I think this will be of concern to everyone that relies on TNA for their
research. If you are going to be in London week after next, please try
to attend this meeting and if you know someone not on this list who will
be in London, please pass along this message.
Abigail
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [LOCAL-HISTORY] Changes at The National Archives (TNA)
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:19:15 +0100
From: Ruth Paley <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: From: Local-History list <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
With apologies for cross posting.
The IHR and RHS are jointly running a discussion session on the proposed
changes at the UK's National Archives (TNA) on Tuesday 8 Sept, at 11
a.m. Managers from TNA will be present. I would urge you to go and,
given that it is short notice, to assist the IHR and RHS by publicising
the meeting as widely as possible - fuller information and how to book a
place is being circulated by the IHR and RHS and is also available via a
link on this page http://www.history.ac.uk/
</exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=https://82.110.245.76/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.history.ac.uk/>
TNA proposes to make a 10% saving (£4.2m) in its operating budget.
Despite protestations to the contrary most of this is targeted on users
of historical records - £900K (21% of the total savings) is to come from
the public service. The current CEO has made it abundantly clear that
she is interested in 'information management' rather than the
organisation's statutory duty towards the historic records. Despite
TNA's claim to have funding problems it has taken on significant new
responsibilities: merging with the Office of Public Sector Information
in 2006 and taking over the Statute Law Database in 2008.
The proposals include:
· Closing to the public on Mondays (a 16% cut in opening hours)
· 35 staff redundancies across the organization of which 12 (34%)
are known to be in the specialist Advice and Record Knowledge section;
TNA will not disclose where the others are
· Withdrawal of microform series from open access in the reading
rooms
I have serious concerns about the rationale behind these cutbacks, about
what appears to be deliberate misrepresentation by TNA to justify its
actions and about TNA's commitment to consultation. According to the CEO
these are proposals not plans, no decisions have been made and so the
new structure and details about posts to be lost cannot be publicised.
Nevertheless appointments are being made to the new structure and, as I
am sure members of the list will realize, it is almost impossible for
meaningful consultation to take place without access to this sort of detail.
It is likely that these cuts will have a major impact on the research
community. More detailed information about the cuts and the campaign
against them is available at www.Action4Archives.com
</exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=https://82.110.245.76/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.Action4Archives.com>
Time is of the essence -TNA proposes to announce its decisions on 24
September.
Regards
Ruth Paley
--
Abigail Ann Young (Dr), Associate Editor/ Records of Early English Drama/
Victoria College/ 150 Charles Street W/ Toronto Ontario Canada
Phone (416) 585-4504/ FAX (416) 813-4093/ [log in to unmask]
List-owner of REED-L <http://www.reed.utoronto.ca/reed-l.html>
http://www.reed.utoronto.ca/ => REED's home page
http://www.reed.utoronto.ca/stage.html => our Web guide
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~young => my home page
