Just over six months ago businesses, schools and other places of work shut their doors. None of us knew what to expect. At Northumberland Archives we spent the week before lockdown doing our best to make sure that we could carry on working. We took laptops home, divided up responsibility for tasks and updated our website and social media.
Although the archives at Woodhorn and Berwick were closed to the public, staff were busy at home. Between March and September archive assistants worked on preparing catalogues that were only available in paper format, so that they could be included on our digital catalogue. Members of the reprographics team had the opportunity to develop our digital preservation system (basically an archive for digital files of all sorts) and to add digital images of parish registers to our Reading Room computers. We’ve also been working on an education project which will provide archival resources and activities on a specially designed section of our website.
In addition, there have been video meetings, contributions to this blog (including a really fascinating series about folklore in Northumberland) and lots of posts on social media. All in all, we used lockdown as an opportunity to get the sort of things done that have always been on our wishlist, but which often take a necessary second place to running a busy public service.
Six months later and we are about to open our doors once again. It is an exciting time for us, but has taken a massive amount of planning. Risk assessments have been done for each member of staff and for the buildings. Staff have all had an induction so that they are all familiar with the new COVID restrictions at work. Social distancing means that offices and the searchrooms have been rearranged. Rooms each have a maximum capacity so the number of researchers that can visit us each day is limited, as is the number of staff that can be on hand.
Across the County Council, the staff who are being allowed back into workspaces are being arranged into “Bubbles” (a small group that works together). At Woodhorn we’ve divided the archives staff into two Bubbles (there’s fewer at Berwick, so they make up one Bubble). Each Bubble works for half the week in the office; the staff on duty on a Wednesday will be different from the staff working on a Thursday. Unfortunately, this does mean that some of our services take a little longer than they used to, but we hope that users will understand that this has been introduced to help protect staff and researchers once we open.
As well as reorganizing buildings, furniture and staff, we’ve had to rethink the way that we do things at the archives. We decided that we should limit the items that are passed between staff to researchers – when you start thinking about a “normal” visit to the archives you realise how often that happens!
The first thing that most people do when they come to visit us is fill in a registration card and the visitors’ book. That will be done online now at https://archivescard.com/ . We also won’t be lending paper, pencils or magnifying glasses. In the past, we’ve also lent out tokens to lock bags and coats away. We will still be asking researcher to use the lockers, but the tokens will be in the lockers at the beginning of each research session. If you want a copy of a document after your visit, we’ll be asking you to fill in a form as usual, but to leave it in a plastic wallet on your desk, which we can wipe down.
We also have to quarantine the documents before and after they are used in the searchroom for 72 hours. That might sound simple, but actually involves a lot of work behind the scenes. Documents have to be retrieved well in advance and boxes marked up to show that they are not to be opened again until quarantine is over. We also have to talk to researchers before they visit about what they need to see so that we can make sure that we get it right and so that the researchers can make the most of their visit.
A visit to the archives at Woodhorn or Berwick might not be quite like it was before lockdown, but we are very much looking forward to welcoming the public back and safely sharing the documentary heritage of Northumberland with them.  Â
