I honestly don’t know what to think about this. It’s interesting that the author of this article and David Kynaston, quoted, recognise that at bottom it’s a resourcing issue - which is an awareness that seemed conspicuous by its absence in the open letter.
I know nothing about any organisational politics, and I totally get historians’ concerns, but my personal Occam’s Razor when it comes to archive service changes is that it’s probably down to a lack of staff and money. Archives are always trying to do a lot with a little.
And personally if I had a collection where a large amount was closed pending a review my member of staff, all things being equal, I think I’d probably prioritise reviewing blocs of material in a managed way leading to regular releases.
It sounds like what they need is more staff. Pretty sure there was a harsh restructure there a couple of years ago and they have fewer people than they used to. It normally comes down to resources!
Sympathetic to the concerns of the historians, but yes, with limited resources at a national archive, the best approach is a strategic sharing of the rich content with as many people as possible, and supporting individual researchers where possible.
We need more, trained and adequately paid archivists to make materials universally available and not just by request/on a case-by-case basis.
