Background
The majority of the Record Office’s holdings are distributed between several out stores with the remainder being held on the main site. The sites are of varying quality and include storage in a nearby school and a converted warehouse ten miles away. Rarely used material – equating to approximately ten percent of its holdings – is stored in a Records Management store 25 miles away.
The storage facilities on the main site and at the school are of poor quality, with continued issues surrounding temperature control and damp. In contrast, the converted warehouse provides compliant storage and is approved by The National Archives to hold Public Records.
However, having assessed the transportation risks to some material, the Record Office recommended that heavily used items and material which would suffer during transit, such as maps and plans, should remain on site.
Currently the Record Office uses a van to collect material from the out stores once a week.
Managing the out-store service
Once a week two members of the archives staff visit to collect material. They usually drive to the relevant out stores in the archive service’s van and they collect material throughout the day. Double staffing has been introduced recently because of the amount of material being requested and handled. In addition, double staffing has addressed issues surrounding lone working. (Previously this was managed through various means, including in/out boards and telephoning the main site when they enter and leave each out store.)
The difference in quality between the two main out stores is substantial. This can make managing some off-site material quite difficult. In particular, the storage located in one of the local schools is difficult to access and it has poor parking provision. There are issues of child security when Record Office staff are on site collecting documents. In addition, the store is on different levels and the material must be transported manually on stairs because there is no lift. The environmental conditions are poor and there are few staff facilities other than toilets.
The site is also vulnerable to small scale acts of vandalism, such as window breakages. However, no one unauthorised has entered the building and there has never been any damage to the collections.
The environmentally compliant warehouse storage facility is sited on an industrial estate. Although ten miles from the main site it is easily accessible and has convenient parking. In addition, the store is all on one level and material can be transferred easily from the shelves into the van. It is staffed by project workers and has a fully equipped staff office, internet access and ample room to undertake work on the collections. The lack of adequate space at the main site means that much of the cataloguing work is undertaken here.
All the out stores have monitored alarms for both fire and security. Insurance for all the sites is part of the County Council’s global insurance policy and there is additional insurance for compensation in case of damage. There is training in handling to try and combat some of the risks associated with moving archival material regularly. During stock-taking, specialists come on site to provide staff with tailor-made training in manual handling to suit their specific needs.
Decisions surrounding where collections are to be stored are based on several factors, including usage, the potential for damage during transit and depositor expectations. Large and/or planned acquisitions are usually delivered straight to the out store.
Benefits and challenges of managing a split-site service
Benefits
- Having sufficient storage and additional working space
Challenges
- Undertaking visits to the out store takes up valuable staff time
- Having staff split between two sites can create communication problems where staff failing to integrate properly (particularly when only one site is public-facing – staff can feel less involved and may fail to appreciate the work/difficulties of their colleagues working at another site)
- Users are limited to the amount of material they can order at any one time as there is a restricted amount of space in the van
- Users must be made aware of waiting times
- Having 70% of storage off site is inconvenient for both staff and users – staff feel that that they are not providing a good service to their users
- Users have to wait a week for material if their request was placed just after a delivery and they have to make a second visit if the request was placed in person – they get frustrated if they are not aware of waiting times or off-site storage before they arrive
- Although there is little impact on paid searches, there is a more appreciable impact on Freedom of Information (FOI)/Data Protection Act (DPA) enquiries. Material relevant to these types of searches is held ten miles away, making answering these enquiries difficult and time-consuming.