change could be managed as part of work on other organisational files.

Adobe Acrobat files can be read by many systems, too, and this format may be useful for preserving e-publications.

Examples of formats which are unsuitable for long-term preservation are proprietary software, e.g. family history programs. This is because the information value doesn’t warrant the expenditure required to monitor and migrate a large number of very specific programs for which only a limited number of examples may be held. The results could be rendered in an alternative format, for example Adobe, if necessary.

Disaster Recovery

In the short-term it is the responsibility of your organisation’s information management team to ensure that electronic records held in the Local Studies and Archive service’s network storage folders can be restored from back-ups where needed, and to use systems to make sure there is more than one copy of every record. In the long-term a future digital preservation system may exist off-premise (e.g. in Cloud storage) and it will be the responsibility of the supplier to ensure that there are adequate disaster recovery procedures.

Preservation of records held elsewhere

Local Studies libraries should encourage good practice and provide advice to owners of digital archives on the care of their digital records. If you do have access to a digital preservation system it is always worthwhile enquiring if owners of large digital records could consider contributing to the costs.

Further information:

There is much guidance on the National Archives website: Preserving digital collections – The National Archives

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Toolkit – Indexes & Transcriptions

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Traditionally a mainstay of local studies and family history society projects, indexes and transcriptions give us access to high quality and obscure information contained in valuable sources. Current digitisation projects build on these techniques to make digitised material more searchable.

Collection and retention:

Local Studies Collections should collect and retain high-quality indexes and transcriptions relating to material held within their collection area.  These include:

  • Newspaper indexes and cuttings files – often created by local studies staff and contain high quality information not easily found anywhere else, but the decline in local print media and a lack of time and resources may make these difficult to keep updated.
  • Parish registers – often undertaken by local history societies and volunteers, these include the names, dates and other details found in registers of baptisms, marriages and burials.
  • Monumental inscriptions – often undertaken by churches.
  • Census transcripts –  some of the first transcriptions were undertaken by local history societies and these are often of a higher quality than later versions found on genealogy websites like Ancestry.
  • Microfiche copies of the IGI (International Genealogical Index) – Although largely superseded by Familysearch, the IGI is still a high-quality though selective index to parish records.
  • Other archive material books – companies such as the EurekA Partnership (The Eureka Partnership – Family History, Ancestry, Family Tree | The Eureka Partnership) still produce amazing publications from primary sources locked away in Record Offices.

Digitisation of paper indexes

Many index creators have digitised their work and local studies staff should also consider doing so. One service which has done so for many years is Hertfordshire Archives & Local Studies, who started by digitising their parish record indexes and then asked volunteers to create new name indexes from other records in their collection. Users from all over the world can now use their  Hertfordshire Names Online database to order copies of records and newspaper articles.

Why create indexes and transcription in the digital age?

Computers cannot be relied on to interpret digital copies of text… yet. OCR software can often create excellent transcriptions of books and pamphlets. Free software, such as that provided by Google and other providers can do a good job of interpreting newer material, though pay-for programmes, such as ABBYY FineReader, produce better quality results.

OCR software has not yet mastered older typefaces, including some newsprint, nor most handwritten material, so the services of volunteers or external suppliers are still of value. As those who have struggled with family history resources know, the quality of an online resources is only as good as the information that gets placed into it, so large amounts of data checking is often required to ensure a good result.

Examples of transcription guidelines include:

US National Archives transcription guidelines

Smithsonian ‘s transcription Guidelines

In house or crowdsourcing?

Libraries and archives traditionally invite readers into their libraries to transcribe material, however once material has been digitised volunteers can volunteer from the comfort of their own home. The great advantage is that much more work can take place, for example, virtually all the main newspaper pages from Slough History Online were indexed by one volunteer. However, the amount of work produced by such enthusiastic volunteers can be a challenge for smaller units.

Archive projects, such as AnnoTate have used crowdsourcing as a way of transcribing large amounts of archive material:

Of course, like the National Archives, the answer could be a blend of the two: Current opportunities – Get involved (nationalarchives.gov.uk)

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Toolkit – Virtual events

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Why online events?

Online activities can be an accessible and practical way of promoting services and collections to new audiences, particularly those who are unable to attend in-person events due to other commitments or accessibility issues.

