Yesterday we sent out this briefing to all UK MPs and our press list. It is our response to calls for digitisation of adoption and care records. We believe there is a better - & much needed - solution to make these records more accessible to those that need them. #LongLostFamilies bit.ly/4mBqsxo

Why aren’t Police Records in England & Wales covered by the Public Records Act? We've been campaigning on this since 2012 - blog for more info: www.campaignforrecords.org/blog/why-arent-police-records-covered-by-the-public-records-act #publicaccountability of interest @andyburnham.bsky.social ?

During the #ARA2025 conference, the keynote speech was on multisensory archives. Rosie spent some time reaching into this box and describing what she could feel to colleagues!

Today we are celebrating Chloe’s win of ‘Record Keeper of the Year 2025’ awarded yesterday by the UK & Ireland Archives & Records Association! A very well-deserved win for our hard-working archivist! @arainternational.bsky.social @araukie.bsky.social @falklandsinuk.bsky.social

Last night at the #ARA2025 conference there was a gala dinner and awards ceremony. Huge congratulations to Gloucestershire Archives on winning Record-Keeping Service of the Year!

Next up Valentina Flex from the Gertrude Bell archive - starting her talk on embracing digital scholarship with a definition

Starting with a great sensory exercise from PurpleStarz to get us going this morning. Our description of this paper: glossy, clicky, paper #ARA2025

Final day of #ARA2025 has started with a truly inspiring keynote "Archives for All!" from purpleSTARS, all about multi sensory approaches to heritage collections. Something we should really incorporate a lot more of where possible and seek opportunities!

B8 Panel Session at #ARA2025 is focusing on ‘Life After Hanwell’, hosted by Elizabeth Stettler, Pedro Maximo Rocha, Rhiannon Griffiths and Richard Aitken

Going live soon! Join us for Forming International Connections at #ARA2025 Session D9 at 2:05 PM BST. Let’s talk about building a stronger global archives community. 🌍 #InternationalArchives #ARAConference

Why records surveys matter - Fiona Bourne from RCN sums it up record surveys = knowledge-organisational mapping, departmental analysis, records discovery, management, retention #ARA2025

The final day of #ARA2025 is underway, with Dr Kate Allen, Ajay Choksi, Samantha Walker and Victoria Stevens leading an interactive keynote: ‘Archives for All! A Multisensory Approach to Archive Collections’

Starting our 3rd keynote- with a panel from PurpleStarz doing a sensory exercise with this piece of paper: our 3 words for the mentimeter: glossy, clicky, paper#ARA2025

More Track B talks on Wednesday afternoon #ARA2025: ✂️ Laura Anderson talked about her experiences on ACTS 📚 Ann-Marie Miller & Chloe Tse discussed conserving mould damaged stationary bindings 🖌️ ‘Off the Wall’ with Shirley Jones, who was talking about collaborate training with wallpaper restorers

Wednesday afternoon wrapped up with a thought provoking workshop hosted by Ann Attwood, asking ‘What is archive conservation in 2025? #ARA2025

Fantastic to see all the winners receive their awards at the #ARAExcellenceAwards2025 - find out all about who won what here www.archives.org.uk/news/ara-exc...

Enjoying a dip in the conservation stream! These are favourite, can't do without and wish list kit #ARA2025 sewing machine, box maker, buffalo Koran spatula, magnets, cats whiskers, porcupine quills, hobo Bluetooth data loggers, large sheets of perspex (and Instagram - sorry Bluesky!)

Kits sat with each partner for a month for familiarisation and confidence building: not trying to fix everything at once, but to create support and experience #ARA2025

Oldham was an early user of the kit, setting up DAR and finally able to access born-digital material on hard drives blocked under IT policies #ARA2025

This is really practical and promising. (But if anyone's ever tried to manage files on a 1990s Plasmon Data Store, do let Jan know, that one is... going to take some time.) #ARA2025

Two papers this afternoon reinforce messages from earlier that there needs to be active intention to create genuine inclusively of archives & for the users of archives - looking at intergenerational practices as well as radical softness & "slow archives" speakers: Chloe Lee & Nella McNicol #ARA2025

The inspiration from day one of #ARA2025 is this slide and the idea that an empty shelf in an archive is a silent history. We were urged to be change-makers, to go out and find the missing records to give those silent histories a voice.

A sunny start to a second day at #ARA2025 and looking forward to to sessions all around outreach, engagement, and appraisal. Have tried to attend talks on AI as well to perhaps broaden my cynical mind a bit! 🌄

It’s Day 2 at #ARA2025! Great to have a conservation themed Keynote this morning from Professor Christina Young

I've made it to #ARA2025 and said hello to a few people, which is a good start. Sitting in on sessions in the big room (for Reasons) which means a lot of AI today.

