Distinguished Service Award

This award recognises individual conservators, archivists or records managers for career-long achievement and/or outstanding work, e.g. successful management/implementation of a project; external fundraising that has transformed a resource or service; significant improvements to service delivery, etc.

Anyone can nominate a person for this award (including self-nomination) and the award is decided by the ARA Board.

You can download and complete the nomination form here.

Deadline for nominations is 7th June 2024.

Find out about previous winners of the DSA here.

Record Keeper of the Year

This award acknowledges achievement by an individual archivist, conservator or records manager within the last eighteen months at any career stage.

Anyone can nominate a person for this award (including self-nomination) and the award is decided by a public vote. Voting opens here in June.

You can download and complete the nomination form here.

Deadline for nominations is 7th June 2024.

Find out about previous winners of the Record Keeper of the Year Award here.

Record Keeping Service of the Year

This award recognises achievements by an archive, conservation or records management service or operation within the last eighteen months. A service must employ staff with appropriate qualifications in order to be eligible, but can be nominated from any one of the three professional sectors.

Anyone can nominate a person for this award (including self-nomination) and the award is decided by a public vote. Voting opens here in June.

You can download and complete the nomination form here.

Deadline for nominations is 7th June 2024.

Find out about previous winners of the Record Keeping Service of the Year Award here.

New Professional of the Year Award

This award recognises the achievements by an individual member of the ARA’s section for new professionals within the last eighteen months.

Nominators for this award should be established professionals able to explain with authority the achievement of the nominee. You cannot self-nominate for this award. The award is decided by a public vote. Voting opens here in June.

You can download and complete the nomination form here.

Deadline for nominations is 7th June 2024.

Find out about previous winners of the New Professional of the Year Award here.

What does it mean to win an award?

The awards are a great opportunity to spread the word about the value of the recordkeeping sector – archives, records management and conservation – to the publics of the UK and Ireland.  When the winners are announced we will publicise the results not just to the sector but to the wider press (particularly focussing on press in the locations where the winners work) as well as to key government influencers – such as DCMS and the Cabinet Office and to local MPs.

Award winners receive a small trophy, a certificate and their names will be enlisted on the ARA Excellence Awards Roll of Honour.

There are other, perhaps more important, benefits. Below some previous award winners talk about the impact winning had on them and their service:

Record Keeping Service of the Year: Barnsley Archives and Local Studies

Paul Stebbings from Barnsley Archives and Local Studies describes the impact of winning Service of the Year:

After a very difficult couple of years for everybody, during which we had worked incredibly hard to continue to engage with our customers and provide access to the collections, the award of Record-keeping Service of the Year was a wonderful acknowledgement of that hard work and our achievements. It gave the whole team a lift, and was an immense source of pride for us, as well as our hard-working volunteers and loyal customers. It also raised our profile within the local authority and highlighted the importance of preserving and making accessible archive collections. (Paul Stebbing, Archives Manager, Barnsley Archives and Local Studies.)

Record Keeper of the Year: Katie Proctor

Record Keeper of the Year Katie Proctor, talks about the affect on her and the conservation sector:

“Winning the ARA’s Record Keeper of the Year 2022 award has been a highly beneficial and rewarding experience for me. As a winner of this prestigious award, I feel I have been recognised for my skills in managing, preserving, and providing access to records and archives within West Yorkshire. I also feel recognised for continuing and promoting the valuable opportunity the Archive Conservation Training Scheme provides to those wanting to begin a career in Archive Conservation. It’s increased the visibility not only of the conservation studio within WYAS but also the visibility of the training scheme and its valuable input into developing the conservation profession and the importance it has on preserving the valuable expertise of its instructors and committee for future generations.

Receiving the award has helped me to network with other professionals in my field and share knowledge and expertise on the care of collections to a wider audience, particularly within West Yorkshire.

Overall, the award has given me a sense of pride, accomplishment and motivation to continue the important work all conservation professionals do, in preserving our shared cultural heritage.”

Distinguished Service Award: David Mander OBE

For those winning the Distinguished Service Award the impact on their careers is probably a little less marked – they are usually already established and the award is given either to mark their long and ongoing commitment to service in the sector or for a particular piece of work or initiative that has made a big difference.

