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It was fantastic to be able to share new guidance for archives from The National Archives, UK on rapid response collecting following unforeseen events last week. Over 100 colleagues came to the launch event to understand what the guidance covers, and hear from speakers who had provided two of the case studies.
All the team working on the guidance hope that it never has to be used - but fully aware that it is likely to be needed, so hope that it is of practical help.
The guidance includes
- what is rapid response collecting - collecting after unforeseen and/or unprecedented events
- factors to consider in the early stages. This includes checklists to help you think through the available resources, whether rapid response collecting is appropriate in your context, and how to do this ethically.
- immediate priorities (in the first few days). This covers developing a plan, removing items from physical sites, and managing wellbeing and ensuring a safe environment for people.
- the first few weeks. This covers documenting and selecting material, disposing of material where relevant, and preservation of digital and physical material.
- longer-term management. This includes how to manage a move from the immediate response, stopping rapid response collecting, to move into a phase of dealing with what has been collected.
- case studies of a range of rapid response collecting from five different services. These illustrate the changing nature of managing a collection over a long period of time (with one case study from 2001), as well as much more recent collecting from 2015 up to 2024.
In providing a practical resource, the team preparing the guidance also wanted to emphasise that deciding not to undertake rapid response collecting is also an appropriate and valid decision.
It was a privilege to be able to work on this with such a committed team of colleagues on this: Kostas Arvanitis, Wendy Walker, Victoria Stevens, and the team at The National Archives Hannah Jones, David Morris and Mike Rogers.
This post and the image contain public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0