One of the things that comes up at conferences is international perspectives you might not otherwise pick up. Hearing about the Czech National Archives' role across Czechia in digital preservation, drawing in records management transfers nationwide (born-digital only so far). #ARA2025

Day 2 of the ARA conference and our archivist Rosie has been busy attending talks on workplace transferable skills, trauma-informed approaches to support staff and AI solutions for indexing. She has another busy day today, we can't wait to hear more about it! #ARA2025

RM across public bodies is (still) based on MoReq which is recognised to be very rigid but otoh makes for highly structured SIPs in transfers from very diverse organisations. #ARA2025

Opportunities to develop further are coming with a full system redesign, looking at needs, desires, opportunities, more flexibility #ARA2025

And now RM and use of AI (potentially) in public hospitals in Tswane, if staff will implement. The context, in which RM is not taken seriously but is a key driver of why patients may experience long delays in treatment, is depressingly familiar #ARA2025

Another great keynote at #ARA2025 from Christina Young - creating accessibility- struck by effectiveness of literally opening up spaces- eg doing conservation in the public gallery etc

Just been in a great session with a strong theme of collaboration and co creation featuring speakers from Gloucestershire Archives, V&A and Institute of International Visual Art #ARA2025

Day 2 of #ARA2025 has kicked off with another great session of talks in the Track B: ✒️ Dr Paul Garside on ‘Treatment Decisions for Iron Gall Ink’ 🔌 HVAC group update with Amy Sampson and Sirpa Kutilainen 🖥️ Julie Bon on conservation metadata 🔗 mechanical strength of Asian adhesives by Jiwon Jeong

Liz Stettler holding some mouldy and really smelly paste during Jiwon Jeong's talk on the mechanical strength of four traditional Asian adhesives. #ARA2025

Fed and caffeinated, ready for the afternoon sessions. Heard some very interesting perspectives on barriers to accessibility when providing an archive service and the importance of 'radical imagination' in engagement work! #ARA2025

Wednesday afternoon at #ARA2025: Track B ‘Lighting the fire: securing conservation education for the future’ with panellists Victoria Stevens, Alexandra McGuire, Jasmine Hirst and Katie Proctor🔥

Now in a digital preservation session at #ARA2025 starting with Royal College of Nursing talking about kit vs culture in implementing active preservation. How to support digital transformation in an organisation that traditionally did records mgt by "give it to the archive to work out"?

(Or a total auto delete of everything older than 4 years as IT proposed when moving off shared drives 😱 #ARA2025)

The familiar story of extreme digital proliferation in the pandemic. But created an archives superuser group as well, getting some level of departmental support. It didn't necessarily endure over time. So what could come next? Preserve365 as a solution, maybe? Became early users. #ARA2025

P365 is basically labelling plug in allowing automated transfer from M365 to a digital archive. As early adopters, plenty of bugging but also advantages. Pilot on the archive's own old teams stuff was a good low-stakes option for quite a tricky initial start: be your own client first. #ARA2025

Streamlined transfer processes worked pretty well overall, able to create bulk accession records, dealing quickly with obsolete Sharepoint sites. But it's reliant on good file structures in those sites... which means tech is not the only issue. It's about culture and people. #ARA2025

Hoping to move to a more self-serve transfer approach alongside staff training, support and refreshed superuser programme. #ARA2025

Now onto National Library of Ireland, hearing updates on taking steps to implement their digital preservation policy. Liking the practical turn of this session, some useful case studies. #ARA2025

It's a standards-based approach in part because the teams involved are very mixed and you need a solid framework to apply across people with different experience and skills #ARA2025

There's also a strong focus on donor and depositor liaison, doing a lot of pre-transfer work, even some donors fully bagging material for transfer. Interesting to hear about increasing donor confidence here. Helps to preserve non-Latin characters and thus meaning of Irish language material #ARA2025

And they have got improvements in DPC RAM assessment into performance assessment, which is great work for an organisation improving incrementally. CTS next, maybe. #ARA2025

Using digital forensics tool experimentally to support appraisal. Early days, but promising to a point (and lots of functionality that won't be used, hmm) #ARA2025

Last talk in this session is shared Greater Manchester partnership work on practical digital preservation. An example of partnership with a central lead across multiple archive services. DP is currently top priority in partner plan #ARA2025

Created (with TNA resilience funding) shared travelling digital preservation kits: accessing redundant media, open source software, and partnership support with some central resources. #ARA2025

We had great fun wielding hair dryers to create Vivak temporary display stands in a fantastic workshop delivered by Victoria Stevens #ARA2025