Report  from Strategic Academic Stakeholder Forum meeting, 19 February 2010

At the end of 2009, the National Archives formed the Strategic Academic Stakeholder Forum, which brings together senior management from TNA and representatives of the academic research community. The latter is represented by the Royal Historical Society, the British Academy, the Historical Association,  the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust. The first full meeting of the Forum was held on 19 February 2010, and the following is a record of the discussions.

Discussion focused on a number of topics, including The National Archives' plans for 2010/11, and its draft academic strategy, feedback and lessons learned from the recent savings exercise, and the wider context of public sector financing. The meeting focused on how The National Archives could demonstrate to the academic and other interested communities that the core expertise and resources of the National Archives are being properly protected, and also ensure that legitimate academic concerns and interests were, as far as possible, met.

There was wide recognition in the group that the role of The National Archives had necessarily expanded to cope with the creation of material in digital form, and the need to ensure that the future sources for historical research were safeguarded. This had required The National Archives to take a very active role in capturing material at the point of creation because it may otherwise not exist to be collected 30 years later. The group discussed the perception of some users that this focus had been instead of, rather than in addition to, the Archives' traditional role of supporting historical research and safeguarding the nation's heritage, and welcomed the confirmation that this focus was additional and not substitutional, and that the organisation's merger with the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) in 2005 had brought in new resources. The group also discussed the perceptions that the staff resources focused on academic support had diminished, and welcomed confirmation that the numbers of records specialists had not been reduced in the last 5 years. The academics were pleased to hear about the new career development scheme being introduced to support records specialists, and volunteered to support it in whatever way was deemed appropriate.

The forum was then told about the major investment that The National Archives is making in the Kew site in 2010/11, to ensure that its collection can be preserved for the long term in a sustainable way.  In addition, it is making considerable changes to its technological infrastructure to make its catalogue and records available in a way which will transform access to its holdings.  It was explained that this investment was only possible because of the recent savings exercise.

The National Archives made it clear that the concept of ‘guardianship' was the over-riding principle of all of its activities. This concept has been the driving principle behind work to safeguard the future of history and to ensure that more government material is accessible for researchers, as well as the ongoing work to preserve the non-digital collection, to actively support historical research, and to invest in collection care, cataloguing and elsewhere. This clear statement was welcomed, but it was pointed out that many in the sector and beyond had come to believe that this commitment was being diluted, and more work needed to be done, in particular in real engagement with the sector and in communicating the fact that scholarly and archival values are a critical part of the organisation's remit, to convince them fully of this.

The meeting also discussed the activities transferred to The National Archives when the Historical Manuscripts Commission merged with the Public Records Office in 2003. The National Archives explained how they had refocused and professionalised the work of the team to provide greater strategic leadership for the wider archive sector and to focus on critical areas such as business archives, because of the increased number of business failures as a result of the recession. This was also welcomed, and the point made that more needed to be done to make researchers aware of the National Archives's broader activities within the archive sector.

The meeting also considered the future challenges facing the archive and academic research sectors, given the likely future public sector spending regime.  It was recognised that, because of the resource constraints on local and university archives,  it was likely that The National Archives would be under increasing pressure to support both researchers and the wider archive sector in terms of being a central source of expertise at a time when it might well be under more severe resource constraints itself. For this reason, it was agreed that the Forum members would work closely together to ensure that we could articulate this situation clearly to key external stakeholders in order to ensure that we preserved the expertise and central support provided by The National Archives.

The forum agreed a number of steps to be undertaken prior to the next meeting of the Forum in May 2010. These included:

• TNA will take into account discussion in the Forum in the reformulation of its academic strategy
• TNA will commission a series of articles to highlight key issues raised by the digital archival revolution for different historical periods and subjects.
• TNA will liaise with the academic community as regards the career development scheme for records specialists.
• Closer liaison will be arranged between the communications officers of all Forum members, with a fuller discussion of communications issues at the next meeting.
• There will also be a fuller discussion at the next meeting of TNA's work with the wider archival community.

Finally, the academic members congratulated Natalie Ceeney most warmly on the award of a CBE, and her decision to move to a new post as ombudsman in the Financial Ombudsman Service. They expressed their gratitude to her personally for her role in instituting this Academic Stakeholders's Forum. A number of the group would be writing to the Minister of Justice on behalf of their organizations requesting that the remit for the new appointee to her position at TNA should  specifically include close liaison with academic stakeholders, and that the appointment panel for the post should include a representative of the wider historical community.