This has particularly been the case since March 2020: “The digital switch happened quickly when lockdowns were first introduced. Libraries were able to offer their users alternatives to physical [services] and many people made use of these digital services in ways they had not done before.” (‘Service Recovery Hub – stay on top of the latest developments,’ Information Professional, April-May 2021, p.31)

While online activities have been the default method of delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic, they will likely remain a useful tool in the arsenal of all librarians going forward.

Online local studies events have proved particularly popular since March 2020, perhaps because audiences spending more time at home have been looking at community and individual identities with fresh eyes, (re)discovering a passion for heritage and family history.

Although it is tempting to simply think of online events as a straightforward recreation of an in-person event, there are several factors that have to be taken into account, many unique to online activities. These can be framed in three overlapping categories: planning, delivery and evaluation.

Planning

Identifying the best platforms to use

Librarians can face several barriers to setting-up online events: uncertainty around platforms – which to use and how to use them; whether there is an audience that will (a) find and be interested in the events being set-up and (b) understand the technology needed to access those activities. Much more so than traditional in-person events, online activities can involve many ‘unknown unknowns’ – at least initially.

Support can be found, whether internally – from colleagues in other areas of your service – or externally: e.g. online guides to choosing the best platform, or social media conversations and mailing lists, both of which can be used to identify the platforms external colleagues have found most librarian and user-friendly.

Which platform will you choose? Zoom was the early leader, but Microsoft Teams is often free at the point of use for local authorities so is the preferred option. YouTube and Twitch are also available.

Test the available platforms for yourself before deciding – become familiar with the systems for admitting users, turning on/off user cameras and sound, removing attendees from the session in cases of disruptive behaviour.

Content

Online activities can range from lectures to interactive workshops, but most often follow the classic format of a speaker delivering a talk to a listening audience.

You may discover that some events are more difficult and challenging for online platforms – e.g. workshops with interactive elements. Keeping it simple is key: it is much harder to intervene and correct an event that is going wrong online than it is in person. Communication with audiences is much harder as the usual visual cues are more difficult to read – e.g. body-language – and it can be more difficult to speak to audience members with particular issues privately on a 1-1 basis.

Tips for hosting such sessions successfully would include ensuring more than one member of staff is present – attendees who are struggling with the material, or who are being ‘disruptive’ (whether intentionally or not) can be spoken to privately by one librarian, while the other continues to lead the session. Most platforms for hosting online events will have an equivalent of Zoom’s ‘break out room’: a discrete digital space where a customer (or customers) can be placed with a host to discuss any problems that have arisen.

Many considerations for choosing the topic of online activities are the same as those for in-person events – e.g. an exploration of library collections from a staff member, or a talk by a local historian. Tying talks to anniversaries and significant local, national and international events – including awareness days/weeks/months – can be a useful way of populating a calendar and will help generate publicity and engagement. Some tie-in events could prove controversial, however, with particular implications for online activities (see the delivery section below).

Bear in mind that online events can potentially help library services to reach audiences who would not normally use local studies resources and can aid wider organisation aims around diversity and representation – it’s worth casting your net wider for online event content than you may for in-person ones; you may find a new audience easier to reach with the former than the latter.

Many attendees at online events since March 2020 are local and family history afficionados who are no longer based in the region (or even the UK at all), and so unable to attend in-person events. Many local history librarians will find they are hosting events for audience members from as far afield as Australia and the USA.

Of particular importance for online events is finding speakers who are not only comfortable talking in front of an audience, but who are familiar with and happy to use the necessary technologies –  while this is perhaps less of an issue in a post-March 2020 world, it is still a consideration to take into account.

Events may increasingly be delivered in-person and online simultaneously, even now that COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted. Not all attendees or potential attendees are yet comfortable attending in-person events – a situation likely to persist for some time to come. Getting technical advice and support from colleagues, social media, mailing lists or user guides on how to do this effectively will be key.

Marketing

Organisations may require all librarians across the service to use one account for running online events (i.e. including non-local studies ones); coordination is therefore required to ensure platforms are not double-booked before any marketing is started.

The usual publicity channels for in-person events – mailing lists, printed and digital programmes of organisation events, social media, blogs and posters – remain relevant for online events.

It is advisable to make entry to online events available through booking a ticket: unlike in-person events, where attendees can sometimes (though not always) make a casual decision to attend on the day, that is less useful for online events in which a login code often needs to be sent to attendees in advance of the session.

