ARA Excellence Awards 2023
The winners of the ARA Excellence Awards were announced at the Gala Dinner of the Archives and Records Association Conference in Belfast on the evening of Thursday 31st August 2023.
The Archives and Records Association instituted the ARA Excellence Awards to recognise excellence and contributions by individuals and teams in the record keeping sector. The work of the sector is vital in supporting democracy and human rights and in preserving and sharing the heritage of the UK and Ireland.
To celebrate the achievements of record keeping professionals and their contribution to society, ARA has four special awards: Distinguished Service Award (DSA), Record Keeper of the Year, Record Keeping Service of the Year and New Professional of the Year Award.
In 2023 over 1,000 votes were cast by the public resulting in the following awards being made:
Record keeping service of the Year – Jersey Archives
Record keeper of the Year – Louise Neilson for her work at Lothian Health Services Archive
New Professional of the Year – Fran Horner for her work at Heritage Quay, the Archives and Records Management Service for the University of Huddersfield.
Further to these awards, three Distinguished Service Awards were made by the Board to:
Vicki Wilkinson
Antony Oliver
Sally McInnes
Aideen Ireland, President of ARA said:
“It is always good to find a reason to celebrate what is best about the record keeping sector and to encourage us all to strive for excellence and the ARA Excellence Awards provide a perfect opportunity to do just that. The scope of the awards means that we are presenting them to people who have only just begun their careers and to people who have been working in the sector for decades. It was particularly heartening to see the increased public participation this year, showing that people really do care about their archive and record services.”
Three awards were voted on by the public and over 1000 votes were cast in all.
ARA Excellence Award winners with Aideen Ireland, ARA President (far left) and Andrew Nicoll, ARA Chair (far right). Photo credit - Lost Lens Caps Photography
The nominees for Record keeping service of the year were:
Edge Hill University Archive and Special Collections
Jersey Archives
Wolverhampton City Archives
The winner with 52 per cent of the vote was Jersey Archives.
In order to properly celebrate this award the presentation will be made Jersey with staff and volunteers later this autumn.
Linda Romeril, Jersey Heritage’s Director of Archives & Collections, said:
“We are over the moon to have won this national award, especially as it is voted for by the public and shows their support for the service we provide at Jersey Archive. We always strive to do our very best for anyone who contacts or visits the Archive. I am very proud of my team and feel the award to testament to their knowledge and commitment to both the preservation and provision of access to the unique records that we care for. It is also a fantastic way to mark this year’s 30th anniversary of the Archive service being established.”
ARA Excellence Awards - Recordkeeping Service of the year Jersey Archive - Left to right, Aideen Ireland, ARA President, Laura Anderson, Catherine Porter, Harry Le Feuvre, Jersey Archive, Andrew Nicoll, ARA Chair. Photo credit Lost Lens Caps Photography
The nominees for Record Keeper of the year were:
Erika Freyr
Louise Neilson
Joanne Shortland
The winner with 37 per cent of the vote was Louise Neilson.
Louise was nominated for her work at Lothian Health Service Archive and particularly her work on Speaking Out a project that catalogued and rehoused a collection from Lothian Gay and Lesbian Switchboard, the first operational gay switchboard in the UK and the first gay charity in Scotland. Her nominator wrote:
“The last 15 months have been incredibly significant for Louise's career development, taking on a complex, challenging, yet extremely rewarding project of real and lasting significance to LHSA, the University of Edinburgh, and (most importantly) the LGBT+ community in Edinburgh and beyond. Throughout the project, Louise has acted as an ambassador for her archive service, establishing new networks with organisations and individuals and responding to the needs of different groups of stakeholders. Some of the content of the Switchboard collection is extremely upsetting: Louise has not shied away from distressing material (creating anonymised summaries of the thousands of Switchboard calls represented in the collection to aid access decisions, for example), instead building strategies to manage its effects in her daily professional practice. Despite challenges like these, Louise's enthusaism for and ownership of her role is immediately obvious, and she is the main driver behind the success of a project that will benefit a range of communities for years to come.”
