Introduction

Inviting responses

The survey was open to responses between 8 January 2024 and 15 March 2024, to give people an appropriate amount of time to respond.

We promoted the survey across a variety of communications channels, including our sector-facing Twitter account, the Archives-NRA Jiscmail list and our regional newsletters.

We also circulated the survey via the communication channels of partner organisations and networks such as the Archives & Records Association, the Business Archives Council and the Higher Education Archives Programme.

Special mailouts were also used, dedicated to the topic of the survey, and sent to all 2500 archive collections listed in our Find An Archive directory.

The response rate

We received responses from just over 400 archive services across England. We estimate that this could constitute up to a quarter of all archive services across England and is a good sample of the archive sector’s current resources and challenges, which we can use to tailor our sector support going forward.

Horizontal bar graph, titled 'Responses per Category'. The y axis is titled 'Archive Category' and the x axis 'Number of Responses'. There are 18 bars, titled (from top to bottom): 'Local Authority Archive', 'Higher Education', 'School/College', 'Independent Museum/Gallery', 'Specialist', 'Religious organisation', 'Community', 'Estate', 'Professional Association', 'Business', 'Club/Society', 'Charity', 'DCMS Organisation', 'Public Services', 'Learned Society', 'Local Authority Museum/Gallery', 'Local Authority Library', 'Arts Organisation'. The Number of responses decreases steadily from top to bottom, with 'Local Authority Archive' numbering 80 responses and 'Arts Organisation' numbering less than 5.