Archives Accreditation & Business Archives

An Archives Accreditation standard is currently being developed by The National Archives in partnership with other archive organisations.

Accreditation will provide a framework for benchmarking performance and support development planning.  It will drive improvement by externally validating and accrediting achievement.  The proposed core modules that the accreditation process will be based on are the same as those for the UK museums accreditation scheme and group requirements into three categories:

• Organisational health
• Collections
• Users and their experience

Encouraging Scottish business archives to participate in any wider accreditation schemes developed for the UK was Action 8.3.2 in the Strategy.  As a result the Implementation Group will be responding to the consultation and would urge business archives nationwide to contribute constructively to the consultation, to ensure that any special considerations regarding archives that primarily hold business records are taken into account and that the scheme is accessible to them.

The standard will be piloted in June this year but there is still time to have your say.  There is going to be an open online webinar consultation to be held on 9 February. To receive an invitation to the webinar on Creating Archives Accreditation please email info@janicetullock.co.uk.

For more information about the standard there is a FAQ that the national archives have prepared which explains some of the basic principles of accreditation and how to get involved.