PRO 711996-2001Archive Inspection Services Unit: Archival Mapping of Places of Deposit in England and Wales: Projects, datasets
The Archival Mapping of Places of Deposit in England and Wales: Projects datasets encompass the three archival mapping exercises which were undertaken during the period 1997 to 2001. These were the English Archival Mapping Project (Phase 1), the Archival Mapping Project for Wales and the English Archival Mapping Project (Phase 2). The data within each dataset largely corresponds with the content and composition of the questionnaires that were issued to the individual archival Places of Deposit (PoD). In addition to the main mapping project questionnaires, a separately compiled out stores questionnaire was also issued to PoDs.
The mapping projects requested information about the following key areas:
Accommodation and storage;
Public access and services;
Preservation and conservation;
Finding aids and reference services;
Information and communications technology;
Electronic records;
Training and development.
For every mapping exercise, each archive was allocated a statistical score according to the returned questionnaire information. This facilitated the national, regional and inter-regional comparisons of services and facilities and provided an indication of where services were managing well and where improvements could be made. Individual participating record offices received copies of their own scores to assist their work on the development of regional archival strategies. In each case, however, no league tables or ranks of results were published for any purpose. The mapping projects were initiated to enable the archive sector to identify funding needs throughout England and Wales and to alert funding bodies to specific regions and areas of provision.
An extensive amount of dataset documentation was transferred to and retained by NDAD as the mapping projects largely focused upon the production of scoring bands and the compilation of graphical representations to indicate and compare levels of service provision. The many graphs and comparative analysis (largely displayed via Excel spreadsheets) were compiled by the creating agency to be an effective visual aid to the presentation of general data and are considered equal in research value to the datasets themselves.
The datasets in this series are available to download. Links to individual datasets can be found at piece level.
The National Archives
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