Northern Region - Opening Closed Records

ARA Northern’s July meeting explored the procedures and benefits of opening up closed records. This is undertaken systematically by the UK’s national archive services, but perhaps has not have received a great deal of attention from local authority and specialist repository archives.

Given the role government and local authority services play in supporting democracy through opening up official records, ought there to be more thought given to what local and specialist services do and consider if there can be improved benefits from releases. There are records in deposited collections that are subjected to closure periods – do we formally record when they are open to inspection and what value they might contribute to researchers? And do we make sufficient use of the stories embedded in newly opened records?