David Mander who set up the awards in 2015 went on to receive his own DSA, he says:

“It could be said that if you want to have an award first create it yourself, but that was not my intention, though it was a great pleasure to receive my own DSA at our Leeds conference in 2019. Having become Chair of the Northern Region the year before, it has been my pleasure to help bring the region back into activity and with the support of my colleagues on the region’s committee provide local content for the Leeds conference. My award was at least in part a recognition of that recent voluntary activity.

I would hope that colleagues will think about members they know who have either stood out for innovation or given a long-standing contribution to our profession. There ought to be many who could be nominated for Record Keeper of the Year as well as for future DSA’s and I look forward to hearing stories of achievement in the future.”

David’s own testimony is modest, the citation for the award referenced his long and distinguished career, they key role he played in setting up Archives for London, the work he did as chair of the ARA Board of Trustees in revising the Vision and Mission Statements and Code of Conduct, widening ARA’s reach with new membership categories and helping to revive ARA’s Northern Region.

He is right to say that there are many who could be nominated for Record Keeper of the Year, Service of the Year and New Professional of the Year as well as for the Distinguished Service Award.

New Professional of the year award: Julie Devenney

For a new professional making their way into a career in the sector every little helps on the CV. Julie Devenney who won the New Professional of the Year Award in 2019 her nomination focussed on her work as social media officer for ARA Scotland where amongst other achievements she set up ArchiveHour and #Archive30, she says:

“I was delighted to win, of course, but even just to be nominated was such an honour. I had graduated from my Information Management course two years previously and never would I have imagined I would be nominated for an award in the sector, never mind win. It was so nice to be recognised in the sector for the work I had done, which had become a passion, but there were lots of late nights and hard work organizing it so it really meant a lot that others saw and appreciated that work.

Also to be recognised by ARA like that was also important to me, as the work I was doing was in social media, a part of our work that, then, often went unnoticed in our sector so, to me, this sent a message that ARA recognises ALL the work we do in our sector, even the work that’s not often shouted about and made that work feel ‘seen’.”

In terms of the impact on her own career she says:

“Finding a role within an archive can often be quite difficult so being nominated or winning this award is a definite bonus and would help highlight your qualities to a potential employer. It is a great way for a new professional to get known in the sector. Three years on, I still hear from people who say they were inspired by #Archive30 to try their own social media campaigns and I still get approached by archivists looking for advice. After all the years of asking and receiving wonderful help from others, it is so nice to be able to give back to the sector.”

But it also had a personal impact:

“My girls ( who were seven and nine then) were really proud of me. They weren’t really sure what I was doing but they could see the hours and effort I was putting into it so to tell them I had won an award for it was really special. When I brought the award home and put it on my side table, the next day I noticed they had put their baton medals next to it which made me so happy and all the effort worthwhile.”

A Little History

When David Mander OBE, as incoming ARA Chair in 2014, put forward the idea of the ARA Excellence Awards his thought was to augment the existing awards in the sector for example the Community Archives and Heritage Group Awards, The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Archives and History lifetime awards, the FARMER award for the best annual archive course student dissertation and the Ellis Award for long standing achievement.

These awards were either specific to a particular area or theme or aimed towards people at the end of their careers, which left quite a few gaps. He says:

“I was very keen to have awards to generate more publicity for archives, and with the support of a small working party, came up with the proposals for record keeping service of the year and record keeper of the year, both with an element of voting in them so that we could encourage wide-ranging participation. But I was also looking for something a little lower key than either the Ellis prize or the APPGAH lifetime award. So the idea for the Distinguished Service Award (DSA) was born – a recognition for significant achievement, slanted to, but not limited to, those who have built up a long service record and a recognition of acclamation by the profession as a whole.”

The first awards were made in 2016 and in 2017 the New Professional of the Year Award was brought into the fold.

David/s original plans for a more exotic name and trophy fell foul of supply issues: “My original title for the award was Jenkinson’s Elephants, after his example of the kind of attachment to a record that might prove difficult for an archive service to host. I had hoped to have the award in the form of a glass elephant – but sourcing a trophy maker for this proved to be too difficult.” The original awards did feature an elephant (below) but now have a simpler design (above).