§ This statement should be
read in conjunction with the East Sussex and Brighton and Hove
Record Office Collections Development Policy.
§ Maintaining accurate
documentation of our archival holdings is a fundamental element of
the work of East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office. This
information forms two parts: information regarding acquisitions,
and the information contained in the catalogue. Both are collected
and stored using specialist archive
software.
§ East Sussex and Brighton
and Hove Record Office recognises that good documentation of its
holdings, through accessioning and cataloguing, is fundamental to
collections management, and to relationships with our donors,
depositors and users.
§ East Sussex and Brighton
and Hove Record Office works towards meeting international
standards and principles governing the creation of catalogues of
archives. It is committed to working with partners to adopt and
employ agreed standards of documentation which ensure maximum
interoperability and sharing of metadata.
§ An internal staff working
group regularly reviews all operational work with regards to
maintaining collections information. Procedural documentation for
accessioning and cataloguing is maintained by archive staff.
1.
Categories of
Acquisitions
1.1
All documents at East
Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office can be allocated to one
of six categories, based on the basis on which they are received.
Caterogies 1-5 are statutory. The power granted by the Local
Government (Records) Act 1962, on which the power to accept
documents in category 6 depends, is discretionary.
1
Public
Records – Public Records Act 1958 (includes records of HM
Coroners, the County Court, health authorities and hospitals,
magistrates’ courts and Quarter sessions).
2
Parish
Records – Parochial Registers and Records Measure
1978
3
Local
government and statutory bodies – Local Government Act
1972 (Borough and District
Councils, Brighton and Hove City Council, East Sussex County
Council – including records which are council property,
schools, Parish and Town Councils, river, waste and sewerage
authorities, Sussex Polic Authority, and other public
authorities).
4
Manorial
Records – Manorial Documents Rules 1926
5
Tithe
Records – Tithe Rules 1963
6
Estate,
family, community – Local Government (Records) Act
1962 (includes charities,
clubs/societies/associations, estate and family archives, business
records, non-Church of England religions (non-conformist), private
schools (non-East Sussex County Council/Brighton & Hove City
Council), solicitors records and property title deeds).
There is a
degree of overlap between categories 4 and 6.
1.2
Documents acquired by gift or purchase, and which consequently
become the property of ESCC rather than of a third-party depositor,
will then be deemed to form part of Category 3.
2.1
Recording the
provenance of material donated to East Sussex and Brighton and Hove
Record Office is a crucial part of our activities. Using the
Accession component of the CALM cataloguing software, we record
details of every accession, distinguishing gifts, purchases,
bequests and deposits on loan. We include a preliminary indication
of the scope, content and creation dates of the material, its legal
status and any restrictions on custody or access. Deposits received
under the Parochial Registers and Records Measure 1978, Public
Records Act 1958 and Manorial Document Rules 1926 are distinguished
in this system.
2.2
The CALM
accessions database holds details of all accessions since ACC 8001,
received on 2 November 1999. Between 1991 and 1999 similar data is
held in annual MS Word files; before 1991 it is contained in the
office’s paper accession registers. In addition, the CALM
database includes all deposits which remain listed under their ACC
number, a further 1170 accessions.
2.3
Hard copy
accession registers began to be maintained in 1950, continued in
parallel to the CALM database from 1999, and since 2013 have
remained in use to house forms of agreement to our Terms and
Conditions for the Acceptance of Archives (Depositor
form).
2.4
Signed copies
of the Terms form are now scanned and saved to the network, and
physical copies are filed in the Archivists’
office.
2.5
All new
accessions are allocated an Accession Reference Number: ACC. This
number is determined as the next available number on the Current
Accessions spreadsheet, where basic information about the accession
is recorded.
2.6
Prior to 2012,
transfers of records of East Sussex County Council from East Sussex
County Council Record Centre were not assigned accession numbers,
but since that time such records have been allocated ACC numbers
for the purposes of maintaining accurate accession records,
statistics and physical control.
2.7
On receipt of
deposits/donations from private depositors (principally Category 6
material), a copy of the Depositor’s form, outlining the
Terms and Conditions for the Acceptance of Archives, will be signed
by the depositor/donor and the receiving archivist. A copy will be
held internally, as above and in accordance with the General Data
Protection Regulation, and a copy will be given to the
depositor/donor. The ‘ACC’ number will be shared with
depositors/donors.
2.8
Integral to the
accessioning process is the management of information relating to
the source of the material. This is held in the same formats as set
out at 2.2-3 above. Contact names and addresses of pre-1999
depositors are held in the paper accession registers, in an index
to those registers, and in the office’s filing
system.
2.9
Details of the
sources of accessions are not available to the public, and we will
not share the personal details of depositors with third parties
without consent. Old paper lists may contain personal data, but
these documents are not publicly accessible.
3.1
In 2023 East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office acquired
Preservica to manage its collections of digitised material and born
digital deposits.
3.2
Digital accessions are processed in the same way as physical
accessions, are given an ACC reference number and are recorded in
the accessions database in CALM.
3.3
Digital deposits are usually transferred via Preservica’s
Submissions Tool (this is preferable for East Sussex County
Council), or file sharing sites such as WeTransfer. East Sussex
County Council does not permit the use of external hard drives or
USB sticks on East Sussex County Council networked
terminals.
3.4
East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office will keep two
copies of digital files, maintaining the East Sussex County Council
drive ‘Team Data’>’Scanned Docs’ as
back-up for files that are ingested into Preservica.
3.5
East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office’s Digital
Collections Policy and other working documents can be found on the
network, and where relevant are published online.
4.1
Standard terms
of deposit have been used by East Sussex and Brighton and Hove
Record Office since 1997. They can be adjusted in certain aspects
by negotiation.
