Finding Archives: Where are archives kept?

Key focus: local, includes government records and deposited records of various types, can cover wide variety of locally significant subjects

In addition to preserving the records of national government, there are statutes in the UK that govern the retention and long term preservation of records created by local councils.

Local record offices have been established throughout the country to serve as places of deposit for records created by local councils.

In addition, local record offices often serve a community function by taking receipt of records created by local businesses, charities, societies, civic figures, families and notable individuals.

Such deposited collections enhance the official records created by a local authority. They do this by providing unofficial perspectives on a vast range of locally significant subjects, such as leisure, sport, commerce, industry, changing urban and rural landscapes, literary and artistic culture, etc.

Key focus: local and national, subject coverage is dependent on function and purpose of individual organisations

Private organisations, such as businesses, charities and campaign groups create a lot of records relating to their activities. Such activities usually include administration, project planning, accounting, staff management, promotion and publicity. Other activities relating to the core purpose and ethos of an organisation will also be documented in records.

Similarly, large landed estate holding families create a vast number of records. They do this in the course of managing various aspects of the estate, such as land transfers and sales, rentals, extent surveys, staffing and household management. In addition, large volumes of personal records are created by such families, including correspondence between individual members or with friends and business acquaintances, photographs, scrapbooks, and household recipe books.

If financially and administratively able, private organisations might create their own archive repository, rather than depositing their records with a local record office or special interest repository.

Key focus: Local and national, subject coverage determined by educational and research specialties of individual universities, and includes operation of higher education institutions

As the core function of universities is to provide higher education and undertake academic research, many universities have established their own archives and special collections departments to provide resources for students and academics undertaking research projects.

These departments collect and manage archive material relating to various subjects and individuals of relevance to teaching and research strands with which the university is engaged.

In addition, universities create their own records, which document their own activities and operations. Such records are also preserved alongside deposited research collections.

Key focus: record type specific, can cover any geographical area and subject

Records can be created on a wide range of support media. Traditional use of paper or parchment to record information poses very few problems for archivists charged with preserving and providing access to these materials.

Other types of support media pose more of a challenge. As an example, photographic material requires storage at temperatures colder than is required for paper and parchment based records. If an archive repository cannot create the correct storage conditions, the preservation of photographic materials cannot be guaranteed.

This is also true of film material. However, in addition to this challenge, specialist equipment is needed in order to access information stored on film. Such equipment can be expensive and hard for more general archive repositories to acquire.

Therefore, format based repositories have been established, in various instances, to manage and preserve materials with special requirements.

Key focus: subject specific, can cover any geographical area and record type

Rather than being founded to preserve the records or a particular organisation, type of organisation, or format of record, some archive repositories have been established with a core function of collecting, managing and providing access to material on specific subjects.

Such repositories are usually associated with museums founded to explore particular subjects, or special interest groups involved in raising awareness of a particular theme.

It is always worth searching to see if there exists an archive repository dedicated to the subject on which your research is based.