Time slips by very quickly – not just since my last blog but also that this year marks the 30th anniversary of the Friends. It is also notable too that The National Archives celebrates its 40th anniversary at Kew. A lot has happened in those intervening years and there have been numerous and significant changes. And change is the theme of this blog – a reflection of changing times, priorities and ways of doing things.
My last blog, back in July last year, was my second as Chairman. The long pause has been due to taking stock of who and what we are as a support charity, and reviewing how we govern and manage what we do. Since 2013 we have rapidly grown our membership and before too long, probably this year, we will reach 1200 members. That has brought its organisational challenges because everything we do, apart from publication design, is done entirely on a voluntary basis.
We face some big decisions about when and how we may need to introduce paid support to maintain effective management. There is a balance to be struck between constructive, productive and enjoyable volunteering and it becoming a chore and an over-worked burden. I have to say that some of our commitments are close to becoming untenable for solely volunteer responsibility. Our calls for extra volunteers to join us and spread the load have not always produced the response hoped for, so going the paid route will probably have to be the answer if we are to remain viable and effectively managed.
Against this background, the role and activity of the Friends today is in many ways entirely different to how it was back in the late 1980s, early 90s. Recently, some members have questioned the current focus of the Friends and the emphasis on non-document projects. This reflects the changing nature of the institution the Friends support. Set up in 1988, the Friends charitable objects (which remain unchanged) were to support the work of the then Public Record Office and educate the public in the knowledge of the public record.
Today The National Archives has, for example, the lead management and licensing role of the archive sector, active educational and outreach programmes and developing as a centre of research – an entirely different institution to that when the Friends was established. It is now much more proactive in becoming a historical, cultural and academic venue promoting the collections, and the history within, rather than just a passive repository of the historical record.
As The National Archives changes, so too must the Friends to retain its relevance, effectiveness and broad appeal beyond the fairly narrow focus of document-based indexing and transcription projects. The importance of this vital work in making the historical record more accessible to a wider audience cannot be denied. However, accessibility can come in different forms and, perhaps more crucially, finding new audiences is important for long-term sustainability, not only for The National Archives but the Friends too. Where will the next generation of trustees come from if we do not diversify our efforts and appeal to younger generations and a broader section of society?
Some of our recently funded projects have enabled community groups, school children and students to see original documents at first-hand and draw their own unique interpretation and understanding. This has resulted in films and artwork based on the inspiration derived from the historic record. We hope this will create a legacy and help to promote interest and involvement in the archive sector for the future.
That said, it is very much business as usual. We do have a number of ‘traditional’ document projects in hand, some through funding and others through the practical efforts of our volunteers. A significant amount of funding has been given to HCA 30 and 32, ‘The Prize Papers’ project. Other current ongoing projects include the Royal Navy WWI service records in ADM 188 and 196 (see Magna, May 2017, p.19).
Our ‘Military Team’ of volunteers have completed numerous transcribing projects and are now well into a two to three-year project to transcribe WO 416, a currently closed series of WWII prisoner of war records. These will be released incrementally on a monthly basis through to December 2020. The very long-running projects transcribing Chancery records by on and offsite volunteers will shortly draw to a close and we hope to showcase these, and other Friends’ supported projects, at the AGM in June to highlight thirty-years of endeavour.
And one final intriguing thought – we have just launched the Friends’ Research Fellowship to assist The National Archives develop as a centre of pioneering research. The inaugural presentation is based upon datafication and the ways in which digital technology can help to access and unlock the collections. In time there may be no need for human intervention to physically transcribe and index – it could all happen digitally. Change is very much in the air and whilst our key charitable objects remain entrenched – the ways of achieving them have become much more diverse.