4.2
Terms and
Conditions for the Acceptance of Archives (otherwise known as the
‘Depositors form’) are signed by anyone depositing or
donating archives to East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record
Office. As of late 2024, this form includes provisions for digital
deposits and donations, and covers public access provision for the
material. These signed forms are retained as part of the official
record of accession (see 2.3-2.4 above). Forms can be accepted via
email.
5.1
Material from
private individuals, societies, groups, clubs, businesses, families
and others that generally constitute a ‘Category 6’
accession, with either be Deposited (Loaned) or Donated (Gifted) to
East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office. Deposited
collections will remain the property of the Depositor, whilst a
Donated collection (a ‘Gift’) will become the property
of East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office on
accession.
5.2
‘Depositor’ is an interchangeable term used by East
Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office to refer to any
individual, group or organisation from whom we acquire material.
The term ‘Donor’ however, will only apply to those who
have Donated/Gifted their material to East Sussex and Brighton and
Hove Record Office.
5.3 Every
encouragement is given to private owners to donate, rather than
deposit, their material.
5.4 We seek to
acquire all relevant information regarding a collection that owners
can supply. In the case of deposits, we stress that transfer to
East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office is a two-way
process, and that changes in ownership, whether brought about by
inheritance or sale, need to be communicated to us if we are to
maintain an accurate record of our holdings.
5.5 In the
context of East Sussex County Council’s statutory
responsibilities, deposited or donated material may be accepted but
may also inclur charges for processing and storage (see Collections
Development Policy).
5.6 Documents
received from other former record-keeping institutions, chiefly the
Sussex Archaeological Society and Hastings Museum, are accessioned
as from their original depositors with the immediate transferor
regarded as an intermediary, other than in cases where it can be
demonstrated that ownership has passed to the
transferor.
5.7 In order to
retain archives in the public domain, East Sussex and Brighton and
Hove Record Office has a purchase policy made possible by the
generosity of the Friends of East Sussex Record Office, now (since
2014) the Friends of The Keep Archive (FoTKA). FoTKA will be asked
to contribute to any necessary conservation costs arising from such
purchases.
6.1
Cataloguing the
material withinEast Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record
Office’s custody is essential to enable staff to manage the
material effectively and to facilitate public access.
6.2
All new
cataloguing conforms to current professional standards, namely the
principles and mandatory elementsof the General International
Standardof Archival Description (ISAD(G)), and the requirements of
East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office’s CALM
database and online catalogue. East Sussex and Brighton
and Hove Record Office maintains current Cataloguing Guidelines and
a Style Guide, both of which are made available to staff and
volunteers cataloguing collections.
6.3
Born digital
material is also catalogued into CALM following the same standards
as physical records.
6.4
Older
catalogues may not meet current standards. Work will continue,
largely with volunteer support, to enhance these
descriptions.
6.5
Cataloguing is
carried out either directlyin the CALM database or by means of
imports from Excel spreadsheets. Once the documents have been
‘homed’in the repository, the catalogue(s) are uploaded
via Orangeleaf’s CollectionsBase to The Keep’s online
catalogue on the website, which is shared with other partners in
The Keep.
6.6
Hard copy
catalogues are no longerproduced, but those which exist, along with
some card indexes, will be retained for public use until demand for
them no longer exists. These can be found in the Reference Room at
The Keep.
6.7
Less than 1% of
East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office’s holdings
are unlisted, awaiting cataloguing.
6.8
East Sussex and
Brighton and Hove Record Office aims to catalogue in detail to file
level to improve accessibility to our holdings through our online
catalogue and make best use of frontline resources. Where
appropriate, we use volunteers to catalogue discretionary
(non-statutory) accessions, or to help us to create more detailed
catalogue entries of any existing collection through item level
descriptions (for example, the names of witnesses and the probate
values of wills, or listing individual photographs in an
album).
7.
Priorities
7.1
East Sussex and
Brighton and Hove Record Office works within the scope of its
statutory duties and the resources available to deliver them.
Priority is given to the acquisition and processing of statutory
and non-discretionary material, Cateogories 1-5 in 1.1
above.
7.2
Several factors
will be considered when prioritising accessions for
cataloguing:
7.1.1
Accession
Category: Priority will be given to Categories 1-5.
7.1.2
If the
accession is likely to be in immediate demand by the
public.
7.1.3
If the
accession is a grant-aided purchase for which the funder requires a
full catalogue.
7.1.4
If the age,
language or technical content of the material are sufficiently
difficult to make a detailed description by an archivist necessary
for its future use by the public.
7.3
Considerations
whichmight argue againstprioritising material for cataloguing
include:
7.3.1
How long the
documents are closed for public inspection.
7.3.2
If the
documents are unfit for production and require
conservation.
8.
Publicising new
accessions and existing holdings
8.1
Information
aboutnew accessions is shared with users in the following
ways:
8.1.1
Between 1978
and 2014 the county archivist’s Annual Report included
lists of accessions. These are catalogued and held in hard
copy.
8.1.2
Annual
accessionreports (where public
records have been acquired) are supplied to The
NationalArchives, and relevant material notified to the Manorial
Documents Register.
8.1.3
Noteworthy
accessions, some purchases, and noteworthy collections that have
recently been made accessible, are publicised in The Keep
newsletter (‘Keeping Up’) which is sent to subscribers.
The Keep also operates Instagram, X and Facebook accounts to
publicise our collections and services.
8.1.4
Catalogued
collections are searchable on our website. Since 2024, East Sussex
and Brighton and Hove Record Office has been making digital
material accessible via the online portal Universal Access.
Additions to this are publicised as above and linked to their
catalogue entry online.
