serious changes of opening hours at the NRO

[PrawnCocktail]

Not even sure this meets the legal minimum. They're supposed to "to take account of the needs of their users" - and this surely doesn't.

 

[BumbleB]

OK - donation    But I did sign.  We can't lose access to Archives.

[PrawnCocktail]

Bumblebee - thank you. (Not that  it's my petition - it isn't)

I have never been asked for a penny by Change.org, but maybe that's because I joined it years ago on Facebook.

This isn't of course about just the NRO, if they get away with this, there will be other Record Offices that will follow them!

[Jomot]

This isn't of course about just the NRO, if they get away with this, there will be other Record Offices that will follow them!

You're not wrong there!   Petition signed.

[Redroger]

Lincolnshire came up with a different solution, everything on a site: Lincs to the past, which has its own problems, though could be a brilliant resource. I am surprised that Lincolnshire archive has not made major cuts to their opening hours. I wonder what the Association of County Councils attitude is to this situation?

[PrawnCocktail]

The further statement is now available:

"Thank you to everyone for taking the time to share your comments with us. We hope the statement below will explain the reasons for the changes.

STATEMENT ON ARCHIVES AND HERITAGE SERVICE OPENING HOURS

The County Council is responsible for making sure that limited and reducing local government resources are used as effectively as possible. In the current financial climate, it has no option but to look at how best to remodel service delivery with reduced budgets.

The Archives Service changes to opening hours that will be implemented from 21 August show a commitment to maintaining free public access to archives. The service will continue to be free for on-site visitors from 9am to 1pm Tuesday to Thursday and one Saturday morning each month.

Customers have said that they most need and want online access to resources; numbers visiting the service in person have fallen dramatically in the past two years. This has been taken into account in this revision to opening hours and the intention is that outside the core opening hours, the service’s limited staff resources will be redirected to the work of digitisation and developing on-line access to archives.

In order to mitigate the impact on research of the changes, the service has in fact extended the times during which people can choose to visit. These additional hours are chargeable but are offered in order to support researchers and not otherwise.

This is a bold step in difficult times and we seek your support as we work to ensure that researchers can enjoy and learn from our rich collections now and into the future."

And
"£31.50 per hour is our standard rate for dedicated staff time"

However, most of us don't need "dedicated staff time". We just need access, and records produced. And at least one full day per week, to allow for extensive research.

Petition now up to 363 signatures.

[smudwhisk]

Has anyone noticed that the original statement on Monday said one Saturday per month between April and October 9am-4pm but now they are saying it is only the morning on one Saturday?

I wouldn't mind if they had done what they originally said with Ancestry and digitised the original pre1813 registers instead of the microfiche.  Some not surprisingly are not very readable form the fiche.  And originally they announced they agreement included Wills too but that has been axed as they recently responded on a Facebook post that they were looking into this.  What a mess.

[Redroger]

£31.50 per hour no doubt leaves an ample margin of profit for Northamptonshire CC, as few if any of their staff apart from the Chief Executive would be on that type of salary, despite silly rumours to the contrary. As I said in my first post, this is purely and they now admit to mitigate the effects of central government cuts.

[mgeneas]

Smudwisk mentioned wills. They were microfilmed by the LDS back in 1958 and have been available to order and view in Family History Centres. With their new digitization programme many are already available to view as images online at FH Centres.

Here is the link to the catalogue entry for original wills pre 1858, those with the camera icon are already digitized.
Northampton Court
https://familysearch.org/search/catalog/350023?availability=Family%20History%20Library

Peterborough Court
https://familysearch.org/search/catalog/350346?availability=Family%20History%20Library