Potential help and resources

People

What skills and capacity do people already working in your service (both paid staff and volunteers) have? Might they (not) be emotionally ready to undertake rapid response collecting?

What support might people need from within the service and from outside (remember the service manager)? How will you support them? How will you get support?

Rapid response collecting may be demanding, difficult and disturbing. It may also be rewarding and positive. People may have a range of emotions and reactions at different times, and everyone is different. There is no one way to behave, think or feel.
People may be affected, both now and in the future, whether they are working on the rapid response collection directly or not. More information on this is available in ‘Managing wellbeing‘.

Health and wellbeing guidance is available from the Archives and Records Association.
ARA commissioned a further report published late in 2024: Arvanitis, K. and Kavanagh, J. The impact of collecting after sudden, unforeseen or violent events on the mental wellbeing of the record-keeping workforce. A Report for Archives & Records Association UK and Ireland.

If you need help for a mental health crisis or emergency, you should get immediate expert advice and assessment.

It’s important to know that support services are available for you to access, whatever you’re going through.

In the UK call 999 or go to A&E now if:

someone’s life is at risk

you do not feel you can keep yourself or someone else safe

A mental health emergency should be taken as seriously as a physical one. You will not be wasting anyone’s time. Get urgent advice from 111 online or call 111 and select the mental health option.

Ask for an urgent GP appointment.

Free listening services offer confidential support from trained volunteers. You can talk about anything that’s troubling you, no matter how difficult:

Call 116 123 to talk to Samaritans, or email: jo@samaritans.org for a reply within 24 hours

Text “SHOUT” to 85258 to contact the Shout Crisis Text Line, or text “YM” if you’re under 19

The mental health charity Mind has information on ways to help yourself cope during a crisis

Does your organisation have occupational health support, an employee assistance programme? coaching/mentoring schemes, peer support groups, Mental Health First Aiders, counselling or other schemes?

Could you draw on colleagues from other areas of your organisation, or on professional colleagues in other organisations? What skills or resources do they have that you do not (for example, communications, quarantine space)? Could existing volunteer groups undertake specific tasks (for example, sorting and washing soft toys)?

If they will be supporting you in working with collections, what training or support might people need so that they can be effective? Would you have capacity to recruit, train and support new volunteers?

If you do not already have a volunteering programme in place, as a minimum you should consider how you will coordinate and manage volunteers, induct and train them, keep them safe, and support them. You must have employer’s liability insurance or public liability insurance that explicitly covers volunteers. Remember that volunteers are not cost free because you will need to manage them. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations provides detailed resources.

Featured case studies: West Sussex Record Office and Manchester Together Archive

Space

What space might be available to house physical materials in the short- and long-term? Space for quarantining, drying out or freezing, cleaning and sorting may be needed quickly. Are there other areas in your organisation, or facilities in your local area? Some services have had the use of temporary storage facilities donated by local businesses.

What resources are available for meeting conservation needs of physical materials? These might include quarantine space, working and processing space, space to store boxes and packaging materials, as well as facilities for freezing material or treating mould.

‘Preserving physical material‘ covers the urgent conservation treatment of physical materials.

If collecting digital formats, what storage space is available?

Additional space may be needed:

on your web server, if you are accepting submissions through a web form
in networked storage if you are collecting directly (for example, by web scraping or collecting social media hashtags, rather than asking people to submit material to you).
in mailboxes, if accepting submissions by email.

However you collect digitally you are likely to need additional quarantine space so that material can be scanned for viruses and malware, and additional space in backups. You may need to talk to your ICT provider at an early stage.

If you are unable to collect digital formats directly, you could consider nominating any dedicated or significant websites for the UK Web Archive.

Finance

Consider:

What budget is available immediately for preservation or other supplies (for example, boxes or Personal Protective Equipment (PPE))? for emergency preservation actions (for example, freezing material, treating mould)? for logistics (for example, hiring a van, purchasing equipment)?

Will people need travel and subsistence expenses, overtime or other payments?

Will additional physical or digital storage space, or processing capabilities, be needed in the short-term? How could these be resourced?

Time

Important points to think about are:

What time constraints might need to be considered, including planned commitments, leave or service closure? How will you manage these?

How might these constraints change as time goes on? What will need to be replanned?

How often will you need to revisit these initial plans, and when will you next do this?