Chloe Anderson-Wheatley RMARA AMIRMS
Brief outline of career to date, experience and why the nominee is deserving of this award:
I am nominating Chloe Anderson-Wheatley for the Record Keeper of the Year award, to recognise the extensive contribution she has made to the archives and record keeping service for the Falkland Islands Government and to the wider ARA profession through her multiple professional activities. Over the past eighteen months Chloe has significantly raised the profile of the Island’s National Archives service, massively increasing local and international engagement and awareness with the collections, and has built new partnerships to the benefit of her service, the heritage of the Falkland Islands, and ARA’s international community.
Chloe first entered the profession as a teenage volunteer for the Jane Cameron National Archives in the Falkland Islands in 2012. From this she gained further practical experience in the UK alongside her studies, before completing her MA in Archives & Records Management from University College London in 2017 at the age of 21, fully funded on a Commonwealth Scholarship. Chloe returned to the Falkland Islands, spearheading the establishment of the records management function, formulating formal policies/procedures for the Falkland Islands Government (FIG) and leading to her being appointed as FIG’s first Records Manager in 2019. In 2023, following government restructure, Chloe was promoted to Corporate Records & National Archives Manager; overseeing both FIG’s corporate records management service and the Jane Cameron National Archives (JCNA).
As head of the newly created Department, Chloe‘s role extends from continuing to lead records management, to incorporate the National Archivist duties for the JCNA, covering both the day to day running of the service (collections care, maintenance of building, and provision of research) and its strategic development.
In the last eighteen months, Chloe has excelled in this all-encompassing senior position and achieved significant results leading forward several key developments for the service. Recruiting and line-managing the Records Management & Archives Support Officer to assist with routine activities, Chloe acted first to proactively employ and engage initiatives to raise the profile and showcase the value of the archives to one of its key and previously underutilised stakeholders, the local community. Over this period the JCNA transformed its external communications, reformatting and making its newsletter biannual since Jan 2024 , starting a mailing list and three social media accounts to keep the community better informed and target specific audiences. With the latter it has allowed the service to connect to the wider sector and along with other archive services, take part in wider campaigns such as #Archive30 and #ExploreYourArchive Week.
Internally, she achieved another milestone to implement practices that balance the local/national context of the organisation, with professional standards. For the JCNA, Chloe used her knowledge of the collections and stakeholders to reflect, form and gain approval for core policies, such as the Collections Development & Acquisition Policy. Alongside this she took steps to make the collections more accessible and usable to researchers, altering appointment hours and reformatting the catalogue information to better describe the extent and scope of its national collection. Recognising skills gaps in the team, she partnered with the JCNA with the UK National Conservation Service to support collections care to introduce formal environmental monitoring procedures. For corporate records management, she led her team’s cross government approach to work with departments to conduct the annual review of record retention schedules, restructure shared drive environments, monitor offsite storage records, and work with IT colleagues to develop specification list for an EDRMS to start transformation of FIG’s information management. All of this has been included in regular formal reporting mechanisms to the government’s senior management team and the politicians, reflecting not only a transparent approach but clear support and ongoing commitment for these initiatives.
With existing stakeholders, she has successfully used the archives as a tool to advocate and promote interest in the Island’s local heritage. In the past year, she has developed student guidance, provided in-class support and re-instated student tours of the archives on behalf of the Jane & Alastair Cameron Memorial Trust for their annual student history project; she worked with the national education service to offer for the first time, work experience placements to get younger generations involved and consider archives as a career. Having a focus on international partnerships and supporting research in Falkland material, Chloe has nurtured and created links with other archive services in Portsmouth, the University of Edinburgh and The National Archives UK to encourage information sharing.
Key achievements and impact of Chloe’s work within FIG for the Jane Cameron National Archives and records management include:
Leading outreach activities that have led to an increase of 250% in the number of accessions received annually, as well as an additional 50 research queries and 15 more research appointments each year
Actively promoting the JCNA profile and activities to get engagement from the local and international community with public tours of the Archives, promotional features in the local Falkland Islands Television and articles in FIA Newsletter and Explore Your Archives blog
Redeveloping the JCNA website to enhance user experience, navigation and searchability of material (including FAQs, external resources, and new pages) and digitising and making available over 800 items: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.fk/
Adapting the existing catalogue to fully implement ISAD(G) standard for describing and noting collections information, supporting the approach of new Collections Information Policy, Access Policy, and Collections Development and Acquisition Policy
Leading and facilitating work experience placement opportunities, over the past year hosting and developing projects for 5 local students and, internationally, a recently qualified Uruguayan Archivist
Leading Corporate Records Management Training Programme between 2023-2025 FY, training approx. 170 FIG employees across 9 subject specific sessions (data protection, offsite storage, file name conventions
In addition to her full-time role, Chloe has gone above and beyond, illustrating her ongoing commitment and engagement with the wider archival profession to support international information sharing and sector development. Since 2020 she has been involved with ARA by volunteering, and at various points acting as Chair for, the ARA Section for Archives and Museums [Chair 2022-2025], Section for Records Management and Information Governance [Chair 2023], and working with ARA Chief Executive and ARA Board to create the International Group [Chair 2024 – Present]. Through this work and in her current studies - undertaking a part-time PhD (since 2021) with University of Dundee – she has worked to advocate and educate her peers on international practices, sharing recordkeeping resources and leading ARA’s objectives.
Key achievements and impact of Chloe’s work with ARA and through her extra-curriculum activities include:
Establishing, launching and setting the direction for the ARA International Group [Established 2024], expanding the offer provided by ARA to provide a forum and represent UK or Irish recordkeeping professionals working overseas, and for overseas recordkeeping professionals working to UK or Irish standards. This included appointing and working with the Committee to develop a programme to facilitate exchange of shared experiences and international practice. She worked with her team to successful gain a presence at 2025 ARA Conference for a presentation on ‘Forming International Connections’. https://www.archives.org.uk/international-group
Leading progress and sector wide consultation for ARA SAM’s Glossary Project – to map common and shared terminology between archives and museum sector – which included survey in 2024 and working with professionals in the SAM Glossary Project Working Group https://aramuseums.wordpress.com/glossary-project-working-group/
Facilitating and promoting training programmes with ARA Groups to share practice, including: ‘In Conversation: Around the World In Oral History’, and ‘Collections Emergency Planning & Response’.
Contributing several articles to the ARC Magazine about experiences working in an international setting, ‘The Jane Cameron National Archives: Challenges and Opportunities of being Geographically Isolated’, ‘ARA International Group Update’
Presenting at Dundee Humanities PhD Conference in 2023 and 2024, sharing practices on qualitative research and speaking about her archival research at the Jane Cameron National Archives
Overall, I am nominating Chloe not just for one singular achievement, but to recognise the numerous and extensive ways she has contributed her knowledge, experience and time to the benefit of the Falkland Islands Government and to wider professional sector over the past eighteen months. Despite working in an isolated location as the only qualified recordkeeper, Chloe has not shied away from the unique opportunities to effect change in her organisation or interact with ARA. She has evolved how the Island’s national archives services engages and educates the local community about the value of its collections, increased accessibility and use of the service, and drove forward professional improvements. This year’s ARA Conference is about Innovation and Imagination: Chloe has driven forward exchanges of information, new partnerships, and is an example of an international and all-round recordkeeper.
Attached supporting evidence:
Testimonials from colleagues/peers
Compliments recorded for the service
Annual reports for the JCNA 2023-2024 and 2024-2025