About rapid response collecting

What is rapid response collecting?

This guidance uses the term ‘rapid response collecting’ for collecting in response to unforeseen, sudden, unpredictable or unprecedented situations. Some examples of these may include:

  • community-organised/spontaneous protests
  • accidents, disasters, mass violence or other events involving harm to or death of a person or people
  • significant social events such as the death of a prominent person
  • natural or man-made disasters

This list is not exhaustive or exclusive. It does not suggest that any one type of event is more significant than another.

‘Disaster collecting’, ‘crisis-based’ and ‘contemporary collecting’ are also terms used in the professional literature for rapid response collecting. There are other terms including rescue collecting and collecting spontaneous or grassroots memorials and/or shrines. Different people and situations may use different terms: none is better or worse than another. We use rapid response collecting in this guidance to encompass the general principles and issues which might apply in many different situations.

This guidance applies to both physical/analogue collecting and digital collecting. Rapid response collecting may often centre around particular location(s) chosen by a community such as protest sites and temporary memorials. You might collect physical material, or document sites without collecting original items. You might collect digitally from websites dedicated to an event, or more generally via existing platforms and media spaces (for example, via social media hashtags).

Archives might lead rapid response collecting initiatives, or collaborate with or support others.

This guidance aims to support people undertaking rapid response collecting. However, it is important to acknowledge that it might be right for you not to collect at the time of an unforeseen event.

Purpose and scope of this guidance

We aim to help people working in archives to explore the issues around rapid response collecting and to effectively manage these when responding to unforeseen situations. Such situations are unique, meaning that there is no single ideal response.

The guidance therefore offers prompts, options and approaches to enable you to make informed decisions. It includes organisational case studies, and signposts to other resources where more detailed or specialist information is available. It is not intended to be prescriptive. Please adapt the guidance to your own circumstances. We will update it as practice evolves.

Other guidance is available from The National Archives for planned collecting outside unforeseen events. These include pre-planned large cultural infrastructure projects and general collections development. The Oral History Society has guidance on planning oral history projects including those related to past events.

Why is specific guidance needed for archives?

Other organisations may also undertake rapid response collecting. But archives might have additional responsibilities for preserving the organisational archive or supporting records management for their parent body, which itself may play an active role in responding to the unforeseen event.

Some archive services may also be officially designated to preserve public or official records. Other bodies (for example, Coroner, hospital, or Court) may transfer records relating to the event to the archive service later. Archive services may be designated as: