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Overview

Reflecting the findings from the evaluation exercise, this strategy will focus on delivering four key areas of work: capacity building, advocacy, discovery and enrichment.

Capacity building

This area of work will provide archivists with the tools they require to improve the management of digital records. We view capacity building as a collective endeavour that through working together with partners across the wider archive sector will help build digital capacity. It will also provide the sector with training and guidance that will enable archivists to develop and broaden their digital preservation skills and knowledge.

Advocacy

This area of work will empower archivists to digitally engage with the communities they serve and to help them advocate digital archiving best practice to key decision-makers in their organisations.

Discovery

This area of work will help archives to enable their users to find and access digital archive collections.

Enrichment

This area of work will help archives to unlock their potential to enhance and enrich our society intellectually, economically and culturally.

Capacity building

The National Archives will:

  • Commission new entry-level guidance aimed at the development of a Digital Asset Register with an accompanying downloadable template (From 2023)
  • Work to develop targeted support for particularly under-resourced areas of the sector, focusing initially on the charity archives sector (From 2024)
  • Develop and deliver a pilot of digital drop-in sessions for archive professionals to ask digital preservation experts for advice.

The National Archives will continue to:

  • Commission an evaluation and refresh of our Digital Preservation workflows guidance.
  • develop and support the Novice to Know-How (N2KH) learning pathway, with the launch of the Email Preservation module in 2023
  • Run the peer mentoring programme to encourage the transfer of skills from those experienced in digital work to those less experienced
  • Develop and support new routes into the sector including the Level 7 apprenticeships.

The sector should:

  • Diversify volunteers by offering new, defined, digitally focused opportunities, especially to students and young adults, which benefit both archive and volunteer
  • Support staff to develop their digital skills and share knowledge with colleagues and the wider sector.

Advocacy

The National Archives will:

  • Work with partners to review and develop Archive Service Accreditation to ensure the national standard supports services to deliver improved preservation of and access to records in digital formats (From 2023)
  • Work with the sector on exploring ways to more extensively survey and collect data on the carbon footprint of digital archiving (From 2024)
  • Develop a digital leadership programme to ensure senior managers can formulate and execute the digital strategy and advocacy needed now and in the future (From 2023)
  • Raise the profile of digital preservation in local government through engagement with the Society of IT Managers and the Archives and Records Association. (From 2023)

The National Archives will continue to:

  • Support the Digital Archives Learning Exchange (DALE) network for archive professionals undertaking digital work. DALE will meet regularly off and online to share skills and best practice
  • Promote existing resources developed through this work to ensure as many parts of the sector can benefit from them as possible.

The sector should:

  • Make digital preservation work and training a strategic priority. Other work may have to be temporarily scaled back to allow critical new capacity to be developed
  • Share experiences of digital work while it is being undertaken – through blogs, social networks and by working in the open, using code repositories such as Github
  • Begin or intensify discussions with senior IT managers within their organisation to form the partnerships necessary for sustainable preservation.

Discovery

The National Archives will:

  • Explore sector metadata presentation through further development of the Manage Your Collections tool to host and present sector metadata at scale via Discovery (From 2024)
  • Investigate data extraction from key (shared) line of business systems to broaden our understanding of the contemporary data landscape in record creating bodies (From 2024)
  • Develop a survey tool to assess the extent of digital public record holdings held by local public record creating bodies (From 2023)
  • Explore, with partner archives, funding opportunities for the development of a black history portal prototype to create a space where marginalised histories are presented and better understood
  • Further develop the LOGJAM tool to assess and prioritise catalogue backlogs for both analogue and digital collections (From 2023)
  • Produce guidance on assessing and responding to web accessibility requirements. (From 2024)

The sector should:

  • Expand and deepen collaborations and consortia to share digital costs and expertise
  • Make digital work visible through sustained and effective promotion and ensure that the outcomes of funded digital projects are modular, reusable and open.

Enrichment

The National Archives will continue to:

  • Focus on digital storytelling with the launch of a new training module
  • Develop and deliver resources that focus on reducing community digital exclusion. (From 2024)

The sector should:

  • Work with civic tech. Archives should look to form relationships with data mills, code clubs, citizen science projects and charities such as Wikimedia UK and the Raspberry Pi foundation.