Boards and advisory groups

The CEO and other directors of The National Archives meet annually with leaders of the leading British professional historical bodies:

• The British Academy
• The Historical Association
• The History of Parliament Trust
• The Institute for Historical Research
• The Royal Historical Society

The purpose of the meetings is to develop trust and understanding between The National Archives and our key academic stakeholders. They are occasions when we, together with the leaders of the academic historical associations, can share news and concerns about future developments, and can agree on the development of joint positions and activities to ensure the development of the archival services which underpin scholarly historical research in the UK.

The Departmental Whitley Council is a meeting between The National Archives’ senior managers and the three recognised trade unions. The council acts as a formal link between staff and management.

Meetings take place every three months and are attended by the Chief Executive and Keeper, the director of human resources and organisational development, representatives from the HR Department and elected members from the trade unions.

The Discovery Board considers proposals for:

• digitisation and cataloguing projects, including those with a volunteer component or externally-funded projects
• proposals for solutions to digital records challenges
• significant functional changes to Discovery

The board brings together the decision-making aspects which formerly belonged to a number of smaller boards; these other boards now handle the project management and ongoing monitoring of approved projects, formally reporting back to the Discovery Board by exception and in a formal report presented at the end of the year.

The board brings together experts from across The National Archives to review proposals and ensure that they are well-considered and take account of vital issues such as:

• data protection
• strategic fit and consideration of user needs
• financial viability
• impact on other projects

Membership of the board consists of senior records experts, technical development leads, cataloguing and digitisation specialists, research and user participation managers and public and commercial services department heads. It is chaired by the Commercial and Digital Director.

The board meets once every month.

See our cataloguing and digitisation updates for more information.

The Cataloguing Panel is a cross-departmental group of colleagues with oversight of The National Archives’ cataloguing programme. It reports to the Discovery Board.

The online catalogue presents the public inventory of our collections. Its purpose is to:

• Support transparency about and understanding of the collections by maintaining an authoritative dataset of accessioned records and the contexts in which they were originally created and used
• Enable use of the collections by allowing people to identify material of interest to them

Our cataloguing activity involves both creating new catalogue descriptions and improving existing ones. These additions and changes to the catalogue should reflect good practice by being accurate, clear and meaningful, enabling online searching and complying with standards.

The panel is responsible for:

• Maintaining an overview of the growth, maintenance and adequacy of catalogue content
• Monitoring project work to enhance the catalogue data for our existing collections and identifying where projects require additional support to meet their targets
• Sharing information between departments about new and upcoming physical and digital accessions
• Sharing information between departments about digitisation
• Providing expert input into the development of relevant policies and practices
• Advocating for best practice in cataloguing and data curation
• Reviewing user feedback on cataloguing initiatives

Suggestions for catalogue improvements

You can report an error or suggest an improvements directly from each description in Discovery, our catalogue.

The panel considers selection issues, including:

• revisions and updates to the records collection policy (PDF, 0.12Mb) and appraisal policy
• operational selection policies (new and substantially revised)
• appraisal reports (new and substantially revised)
• selection decisions which deviate from current policy
• collections where further advice is needed on whether to select
• termination of records series accrual and destruction of records under s.6
• deposit of records series to places of deposit under s.4(1) of the Public Records Act which raise policy issues
• transfers of records from The National Archives to places of deposit under s.4(3) of the Public Records Act
• offers of non-public records of historical significance
• records in unusual formats that are likely to cause preservation issues, be difficult to give access to or store

Selection decision tree

Under section 3 of the Public Records Act it is the responsibility of public records bodies to appraise their records and select those worthy of permanent preservation. The National Archives is responsible for coordinating and supervising this work and provides advice, guidance and training to departments on how to carry out appraisal and selection and what to select.

The decision process applies to both public records and to records offered to The National Archives under section 2(4)(h) of the Public Records Act.

documents

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Footnotes to the selection decision tree

1. Factors considered will include whether the records fall within The National Archives’ selection criteria, are of national/international significance, whether records are already held at The National Archives, resource implications for The National Archives and whether there is another suitable archive
2. Information on The National Archives’ selection criteria can be found in our selecting and transferring records pages
3. Some collections may have a specific research value. In cases where there is uncertainty concerning research value the view of the Records Decision Panel may be sought
4. Factors considered by the panel will include whether The National Archives has the capability to preserve the format, whether it can provide access and whether it has the resource to store and maintain the records. This will be weighed up against the archival (historical) value of the records
5. The National Archives may already hold the records, for example the records may have been previously transferred or captured via the web archiving programme. They may already be preserved at another archive, for example, published material may already be held by the British Library