Post deposit
This section of the toolkit provides practical advice on maintaining relationships with depositors, including renewing deposit agreements. It also encourages archive services to build long-term ethical and equitable partnerships with some depositors and shift the balance of power in terms of preservation and access.
- Maintaining relationships with depositors will help ensure you have up-to-date contact details and can make decisions about the management and access to the collection.
- Outline your approach to maintaining contact with depositors in your Collections Development Policy or Collections Information Policy.
- Tips for maintaining contact with depositors include ensuring they understand their responsibilities, inviting them to events, sending them service updates, acknowledging their contributions and keeping them informed about how their collection is being managed and used.
- When a deposit agreement ends, you should work with the depositor to consider whether you are still the right home for the collection and discuss options, including deposit renewal or donation.
- For some collections, consider taking a more collaborative approach with the depositor and develop a sustained partnership.
Maintaining relationships with depositors will help ensure you have up-to-date contact details and can make decisions about the management and access to the collection. Outline your approach to maintaining contact with depositors in your Collections Development Policy or Collections Information Policy. Tips for maintaining contact include:
- Clarity: Ensure depositors clearly understand their responsibilities for keeping the archive service updated on any changes to contact details or ownership (see our template). Ensure any changes in contact details are documented properly.
- Communication: Respond promptly to depositor enquiries and be open and clear. When depositors make temporary returns, it can be a good time to say hello, check contact details and ensure that agreements are up to date.
- Updates: Keep depositors informed about how their collection is being managed and used, and about any major changes at the archive service, such as new facilities or staff changes. For example, send them copies of your annual report or newsletters.
- Social media: Follow your depositors on social media and encourage them to follow your archive service’s social media accounts.
- Engagement: Invite depositors to general events, such as open days and exhibition previews.
- Recognition: Acknowledge the contribution of the depositor so they feel valued and engaged. For example, reference or cite them when using items from the collection in an exhibition or event.
- Monitoring: Keep an eye on the local and national press for any changes in a depositor’s circumstances, including insolvencies. If you hold a deposited archive collection for a business that becomes insolvent, contact the Insolvency Practitioner to explore turning the deposit into a donation. See The Business Archives Council for Scotland and Managing Business Archives website for advice on working with Insolvency Practitioners.
“Aim: depositors are kept informed as to how their collections are being used and why they are valued. This generates trust and supports long-term relationships as well as new offers of material. It also provides an important route for gathering collection information. Potential depositors may be more likely to offer material if there is a clear communications process which encourages depositor involvement beyond the point of accession.”
The National Archives (2013). Effective Communications: Raising the profile of your archive service. Reproduced using an Open Government Licence.
During accessioning, record the date on which the deposit agreement ends or will require renewal. For legacy collections, you may need to review documentation and agreements to determine the correct date. When a deposit agreement ends, you should work with the depositor to:
- Consider whether you are still the right home. Does it meet your Collections Development Policy? Might the collection be better suited at another archive service? For further information,seethe Scottish Council on Archives’ A Collecting Policy Framework for Scotland’s Archives and The National Archives’ The right home for your archives.
- Discuss options. These will include:
a) to depositor: Advice from The National Archives on how to communicate this to the depositor can be found below, but we also encourage services to undertake decisions collaboratively with the depositor in a clear, open and transparent way. It is also important to ensure you are returning the collection to the correct depositor or legal owner and that any conditions in the deposit agreement are met.
b) Withdrawal by depositor: The depositor may decide to withdraw the collection. We explore this in the Permanent withdrawals section in more detail.
c) Turn into a donation: Ask the depositor whether they are prepared to turn the deposit into a donation/gift. In some cases, they may offer it for purchase – we explore this in the Purchasing section in more detail.
d) Renew deposit agreement: If the archive service and the depositor both wish to renew, then check what the deposit agreement states about renewal. A written extension or amendment may be sufficient. However, if you do require or decide on a new deposit agreement, see the guidance in the Pre-deposit section.
If you are unable to make contact with a depositor because their contact details are incorrect, not up-to-date or the organisation no longer seems to exist, then it becomes an ‘abandoned deposit’. See the Abandoned deposits section for how to manage these.
“After the transfer of archives to another repository, this [Return to depositor or donor] is the next best option for disposal. Where a coherent deposit/donation agreement is in place the service should follow the process stated in this agreement. Where such an agreement is not in place the service should consider the impact on their reputation of returning unwanted items/collections to the donor. Correspondence sent to the donor should explain how the reappraisal/retrospective appraisal of the collection/item was carried out, the basis for the decision and how the disposal decision was reached. It is important to ensure that you exercise due diligence and take every reasonable step to trace owners. You should record steps taken to contact owners.”
