Listening to the Past, Speaking to the Future

Modernisation and Workforce DevelopmentRecommendation SevenPut in place a programme to modernise servicemanagement and improve workforce developmentopportunities.Action 1Investigate the establishment of Centres of archivalExpertise within the English Regions to provide support tolocal archives and spread good practice and to collaboratewith the devolved administrations to co-ordinate work inthis area.Action 2Create a quality assurance framework so that nationalstandards for collections care and exploitation areimplemented as widely as possible.Action 3Support innovative, collaborative approaches todeveloping a national strategy to address backlogsin cataloguing.Action 4Undertake further research into the future use ofvolunteers in archival collections through pilot projects.Action 5National agencies across the whole of the UK shouldexplore the feasibility of an integrated training anddevelopment framework.Encouraging VolunteeringActive citizenship has become an increasingly importantmeasure of the health of society in the UK today, and amajor contributor to social capital. To be willing toparticipate in civic activity, informally volunteer to help aneighbour or other citizen, or to give time formally to anorganisation are all seen as positive contributions to thecommon good. Volunteering is a significant part of activecitizenship and has been given high status by thegovernment. Volunteers are active in all areas of life,and all decision makers need to be volunteer-friendlyand also volunteering-literate; that is, aware of ways thattheir actions and decisions may affect community andvoluntary activity.The Task Force has found that volunteers are anunder-used resource in archives and record offices, andhas identified volunteering as an important area fordevelopment across the archives domain. Archivesought to be fertile ground for the active involvement ofvolunteers. Users and archivists share an enthusiasm forthe material which crosses professional boundaries.Many archive organisations are making excellent use ofvolunteers, for example at The National Archives wherevolunteers help with events and cataloguing. The internethas made an exponential difference to the capacity ofvolunteers to contribute on the family history front.Volunteers are active in The Federation of Family HistorySocieties and local Family History Societies which lead theway in the archives sector in this field. It is our belief thatif archive services are appropriately accommodated andresourced, volunteers can be a wholly positive resource.A Willingness To EngageLancashire Record Office is the base for a group of morethan 30 regular volunteers known as the Will Flatteners,who have been working for more than 15 years on aproject to make Lancashire’s wills more accessible. By theend of 2004, when the project is due to be completed,they will have worked their way through 1,557 boxes ofwills, carefully unrolling the documents, putting them intonew labelled folders.Since 1988 the record office has been running the ProbateConservation Programme on wills proved between thefifteenth and nineteenth centuries at the Chester andRichmond Archdeaconry Courts. Many fascinating willsand inventories have been uncovered, and have been usedin exhibitions and researched for articles. An importantaspect of the project was the creation of new indexes tosome of the wills by a team at the University of CentralLancashire in Preston.County Archivist Bruce Jackson explains how the projectbegan as a conservation exercise but has “far exceeded ourexpectations.” He says that, “The benefits have been53