Archives of voluntary action

I see that I have posted before on the vexed issue of the archives of voluntary bodies.

The Voluntary Action History Society is making a concerted effort to make these organisations more aware of their archives and the need to preserve them: Wanted: Champions to safeguard the archives of our charities.

As I commented in a recent post to the Wellcome Library blog, we have acquired over the years a significant collection of archives of voluntary organisations in the medical and health field, and continue to consider the preservation of records from this very important sector a priority.

However, in the course of dealing with this question over the years we have had depressing experiences of records lost or stored in conditions under which they became irretrievably damaged, and encounted instances of very significant institutions which had paid no attention to preserving any details of their history.

Even if records do survive, there may be problems in finding an appropriate repository and in accessing the necessary resources to care for them.

But raising awareness of the importance of archives is a start.

Archives of voluntary bodies

It's gratifying to see that people are beginning to take seriously the problem of the archives of voluntary bodies of various kinds. There is a good blog post here on the Voluntary Action History Society blog, A New Campaign for Charity Archives and the British Records Association annual conference taking place tomorrow is Beyond the Fringe: the archives of pressure groups. These are the kind of organisations that may not even have a permanent HQ, so that their records get passed around as responsibilities change, and in addition they may be understandably devoting all their funds to the core activity for which they were founded.

Records of local organisations may find a home in the relevant local record office, and organisations which fall into specific areas may find that there is a specialist repository that may take them: in the Wellcome we hold a significant number of collections of Medical Charities and Pressure Groups as well as records of International Organisations. But there are still many organisations which do not fall into existing archival safety nets.

Preserving the record of the Big Society

Voluntary sector archives: A hidden casualty of the cuts

The Voluntary Action History Society blog draws attention to the serious problems relating to the preservation of archives of voluntary organisations. This is a particularly endangered sector: many voluntary bodies do not have a permanent HQ, and even when they do, looking after their records is not usually the most immediate priority, while inappropriate storage, office moves, changes of administrator, etc, are a constant source of threat.

If we're supposed to be aiming for the 'Big Society' (a concept which in itself suggests a fairly radical misunderstanding of or ignorance of history) might one venture that those who ignore history are likely to repeat its errors and that the history of voluntary action is hardly possible to reconstruct without the archives of the innumerable organisations engaged in it.

Voluntary action history

Yesterday I attended an event run by the Voluntary Action History Society to celebrate its 20th anniversary and launch two books in the area recently published.

Take-away thoughts:

How very broad the remit is, once one considers that it includes mutual aid initiatives as well as philanthropy, and in both area covers a huge range of endeavours (two things that wouldn't have immediately sprung to my own mind were adult education and restoration of waterways).

How very cynical/perturbed historians who actually work on voluntary action are about the nostalgic and simplistic invocation of 'volunteerism' by the current government and how complex and intricately imbricated relations between state and voluntarism have been.

Is it really true that the British concept of voluntary action has been widely exported (outside the bits that used to part of the Empire)? The call for more transnational work might nuance that considerably.

Made the point myself about the endangered status of archives of voluntary bodies. There is no statutory obligation on such bodies to retain records, they may not have permanent offices (and the early informal stages at their inception may well be very sparsely documented), they may be subject to recurrent 'clear-outs', the historical significance of their documentation is not necessarily recognised. Also, except in certain subject areas (e.g. the Wellcome Library for health-related organisations)  or for locally-based bodies (in which the local record office may be interested), there is often no obvious repository which might be acquiring them.