Listening to the Past, Speaking to the Future

50 The Task Force is confident that creating the ArchivesGateway will be an important step towards addressingthese issues by raising awareness and expectations amongarchive workers and users, and by demonstrating thedemand for archive services to funders. The searchresources of the Archives Gateway will help to encouragegreater accessibility as new connections and opportunitiesare revealed.• users can access catalogue entries, digitised images,contextual information and individual learning pathsthrough the Archives Gateway;• onsite public services meet the expectations of 21stcentury users and complement user-focused technologicaldevelopments;• a properly skilled workforce is in place to provide thecontent for the Archives Gateway and services and provideonsite and outreach services;• collections are appropriately preserved and conserved sothat users now and in the future can understand their ownhistory and identity.1234Modernisation is the key to creating the capacity that willbe needed to ensure that:The Task Force’s seventh recommendation thereforeproposes a programme of work that will address the mostsignificant concerns. Building on work by national archiveinstitutions and agencies, archive agencies in the homenations and in England, Regional Agencies for museums,libraries and archives and Regional Archive Councils, weare confident that this will lay the foundations for longtermimprovement and transformation within all archives.Four action lines have been identified that should form thebasis of a modernisation programme over the next threeyears:Creation of Centres of Expertise to share skills and advice;Quality assurance and continuous improvementin stewardship;Encouraging volunteering;Developing the UK archives and records managementworkforce.Centres of ExpertiseMLA is already involved in reviewing the need forprofessional advisory services both nationally acrossEngland and within the nine English regions. Workingthrough national institutions, the Regional Agencies formuseums, libraries and archives and the RegionalMuseum Hubs, options are being considered for advisoryservices to support professional needs. However, it isalready apparent that centres of excellence and expertisecan help significantly to reduce disparities between thelargest and the smallest institutions, the publicly fundedand the voluntary and the lack of technical skills that existin many places. Centres of Expertise can operate ondifferent levels. While most of the Task Force’s debate hasbeen about a regional focus, it is evident that there ispotential for the larger, publicly-funded services to fosterand support their smaller, private and voluntaryneighbours, and informally many already do.The Task Force endorses this approach and proposesthat further research is undertaken to establish themechanisms and funding models that would need to beput in place for such Centres of Expertise to be effective.It has identified a range of roles that might be fulfilledat a different scale of operation:• Conservation: a minority of archives are now able tosustain in-house conservation facilities. There is alsoa skills shortage in trained conservators.• Electronic archiving: there are few services at regional levelable to meet the issues and problems surroundingthe archiving of electronically held records. There is botha skills shortage and a lack of good practice to emulate.• Photographic/micrographic/scanning services: a smallminority of archives have in-house studio facilities formicrofilming, photography and scanning. In most otherarchives this work is either put out to commercial suppliersor is not undertaken at all.• Social inclusion activities: activities are scattered thinly,and are locally generated according to resource availability.• Educational activity: a small minority of services enjoy thebenefit of a post specifically focused on developingeducational work.