ARA Excellence Award Recordkeeper of the year - Louise Nielson with Aideen Ireland left and Andrew Nicoll right - credit Lost Lens Caps Photography
The nominees for New Professional of the Year were
Fran Horner
Kurt Jameson
Eleanor McKenzie
The winner, with 55 per cent of the vote was Fran Horner.
Fran was nominated for her work as Assistant Archivist at Heritage Quay, the archive of the University of Huddersfield. Her nominator for the award wrote:
“Fran threw herself into this role with determination and enthusiasm, whilst also finishing her archive qualification. Within a few months it was difficult to recall that she was not only relatively new to Heritage Quay but also a new professional. In the 16 months Fran worked with us, in addition to shouldering the day-to-day workload and responsibilities of this role, Fran also made exceptional contributions to the service.”
Fran qualified as an Archivist in 2022 and also achieved Registered Membership of the Archives and Records Association in that year. She previously worked at the National Theatre Archive as their Archive Assistant.
ARA Excellence Awards, Distinguished Service Award - Antony Oliver with Aideen Ireland and Andrew Nicoll - credit Lost Lens Caps Photography
The Distinguished Service 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.
Distinguished Service Awards were given to three people:
Antony Oliver for Distinguished Service in Archive Conservation
Antony began his archives career in 1979, in 1999 he moved to the Sheffield City Archive where he is responsible for the conservation and preservation of the collections pertaining to the city of Sheffield, and the collections that have county wide significance. In addition to providing a preservation packaging and conservation service for the local studies library, and provide an advisory service to the rest of the library wide departments within the city. Antony is also chair of the Archives and Records Association’s Preservation and Conservation Group and acts as external examiner for their Conservation Training Scheme.
ARA Excellence Awards - Distinguished Service Award - Sally McInnes with Aideen Ireland and Andrew Nicoll. Credit Lost Lens Caps Photography
Sally McInnes for Distinguished Service in Archives
Sally is currently Head of Unique and Contemporary Content at The National Library of Wales. Graduating in 1988, Sally joined the National Library of Wales in 1989 , during her 34 years of service there, Sally has made an incredible contribution. Sally became fluent in the Welsh language and has worked effectively at all levels of the organisation using both languages. Her expertise and experience was crucial in the development of the partnership between the then National Assembly for Wales (now the Welsh Parliament) and the National Library of Wales, as a project was developed to fully scope and develop an action plan for the Assembly’s management of current and semi-current records and for the long term archiving of the Assembly’s records in the National Library.
In 2010 Sally was appointed Head of Collection Care and in 2015, took on the responsibility for the new department of Unique Collections and Collection Care which included the former Archives and Manuscripts section. Sally has led on the very important work of gaining and maintaining the National Library of Wales’s Archive Service Accreditation, the UK standard for archive service, and has ensured that the work of archives has a strong voice in strategic decision making at the highest level of the organisation.
One of Sally’s great achievements has been her work to support digital preservation capacity across Wales. Since creating the first policy on preserving electronic records for the NLW in 2000, she has been a staunch advocate for digital preservation.
ARA Excellence Award Distinguished Service Award Vicki Wilkinson with Aideen Ireland and Andrew Nicoll - credit Lost Lens Caps Photography
Vicki Wilkinson for Distinguished Service in Archives and Records Management
Vicki has been a qualified records manager for more than 35 years and began her career at Bristol & West Building Society before moving onto the Bankers Trust, Save the Children, Barclays Bank then settling into RBS in 1992.
Currently, she is the Records Management Lead across RBS, responsible for being the lead subject matter expert in major, enterprise wide transformation projects. From new ways of working such as O365 to leading thought invoking discussion around Artificial Intelligence, Vicki raises the profile of Records Management at every level.
Full information on the criteria for each award and the history of the awards can be found at: https://www.archives.org.uk/ara-awards