Executive summary
Introduction
The National Archives, with its leadership role for the archive sector in England, undertook an initial COVID-19 impact survey in April 2020. This was followed by a Business Continuity Survey in the early summer 2020 and a second impact survey in the autumn 2020. In 2022, a new survey to investigate any continuing impact of the pandemic on services and how they are recovering from periods of closure was undertaken. 125 responses were received.
The New Normal
Responses showed that most services are now offering many services that they did pre-pandemic, particularly the core services of enquiries and reading rooms (over 90%), albeit with some tweaks, such as pre-booking and ordering or changes to opening hours. Community and Education services are being offered by many services but some are still to reinstate these. At most services, staff were either back working largely onsite (42%) or were hybrid working (49%). Indeed across most areas of archive services work (conservation, accessioning), the majority of services reported no continuing impact on their capacity to carry them out. Over half (58%) did not think there would be any change in focus in terms of onsite activities.
Whilst the pandemic had led to widespread delays or cancelled projects (over two thirds of services reported this), many (44%) had already resumed or were planned to (15%). The proportion of archive services that indicated the period of closure would change the way they planned for the future had decreased by over 10% since 2020 (from 58% to 45%).
Increase in digital and online services
The pandemic has led to an increase in those providing digital and online services: 40% of archive services started to offer online talks, webinars, events during the pandemic and are still providing them now, the same is true of 16% of services for online access to exhibitions and 6% for access to digital collections. Open comments suggest this is due to increased interest and engagement from audiences, more investment and focus within services or closures allowing staff more time to focus on digital activities. Services also reported an increase in the proportion of their collections available online. Before March 2020, 20% of archive services reported that 6% or more of the collections were available online. By April 2022, this had increased to 27%.
In comparing 2020 and 2022 survey data, there is further evidence for services increased usage of digital and online tools to engage audiences during closure, with those who used social media, virtual tours, blogs and online events all having increased in 2022. However, 10% fewer services were providing online events now (as compared to during closure), some comments explained that it was hard to commit staff to this now they are back on site and needed for other tasks.
Many services have realised the benefits of providing digital resources and services in developing new audiences. This may explain why many services anticipated an increased focus on online resource provision (70%) and social media (45%) and why digital functions are where the highest proportion of services reported an increase in capacity. Nearly one fifth of services have seen an increase in capacity in the following areas: accessioning digital material; digitising material, preservation of digital material, cataloguing digital material. These increases in capacity are mainly driven by higher education services, a sector where funds have been available for providing services such as virtual reading rooms.
The use of online activities and social media appears to have led to an improvement in relationships with new and potential audiences (52% of services). These online methods may also have helped improve relations within services’ wider organisations, with 46% reporting improved relationships.
The 2020 survey found there could be the beginning of a ‘digital gap’, where smaller services had not been engaged in online activities or social media to maintain relationships with audiences or offer services online. The 2022 survey suggests this has continued with fewer smaller and independent services providing online activities, virtual access to exhibitions and online access to collections. They were also more likely to report decreased capacity to carry out digital functions (e.g. accessing digital material, preservation of digital material). This all seems to have had an impact on relationships, with 49% of smaller services seeing an improvement with new and potential audiences compared to 58% of larger services.
Fewer onsite visits
Visit numbers had begun to recover in 2021/22 but were still a long way behind levels seen in 2018/19 and 2019/20. There were 214,834 fewer visits in 2020/21 (the year most affected by lockdowns and resulting closures) than in 2018/19, an 88% decline. The difference between 2018/19 and 2021/22 still represented a decline of 67%, despite the number of days open to the public only being 33% less. A number of factors will have impacted on this including: effect of the pandemic on the public’s confidence to visit indoor public spaces and use public transport; services limiting numbers; advanced booking being required; limited opening hours; and more resources, events and services now being available online.
Decreasing Capacity and Funding
A large number of services are concerned about funding, 47% reported either already seeing or anticipating an impact on their funding and this was generally (89%) expected to be a decrease. Few services felt that the expected increased focus on online and social media provision would correspond with an increase in resources or a decrease of activities elsewhere (45% did not think it would, 35% were unsure and only 20% thought it would). Open comments showed that services often felt they were expected to do more with the same or less resource or capacity and similarly, a major area highlighted in open comments on how future planning would change was planning for fewer staff and smaller budgets.
The areas where most services reported a decrease in capacity were: cataloguing of physical material (34%), transcribing (29%) and accessioning physical material (26%). Services that had already seen or anticipated an impact on collections due to the periods of closure, increased from 23% in 2020 to 34% in 2022. Comments revealed that the biggest impact was on backlogs in cataloguing and accessioning new material, with several services noting that backlogs in these areas meant they could not accept any new material for the time being and a few noted that this was in part a result of the increased focus on digital, meaning there was less time to give to these functions.
Decreasing Volunteer engagement
44% of services reported a decline in the number of volunteers they had now compared to pre-pandemic and 37% of services reported having no volunteers in April 2022 compared to 20% pre-pandemic. In terms of volunteers’ working location, whilst just over half had volunteers back on site to some extent, a quarter (26%) did not have volunteers back on site at all. Relationships with volunteers was also the area where the highest proportion of services reported a worsening or negative impact, with nearly half (48%) reporting this, many citing a long period of volunteers being unable to be on site and ongoing restrictions on numbers allowed on site as a reason for that. There were however, some services that had developed virtual volunteering opportunities.
The long gap in provision has also impacted on relationships with regular users, with over a third of services reporting a worsening of relations.
Support from The National Archives
There was widespread awareness of the online support (both guidance and information and services and activities), in both 2020 and 2022, at over 90%. A higher proportion however, had used the online support in 2022 than in 2020, perhaps as more services re-opened and turned to sources of support. Fewer were aware of the one-to-one support in both years 60% in 2020 and 66% 2022. The subject areas that services reported accessing guidance on were predominantly COVID-19 guidance and advice (two thirds of respondents) and one fifth was around digital or digitisation. Almost all rated the support accessed as useful.
Where there were suggestions for improvement, this was around how quickly guidance was published and some felt it could have been more in depth. In terms of continued funding for the impact of COVID-19, most felt this should continue but some felt that the programme should be broader in scope.