Open access research from our staff

Archivists and art librarians are well-versed in developing activities and projects using archives and library materials in object-based learning activities, and in engaging artists and creative practitioners with archives and special collections.

Digital transformation in government has brought an increase in the scale, variety, and complexity of records and greater levels of disorganised data.

As part of the Safeguarding the Nation’s Digital Memory project, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, project partners collaborated to produce a Bayesian network encapsulating digital preservation risks and the interactions between them.

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the degree of PhD in Digital Humanities at University College, London (2022) Digital material is not new and has been preserved for a couple of decades now.

In 2020, the Applied Statistics and Risk Unit from the University of Warwick worked with digital archivists from The National Archives and other UK archival organisations to develop an integrated decision support system based on a Bayesian network to measure digital preservation risk.

Over the last few years AI and especially machine learning have become increasingly prominent in almost every industry, and the archive sector is no exception.

This thesis examines the communication strategy of the UK nuclear industry between 1975 to 1990.

Preservation of digital material is a challenge for which many archives feel underprepared and ill equipped.

Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of English Literature at the University of Bristol (July 2020).

Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Hull and The National Archives.

This poster reviews the work undertaken on the development of a digital preservation risk model for The National Archives using a Dynamic Bayesian Network from 2018–2019.

The National Archives’ digital strategy commits us to 'becom[ing] a digital archive by instinct and design' and to 'measur[ing] preservation risks and publish[ing] the results'.

This paper examines if there is a ‘rigour-relevance gap’ in collaborative heritage science research and what enables and impedes effective collaboration between academic researchers and users of research evidence in practice.

In nearly 700 years of activity the position of the Court of Common Pleas in the English legal scene was paramount.

This article charts the evolution of the UK government’s ambitious vision for the archive sector, Archives Unlocked.

Archival collections have particular properties that make physical and intellectual access difficult for researchers.

Among around three million designs registered for copyright and held at The National Archives in Kew, South West London—the archive of UK government records—are thousands of textile samples made for consumers in Africa.

Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Leicester.

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the degree of PhD in Information Studies: Archives and Records Management.

Cultural heritage institutions allocate considerable resource to mitigating the risks of dust in their collections.

Cultural heritage institutions allocate considerable resource to mitigating the risks of dust in their collections.

For the past few years The National Archives has been working to completely rebuild its online resources and extend our Discovery service to describe records held by other archives.

The history of 1970s Britain has been re-appraised by journalists and historians in recent years.

Transparent papers are frequently found in collections, often dispersed among other materials, and can be in need of some degree of treatment or rehousing, thus proving a significant preservation challenge.