Visitor numbers
While respondents reported that their archives were open most weeks of the year, they were only open for 21 to 22 hours a week on average, the equivalent of three days out of seven. This inevitably prevents some users from visiting the archive, especially if the opening hours don’t include weekends.
The responses certainly reflect the fact that some archives aren’t getting as many visitors as they could be and there was a huge difference in visitor numbers between archive types. Local authority archives and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) organisations had a mean average of around 3,800 visitors per year but, after businesses, arts organisations and learned societies, every other archive type reported fewer than 300 visitors per year, just less than one a day. Even within archive types, there was a lot of variation, with 50% of local authorities reporting fewer than 1300 visitors and 50% of businesses reporting fewer than 76 visitors.
However, reading room numbers don’t tell the full story of an archive service’s engagement. Instead, we know that archives are investing in a wider range of services that keep them relevant today, including schools engagement, public talks, scanning services and exhibitions.
Exhibitions and events
It was positive to see that many archives are running successful exhibitions and learning events, but these were skewed towards in-person audiences compared to online. For example, across all respondents, 450 in-person exhibitions had been organised versus only 300 online exhibitions. Archives reported having run over 7,600 learning events on site or at an external venue but only 974 online.
A lack of digital offer can limit an archive’s national or international reach and can jeopardise its work to successfully engage with a variety of users, especially younger audiences. Archives need to continue to find new ways to demonstrate that their communities value and use their collections and services, even if that is not through traditional reading room visits, and feel as comfortable with digital engagement as they do with in-person outreach.
Our interventions
To help archives with this engagement crisis, we are developing new free training on digital storytelling, developing digital exhibitions and managing digital volunteering programmes. We also offer engagement grants of up to £3,000 to connect archives with the wider public in new ways. The Archives Revealed funding programme will have an increased focus on public engagement, with 20% of each grant’s funding dedicated to engagement activities to ensure that the public knows about and uses collections that are newly catalogued and now available.