Sally Mcinnes

Name of Nominee for Record Keeper of the Year Award 2022: Sally Mcinnes

From the Nomination Form:

Brief outline of career to date, experience and why the nominee is deserving of this award:

Introduction: Sally is the Head of Unique and Contemporary Content at the National Library of Wales (NLW). She gained the Diploma in Archive Administration from Aberystwyth University in 1988 and an MPhil for her research on records management in the context of change, also from Aberystwyth, in 1999. Having gained pre-course experience in Bristol Record office, her first professional post was as Assistant Archivist in Carmarthenshire Archives in 1988, following which she joined the National Library of Wales in 1989. She has had several roles within the library, currently being responsible for the collection and conservation of its unique collections.

Sally has been engaged with the profession from the beginning of her career. She was instrumental in setting up the Wales Region of the then Society of Archivists in 1994 and became Wales’s first Regional Representative. For more than a decade, she has made a sustained and significant contribution to the profession in Wales, the UK and internationally, playing a major role in professional bodies, including:

  • Chair, Archives and Records Association, Wales Region, 2008-13

  • Chair, Archives and Records Council Wales Digital Preservation Group, 2013-

  • Advisory Board member of the Digital Preservation Coalition, 2013-

  • Member of the Heads of Conservation and Science Group, 2015-

  • Joint Chair WHELF Archives and Special Collections Group, 2015-2019

  • Secretary, Archives and Records Council Wales, 2018-

Reason for nomination: Sally is deserving of this award principally for the work that she has undertaken to support digital preservation capacity across Wales. Since creating the first policy on preserving electronic records for the NLW in 2000, she has been a staunch advocate for digital preservation. As Chair of the Archives and Records Council Wales Digital Preservation Group and a member of the Digital Preservation Coalition Advisory Board, she has actively supported digital preservation within Wales and beyond. She developed Kickstart Cymru in 2021 to further advocate for digital preservation by exploiting the networking opportunities afforded by the widespread shift to digital technologies. Kickstart Cymru involves three distinct elements: the Saving the Bits training programme, which was open to organisations throughout Wales; an interactive Digital Deposit Co- creation session with students at Aberystwyth University and the provision of Start Up Bundles of equipment to enable local authority services to set up workstations to support digital preservation actions.

The Saving the Bits training programme, which was delivered between June and December 2021, built on the on-going work of the National Library of Wales in securing sustainable access to digital content In Wales. The programme, designed by Sally, was underpinned by work undertaken by the National Archives and the Digital Preservation Coalition, but was innovative in the way it combined theoretical and practical issues, making reference to existing models, tools and workflows. Taking advantage of new technologies, these sessions were both readily accessible and interactive, using presentations, live demonstrations, and breakout discussions. Topics included setting up a workstation, selecting tools, methods of transfer, storage options, IIIF and Crowdsourcing. NLW uses Archivematica as a digital preservation system, but Sally was aware that this was not the case for everyone, so alternative methods were provided for undertaking digital preservation actions, both through using Archivematica and through a standalone method.

Sally was joined by colleagues in NLW to deliver training on areas in which they had specialist knowledge. The Teams Chat function was used to engage with the audience and to respond to questions. Over 100 attendees, representing nineteen organisations from the cultural, education and public services in Wales, joined the six sessions overall. The resources to support the sessions have been published on the Archives Wales website thus creating a resource both for those who attended the training and for others in the future (https://archives.wales/staff-toolkit/saving-the- bits-programme/). They include downloadable resources, such as lists of software, audit templates, digital accession forms and videos of the workflows and processes to ensure reliable and sustainable content. A blog of the work was also published on the Digital Preservation Coalition website in May 2021: https://www.dpconline.org/blog/teaming-up-to-save-the-bits

The Digital Deposit Co-creation session with students from Aberystwyth University was designed by Sally with two aims. The first was to respond to an internal NLW need to improve documentation for digital transfer of reliable, complete and preservable content to the Library. The second was to provide Information and Library Studies postgraduate students with practical skills in digital preservation ingest principles. During the session, the 17 students were asked to create transfer packages of data to transfer securely to the Library; to complete the newly designed digital transfer form; and to ensure that there was sufficient metadata created for management and preservation. Feedback provided by the students concerning the useability of the form and the transfer process was analysed by the Library and the process was improved as a result. Following the session, a video of the workflow was created and made available to the students on Blackboard for future reference.

One of the principal recommendations of the Saving the Bits training programme was the establishment of a standalone workstation, which was independent of a networked system. This would ensure that data transferred to a repository from an external source could be checked for viruses and processed appropriately. Many of the organisations represented at the training sessions did not have the appropriate equipment to do this, so Sally submitted a successful application to Welsh Government for capital funding to enable the procurement of Digital Preservation Start Up Bundles. These Bundles comprise standalone computers loaded with the appropriate software tools and hardware, including write blockers, to ensure data integrity and preservation. These Bundles have now been procured and are being distributed to all the local authority services in Wales, so that they have the equipment to preserve the digital heritage now and in the future.

As well as the Kickstart Cymru programme, Sally has taken a leading role in other recent initiatives which support record keeping in Wales. These include the Records at Risk project, (https://archives.wales/records-at-risk/) which provides information about identifying and rescuing archives and records at risk among insolvent companies; the Wales Vital Information Project (https://archives.wales/staff-toolkit/the-welsh-vital-digital-information-project/) which brings together local authority archive services across Wales to look at ways of preserving born-digital Council material; and the soon to be published Diversity Toolkit, which is a guide for initiating activities to engage Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people with cultural institutions.

Conclusion: Sally’s enthusiastic support for recordkeeping in Wales is evidenced by the various roles that she has held and the activities that she has undertaken over many years. However, over the past 18 months, I strongly believe that Sally has made a significant and long-lasting contribution to the profession by ensuring that Wales has a robust and sustainable approach to the management and preservation of its records regardless of format. It is for this reason that I am nominating Sally for the award of Record Keeper of the Year, 2022.

NOMINATED BY:

Hayden Burns (professional colleague through my role as Chair of Archives and Records Council Wales) Archives Transformation Manager Carmarthenshire Archives

REFEREE:

Mary Ellis (professional colleague, and friend) Head of Archives and Libraries Development, Culture Division Economy, Treasury and Constitution Group 

You can find all nominees for ARA’s Excellence Awards here

You can vote here. Voting closes on 8th July 2022

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