Online methods of booking tickets include Eventbrite and Ticketsource – your organisation may have a preference for which platform you use.

You will have to, however,  ensure there is a process for those attendees who are unable to book online themselves, but who still wish to attend (or are purchasing tickets on behalf of someone else): an alternative contact method should be provided – an email address and, crucially, a telephone number to a department where staff can book tickets on behalf of customers.

Administration

Once an event has been successfully booked and tickets have been sold, it is usually necessary to send login details to attendees ahead of the allocated start date and time. This often consists of a link to the session itself, and a password or code to grant entry, usually sent in an email.

Each platform differs, however, and some offer different methods of online delivery even within the same package: e.g. the difference in Zoom between meetings (where an access password  is required) and webinars (where only a link to the session is needed – access is automatically granted when an attendee clicks the webinar link).

Sending access details to attendees is also a good time to remind customers of the likely set-up in your event – are cameras disabled on entry? Is attendee sound muted? How do attendees ask questions? If you’re intending to record the event, it might also be necessary to send attendees a statement relating to their GDPR rights – your organisational GDPR officers will be able to advise.

Some external speakers may not be familiar with the platforms you are using, and may benefit from a pre-event run through of what is likely to happen on the day – the order actions will happen in, how to share screens, confirming that monitoring questions and chat boxes will be the host’s responsibility, and so on.

Delivery

Hosting events

The host is a key role when delivering online events; this is likely to be a librarian when an external speaker is present. If a staff member is the speaker, it is a good idea to have a colleague present who can handle hosting and administrative duties; it can be difficult to manage speaking and administration simultaneously. In any case, your organisational safeguarding guidelines may stipulate that two staff members have to be present when delivering online events, particularly if they are not being recorded.

Hosting duties usually involve admitting ticketholders from a waiting room (where relevant), followed by a general introduction to the event, the speaker and then any housekeeping – including brief information for attendees about video and sound being on/off and signposting to how and where customers can ask questions (e.g. by text in the platform chat box at any time or orally at designated periods if sound is muted by default).

It can be helpful to pre-write a script for a host’s introduction, and to have that on your screen alongside the platform window (or printed) – improvising in the moment is rarely a good idea!

During the actual event, the host’s duties generally involve monitoring comments and questions in the chat box, which can include technological queries – some of which may need subtly relaying to the speaker, e.g. volume too low. Agree a method of communicating with the speaker beforehand – e.g. by text message, or verbally interrupting the event.

At the end of the event the host will usually thank the speaker and field questions on their behalf – by, for example, reading questions or comments from the chat box. Online events can occasionally include difficult or controversial questions or comments from attendees – the host can pre-filter these if they are relaying to the speaker. Obvious trolling can be more easily ignored (unlike in-person events).

Your organisations should have training or advice available to help staff deal with particularly difficult online situations, e.g. ‘Zoom-bombing’ (defined by Wikipedia as “the unwanted, disruptive intrusion, generally by Internet trolls, into a video-conference call”) – such situations can be traumatic; another reason to have several staff members present at events, where possible.

Delivering events

Many librarians will already be familiar with delivering live events to audiences; online events do not differ hugely from in-person events in terms of the actual delivery. Some general advice, however, would be to undertake plenty of practice on the platform you’ll be using before the event takes place: know how all the icons and tools work, and exactly how they integrate with your preferred delivery method (e.g. slide show, video, etc).

Test sound and video several times before the event is live. A good host should ensure you have to do the bare minimum of administrative work when delivering an event – but it pays dividends to have a good awareness of how to resolve any issues that may arise.

Even more so than in-person events, audience attention may waver during online activities – keep the content flowing from section to section, with plenty of visuals and a mixture of sincerity and humour.

Recording events

Recording events is a great way of ensuring as wide an audience as possible can engage with the content at a time of their choosing. Copies of the recording can be sent to everyone who initially booked a ticket, including those who were not able to attend. Recordings of some events – e.g. talks – might be suitable for uploading to a video-sharing website, e.g. YouTube.

Uploaded talks can be made available for as long as you or your organisation wants them to be – a way of ensuring the permanent (or, at least, long-term) preservation of the research and material covered in the talk or event. Check if your organisation has an institutional preference for which hosting site is used (if any).

