Transport for London Corporate Archives

7 Jun

Name of nominated conservation, archive or records management service/team nominated for Record Keeping Service of the Year 2022 : Transport for London Corporate Archives

From the Nomination Form:

Reasons for nomination:

TfL Corporate Archives is a dedicated service within the Information Governance department of Transport for London, with a team of 4 permanent staff supplemented by volunteers and placements.

All funding comes from the general corporate services fund issued from the government to TfL. For the past 18 months this has meant no extra budget, a constant emphasis on cost savings and a recruitment freeze – all terms of the government funding deals for TfL. As our Cataloguing Archivist left for a new position elsewhere in September 2021, this left us unable to recruit for a replacement and depleted our staff numbers to 3, 1 of whom is not an Archivist.

The pandemic hit us in the middle of an office move. From March 2021, this became a real challenge. User expectation was that the service would begin to re-open in line with more general return to the office patterns and the opening of archive services across the UK. We were unable to do this as we did not have a facility. We have therefore spent the past 18 months keeping users as informed as possible whilst juggling continually changing timelines. We have designed a new service model to enable us to now deliver an on-site service whilst balancing hybrid working, reduced on-site storage space, a reduced workforce, and the desire to prioritise those who have been waiting since 2020.

Prior to Covid-19, enquiries to the Archives service had increased by 130% since 2010-2011 and visits by 198%. Having no direct access to any social media channels and with limited ability to change our webpages, we have had to work especially hard to not lose our profile.

The prolonged work from home period and service closure gave us the opportunity to focus on our digital work and take on or enhance other areas of work. During the past 18 months we have put in a lot of planning to be able to re-introduce our on-site services, deal with the anticipated pick-up in enquiries, determine new ways of processing acquisitions due to reduced storage space, and re-introduce our regular work with physical records, whilst not completely losing the new work streams that we developed in 2020. Our new forward plan is indicative of this and also takes into account the need to meet the increased expectation of users (and our desire for them) to be able to access our resources remotely, which has been accelerated due to Covid-19. We continue to find ways to balance the resources available to cope with this demand. And at all times the quality of the collections, the continuing expansion of the collections, and the preservation of the collections are paramount.

In addition to all the above and other regular archival and service work, the past 18 months have seen these key deliveries:

1. Continual sharing of experiences and knowledge with peers

TfL Corporate Archives always make themselves available for 1:1 or more formal experience and knowledge sharing across all levels of the archives and RM profession. In the past 18 months we have:

Delivered 2 training sessions as part of the UCL Archives and RM course (Oct 2021 and Feb 2022)
Delivered a workshop on advocacy at the ARA Conference
Assisted 2 MA students with their dissertations
Presented at the USA Council of State Archivists Best Practices Exchange Conference (May 2021)
Had informal knowledge sharing sessions with Network Rail and Crossrail
Contributed to the Land Transport Archives Network (Mar 2021)
Provided case study examples and opinion for AURA Network’s Archival Science special issue journal (May 2021)
Presented at Digital Preservation 101 Workshop run by ARA/IRMS/Preservica (Jan 2022)
Panellist for Preparing for the Future workshop run by ARA/IRMS/Preservica (Apr 2022)
Provided case study examples for TNA report on Exploring FOI Issues for Public Authority Archives (Mar 2022)
Delivered session on Archives and Power to University of Essex Modern History students (Feb 2022)
Will be presenting at DAMFest 2022

2. Development of remote training opportunities

Recognised that continued closure of archives services UK-wide and reduction in staff time on site was resulting in a lack of pre-course training and experience opportunities for those interested in a career in archives
Designed and developed a modular based method of delivering remote placement and trainee opportunities. To date, 17 individuals have undertaken modules on the scheme and we have a further 3 signed up to commence in June.
Delivery of remote opportunities extended to our existing volunteers with a Sharepoint site established for them to undertake transcription, exhibition preparation work and more whilst they were unable to attend the office. We felt this was particularly important from a wellbeing and sense of being valued perspective

3. Digital Collections Online Portal, with formal feedback to software developer

Undertook intensive series of user testing sessions to gather feedback on our digital collections portal prior to launch
Feedback fed into immediate improvements
Feedback delivered in presentation and report form to software developers to assist in improving product for other archives services
Portal soft launched April 2022
Created series of demonstration videos to accompany the portal, which we happily share with other archive services to assist in putting similar things together
Focus on as much inclusion and accessibility as possible