The National Archives (2015). Deaccessioning and disposal: Guidance for archive services. Reproduced using an Open Government Licence.
In the Pre-deposit section of this toolkit, we discussed how, for some collections, the archive service should consider taking a more collaborative approach. This includes developing ethical and equitable relationships where responsibility for the care, use and interpretation of the collection is shared between the archive service and (or handed over to) the depositor or the community from which the collection originates. We discussed how to build trust and relationships. Following the deposit, you should continue to collaborate with the depositor and develop a sustained partnership.
What a sustained partnership will look like will emerge from your discussions with the depositor and its community, but it could include:
- Acquisition: Decisions about future acquisitions and collections development are made by the depositors and their community members.
- Cataloguing: Catalogues and indexes created by community members, using their preferred language.
- Exhibitions and events: Curated by community members, based on the collection.
- Digitisation: Decisions and priorities over digitisation led by community members.
- Recognition: Ensure that skills, knowledge and perspectives of community members are recognised. This should include remuneration where appropriate. Advocate for a dedicated budget for their time in core funding or grants applications to cover their time and expenses.
- Evaluation: Undertake evaluation, where the depositor and its community members can provide meaningful feedback.
“Community group interviewees reported feeling wary about collaborating with institutions they did not know because of the risk of being used in a tokenistic way. Some interviewees reported feeling exploited by heritage institutions who engaged with them sporadically and did not appear interested in meaningful or sustained relationships. One interviewee had taken part in the curation of a museum exhibition. The museum had wanted to feature the community members’ photos as co-curators at the museum entrance. The community member felt that this might be well meaning but was perhaps also a performative action intended to demonstrate their engagement with ‘diverse’ communities’.”
Maya Sharma, Marta Riccardi and Safina Islam (2022). If nothing changes, nothing changes, Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust, p.37.
Insolvent companies:
Managing Business Archives. Advice for archivists
Scottish Business Archives Council (2020). Collecting in a Crisis. A Guide to Rescuing Business Records
Partnerships:
Kate Guariento and Nic Munogee. Accessibility and Archives: Preserving Community Stories – Collective Cataloguing at the Glasgow Zine Library
Scottish Civic Trust (2022). Co-creating heritage projects with marginalised people (video). With the European Heritage Days, they have also created an Inclusive Events Toolkit.
Maya Sharma, Marta Riccardi and Safina Islam (2022). If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes, Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Education Trust. Section 7.2.2 includes an excellent section on ‘Working ethically with Global Majority heritage and communities’.
University of Leicester (2021). An ethical framework for collaborating with communities. Aimed at museums, but also relevant for archive services.
University of East London Archives: Living Archives of the Chilean Community in the United Kingdom
The University of East London (UEL) Archives hold significant collections focusing on refugee studies, Olympic history, theatre and East London history. Being open to deposited collections, especially around community-based archives and personal records, has helped diversify collecting. In 2017, they were introduced by the donor of the Refugee Council Archive to the University of Birkbeck, which was looking for a venue to host ‘Crafting Resistance’, a co-curated exhibition created with the Chilean community. A small number of records relating to Chilean exiles in the United Kingdom were already held in the Refugee Council Archive at the University. Keen to create an archive based on the lived experience of the Chilean diaspora rather than just relying on official sources, the ‘Documenting Chile’ project was developed as a co-production between the University of East London Archives and the community.
What they did:
- Used the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état in Chile as the driver for the work.
- Held an online exhibition for the 50th anniversary.
- Collected a range of materials to reflect the lives of the community.
- Co-edited a special edition of the Displaced Voices journal.
- Held a three-day conference at the London School of Economics. This included witness panels, which brought together Chileans and the people who had worked with them to talk about their experiences during the coup. These were all recorded and added to the archive.
- Hosted a film screening and exhibition at the archive with the community.
What happened next:
- Members of the Chilean community deposited material to the archive – at least 12 individuals have done this.
- Regular visits to the archive by the depositors. This includes research visits, work to select material for outreach work, and visits where they provide access to the collection to other researchers or members of the community.
- Actively working to ensure that the outputs of projects are properly prepared for addition to the archive.
Outcomes:
- A project has developed into core work with active contemporary collecting.
- Trust and a strong relationship between the depositors and the archive service.
- “Our “living archive” methodology looks to challenge existing archival paradigms and the underlying colonial notions or archival collection, by looking to re-situate the “Archive” as a transparent and collaborative space in which communities can feel a sense of ownership and control over how the archival records pertaining to their community are collected, preserved and represented to a wider audience.” Paul Dudman (2023). Displaced Voices: A Journal of Archives, Migration and Cultural Heritage. Living Refugee Archive, University of East London.