If you are recording any online events you may need to read a GDPR statement to attendees before beginning, making them aware the recording is happening and of their right to remove themselves from the session if they do not wish to be captured during the recording (though most platforms only capture the speaker and attendees if they make a comment or other intervention). Delivering GDPR statements is generally the duty of the host during any introductory speech.

Accessibility

Online events will be attended by customers who are partially-sighted or hard of hearing: closed-captions can usually be added to events, or you can pre-emptively ask speakers to ensure they are providing good descriptions of any images they are showing.

Bear in mind the diverse needs of customers before setting up online events – consider whether an online event’s format means it will be inaccessible to some audience members – see YouTube’s guide to adding closed captions for more information: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2734796?hl=en#zippy=. Can some events be in-person instead, or a mixture of live-streaming and in-person?

Evaluation

Demonstrating the impact of online events uses the same primary metric as in-person events: how many attendees were present? It may be a good idea to send a survey to attendees afterwards, asking how many customers had attended online who had not previously attended in-person library events. Similarly, a comparison of in-person with online attendee figures may yield informative data about the intrinsic benefits of the latter.

A mixture of in-person and online events is perhaps the future for library services, though as yet largely untried. Additional technical support from relevant organisational departments may be required, at least on the first few instances.

Positives and negatives

Online activities allow your service to reach a much wider range of people than in-person events, where someone’s attendance can be limited by physical proximity, accessibility needs, etc.

Online events can remove some of those barriers – but be aware that they can add others, most especially barriers for those who lack digital skills or access to technologies. Signposting to colleagues who deliver digital skills sessions may be useful in these situations.

Another disadvantage of online events compared to in-person is that it is harder to showcase relevant stock or resources at the event, and audiences who do not usually use your library building no longer have a reason to enter the space.

There is much less personal interaction, whether between patrons and patrons, or patrons and librarians – often further projects and activities are developed from conversations and encounters before and after physical events; something much less common, possibly non-existent, at online activities.

Nevertheless, online events have come of age since March 2020 and are clearly here to stay – they are now, and will remain, a key tool in the modern local studies librarian’s toolkit.

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Toolkit – Larger projects : Before you start……

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Local Studies should receive enough funding from their local authority to  run its core services, including running some community engagement activities, however it is not long before you can identify ways that, with extra resources, you can make more of an impact.

This section of the toolkit offers top tips on the extra work required to turn a small project into a large one. The core principles and planning required to be undertaken before tackling a large project can be found it two key sections of the toolkit:

Linking into Local Authority priorities

Community engagement planning

…..plus

  • Larger projects can focus on a particular local studies resource, so the appropriate pages in the Resources section of the toolkit will be of great use.
  • The social media, exhibitions, websites, copyright and conservation sections may also be of great use.

Key areas to consider when you move towards a larger project:

Planning

Creating an activity or action plan is a good way to articulate your project and work out what you are trying to achieve, how you are going to do it and what it will cost. If you are thinking of applying for grant funding it is useful to start with your plan and a budget as this will help you to write the rest of the application. There is useful guidance on activity planning that you would need to use for any NLHF funded project but it can also be used for your engagement plan, including a template:https://www.heritagefund.org.uk/publications/activity-plan-guidance.

Inclusion

When creating a Local Studies project another good starting point is to think about a variety of entry levels for participants and how they can get involved. As noted in the community engagement section of the toolkit, these can range from exhibitions, talks and workshops to creative activity. You should also think about how the community can be involved in developing and managing your project, what are the volunteer activities, can you create a project community forum, perhaps even ask members of the community to be involved in the recruitment of project officers or consultants if required such as attending interview presentations.

Skills and training

Opportunities for training and learning new skills for both staff and volunteers should always be built into project costs, which provide important outcomes for building capacity within a community or your organisation to create and manage future projects; provide pathways to lifelong learning, further and higher education and employment; and improved well-being.

Websites

It is always tempting to create a website or other digital outputs for a project as they appear to be quick-wins. But think how these will be sustained after the lifetime of the project and when technology and formats change. There is probably a graveyard full of abandoned project websites! Having said that, digital outputs can be a brilliant way of engaging new and wider audiences so if you do choose this route think how can you build in on-costs for the future? A good tip is to include additional years of support from your developer in the budget and within your procurement. Many funders are realistic and happy for organisations to do this.

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Read the next section of the toolkit: Finding out more about your target audiences

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