East Riding of Yorkshire Council has created a one-stop cultural site that combines a museum, library and archive with great improvements to the standards of collection management.
Previously the archive and local studies centre was in danger of losing its licence to keep public records, after the Public Record Office’s 1998 inspection report criticised its storage standards. Documents were also stored on a multitude of sites, making access both time-consuming and costly.
The new building, completed in 2007 with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, holds the collections of the East Riding Archives, Beverley Local Studies Library, Beverley Art Gallery, Beverley Guildhall and the Archaeology of the East Riding Museums Service.
The site identified in Beverley had an existing library and art gallery building, built in 1906, with an extension in 1928. The site for development was next to this existing building. The idea was to create a new building that linked to the existing building that already housed the library.
Since opening, active users have increased significantly from around 4,000 in the last year at the previous location, to 12,000 in the first year at the new building.
In addition, the archive receives the benefits of being a part of the whole building. And usage of the art gallery has also increased enormously. Estimated that the archive receives an additional 120,000 users annually due to the knock-on effects of a shared service.
Sharing functions
The new building draws together the council’s range of heritage services under one roof. Where possible functions are shared – the Treasure House Education Officer, technically employed by the museum, also works across all services and paper conservators can work across the archive, library, museum and gallery.
The Treasure House also has shared spaces for meetings, and a shared education room, conference room, permanent and temporary exhibition spaces, cafe and public circulation areas. These spaces are genuinely cross domain and designed to be used either individually or jointly by all the heritage services housed within.
Measures of success
Temporary exhibitions were designed to bring in new users and to enable the archive, but also all services, to give new opportunities for interpreting the collections and making them more accessible. The meeting rooms and the cafe also offer similar opportunities to draw in audiences who otherwise would not attend.
Features of the building include a public viewing window into the conservation workshop. What was previously a back office function has been brought into the public space and enabled increased public awareness of what archives are all about.
Care has also been taken to ensure that customers feel welcome within the modern storage facilities. The design of the building, which includes a café and a tower with a vantage point across Beverley Minster, is both a draw card and a point of comparative interest to the material held in the archive.
The most significant measure for the archive is the results from the TNA accreditation process. Before they moved in 2006 the archive fell below the threshold and received a very poor ranking. In 2007 the archive received the highest ranking of three stars. And in 2008 they received 4 stars (equivalent to the previous years 3 star ranking).
Following the National Archive inspection report in 2008, Nick Kingsley, Head of National Advisory Services, said: "The move to the Treasure House has transformed the way in which you can ensure the long-term preservation of the collections and make them accessible to an expanding range of users.
To find out more about this case study visit the case study section on the MLA research website.