4. Development of public virtual outreach programme

Initiated programme of public webinars in Oct 2021
Programme incorporates theme based sessions, national events, professional interest sessions, and user focused sessions
Sessions held at variety of times to facilitate participation
11 sessions run to date, reaching a combined audience of 422 people
First team within TfL to secure a regular livestream on TfL social media channels (from Apr 2022)
2 livestreams to date across 3 platforms, reaching a combined audience of 11,336 people
Working throughout 2021 and 2022 on launching images online and a collection of ‘stories’ via Google Arts and Culture. Due to go live in July 2022 with over 1,000 images and 51 stories
Working on own section on MadebyTfL blog to be launched in Aug 2022. Since Mar 2022, 4 blog pieces have been written with a further 2 in preparation

5. Implemented project with U3A

Thoroughly researched and pilot tested transcription and indexing project launched in Jan 2022
Providing new access points, enhanced catalogue descriptions and a form of complete remote access to 17 volumes of 19th and 20th century minutes (c.1,000 meetings)
55 participants
4 introductory training and familiarisation sessions hosted plus 3 feedback
Videos of all sessions uploaded to SharePoint, new site structure document created, video on use of track changes

6. Commitment to improved accessibility of our resources, promoting equality and inclusion

Successful in securing full transition of 1 member of TfL Schools Team to transfer permanently to the Archives to become a new Accessibility and Data Visualisation Officer (Mar 2021)
New role has remit to perform accessibility appraisals of legacy resources and act as the accessibility lead for the team; advise on and implement developments and improvements in technology that can assist both process efficiency and accessibility; transform static data into visual aids and apply established design techniques and accessibility requirements to the visualisations
New role shows a concrete commitment to accessibility
Team member acts as Vice-Chair of the Staff Network Group for Disability
Work undertaken for the Staff Network Group for Disability to mark International Day of Persons with Disabilities in Dec 2021, published internally and externally
Digital workshop run with students of Treloars Special Education College to provide them with access to original content about disability history and help them with their own project research into transport in London (Jan 2022)

7. Partner in DiAGRAM project

Participated in workshops for design of model and building of data inputs
Contributed section to DiAGRAM article in the Archives and Records Journal (May 2021)

8. In-house advocacy for service

In Feb 2021, established regular lunchtime sessions by our wider Information Governance department that are open to all of TfL. An Archives team member acts as the chair and facilitator for these
Lunchtime sessions are recorded resulting in a resource bank for the business
Minimum 4 sessions per year dedicated to disseminating news about the Archives service
Deliver sessions at other team meetings. In the past 18 months we have talked to the following teams: Corporate Environment, Data Analytics, Analysts Conference, Schools, London Transport Museum, Document Management Strategy, Road Asset Management, Road Charging
In Apr 2020 implemented a year long Yammer campaign #lockdownpositivity to ensure presence of the service remained felt and to assist in wellbeing of TfL staff. Until Apr 2021, there was a different positivity post 7 days per week offering activities, stories, the chance to learn new skills, and the chance to contribute to the collections. We received an internal award for the campaign and continued to run monthly themed campaigns throughout 2021 and 2022

9. Increasing amount of open material

Undertaken review of all records closed for 100 years. This has resulted in over 50% of these records being re-classified as either fully or partially open
Overall number of records open to the public has increased by 2% since Mar 2021
Digital Portal has enabled access to 4.3TB of material

10. Opened new, highly visible facility

Major design work for new facility had to be undertaken remotely during 2021
New facility is located in the reception area of a TfL headquarters building and has very visible branding
New space encourages interaction with the Archives team
Only team within TfL to have a public fronted, dedicated space in a headquarters building

Supporting evidence of service delivery excellence (list and attach all/any reports, images, testimony, URLs etc.):

Remote Training Opportunities

Attachments:

1. Remote Module Examples 1

2. Remote Module Examples 2

3. Remote Module Examples 3

4. Remote Module Examples 4

5. Remote Module Examples 5

6. Sharepoint Site Homepage

7. Volunteer Testimonials

Digital Collections Online

URL’s: