Cyngor Archifau a Chofnodion Cymru :: Archives and Records Council Wales

Cyngor Archifau a Chofnodion Cymru
Archives and Records Council Wales

Minutes of the meeting held on 6 July 2005 at CyMAL offices , Aberystwyth.

Present: K. Matthias (Denbighshire, Chair); G. Jenkins (NLW); H. Palmer (Ceredigion); A. Venables (Anglesey); S. Ellis (Conwy); M. Locock (ANW); A. Rowley (TNA); E. Bennett (UW Swansea); P. Sillitoe (Flintshire)); E. Jones (CyMAL); M. Ellis (CyMAL); S. Edwards (Glamorgan); C. Orr (Pembrokeshire); R. Williams (UW Swansea); K. Collis (West Glamorgan); S. McInnes (SOA Wales); S. Davies (UW Aberystwyth), G. Parry (NLW).

1	Welcome
	The Chair extended a warm welcome to a well attended meeting and especially to Andrew Rowley who was attending his first ARCW meeting as a representative of TNA.

2	Apologies
	C. Richards (Powys); G. Evans (NMGW); A Rhydderch (Gwynedd); J. Davies (Carmarthen).

3	Minutes of last meeting
	The minutes of the meeting held on 11 March 2005 at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, were approved apart from changing SD to SE in Minute 5.1.

4	Matters arising from the minutes
4.1	New constitution
	SD tabled a draft of a letter to be sent to each authority represented on ARCW to nominate a member of their staff to attend ARCW meetings on their behalf. It was agreed that comments on the draft should be sent to KM by mid-September and that a final version must be sent to each authority represented on ARCW before the AGM scheduled for November.
4.2	Mormons (microfilming / digitisation of parish registers)
	The Welsh County Archivists Group will meet in August to discuss this and other related issues relating to parish registers. The meeting would also discuss GJ and HP's paper of June 2005.
4.3	Newsplan Cymru
	GJ read a letter asking ARCW to nominate a member on the Newsplan Implementation Committee following the resignation of Gareth Haulfryn Williams. HP was nominated.
4.4	CyMAL
4.4.1	Performance Indicators
	ME reported that the Assembly had developed new Performance Indicators. Draft Performance Indicators were to be put forward to the Assembly Board and then circulated for consultation in September.
4.4.2	PSQG Survey
	CYMAL wanted to support archive services in Wales to participate and asked for suggestions on how to do this.

5	Chair's Report
5.1	HLF Needs Analysis Workshop
	A number of officers attended a meeting of HLF Needs Analysis Workshop on Museums, Libraries and Archives to in July.
5.2	CyMAL Advisory Council
	A meeting of the CyMAL Advisory Council was held on 2 June where ME spoke on Section 60. Much of the meeting was taken up by the Library domain's final draft @ your Library, a major new investment to support innovative library services.
5.3	Regional Advisory Group
	KE and EJ attended this meeting at which EJ presented a paper. The main thrust of the meeting was community archives and the CAAP model and pack. CAAP has now developed to CADG whose main brief is to promote community archives. CADG and RAAG have formed a sub-group to look at guidance and sustainability of community archives directed at community groups unlike CAAP which was aimed at the archive services themselves.
5.4	CyMAL meeting
	KM, GJ and EB met with ME, EJ and Linda Tomos who gave very robust views on the responsiveness to CyMAL's existence, i.e. what does ARCW want from CyMAL. Whilst ARCW has a strategy and an action plan they are not in the form that she can present to the Minister. There was a fear that archives might be marginalised; LT needs evidence to present to the Minister to secure future funding; something similar to @ your Library. ARCW needed to tell CyMAL what it wants by reviewing its strategy especially since CyMAL's current action plan comes to an end in March 2006 and it is already preparing its next action plan. It was agreed that (i) a new high level strategic document should be drawn up stressing ARCW's top priorities (ii) the main responsibility for drawing up the document would rest with ME and EJ, but with significant input from ARCW (iii) an initial/scoping group comprising CyMAL and ARCW officers begin the preparation of the strategy (iv) the strategy was to be ready by the next AGM of ARCW in November and then to be submitted to the Advisory Council when it meets in December.

6	Vice-chair's Report
6.1	Launch of ANW
	She had met with ML to discuss the launch of ANW which would be reported on in this afternoon's meeting.

7	Secretary's Report
7.1	Their Past Your Future
	GJ reported that there had been a successful launch of the exhibition in Caernarfon which would then move to Wrexham, Swansea and Aberystwyth. Culturenet was now involved in digitisation and Denbighshire Record Office was to receive an additional grant.
7.2	Quarter Sessions Records
	GJ reported that Sarah Tyacke of TNA had approved the proposal to retroconvert Welsh Quarter Sessions Records by A2A. It was agreed with ST that the catalogues would be mounted on ANW as well. Representatives of TNA and ML were to attend the Welsh County Archivists Group meeting in August.
7.3	Successor to Linking Arms
	Another project 'Archives UK' had been established, following Linking Arms' s unsuccessful bid, to enable all online UK archives to be searched by a single search point by the creation, over time, of various building blocks one of which would be ANW 2.

'Logjam'

A final application for a grant of £29,000 had been submitted and accepted to audit uncatalogued material. There was now a need to set up a project management group comprising of representatives of NLW as the employer, Ceredigion Record Office as the grant managing body, and representatives of ARCW. Phase 2 of the project must include new elements addressing problems found in Phase. 1.
It was agreed that ARCW would be represented by KM for North Wales and KC for South Wales. HP would represent Ceredigion . [NLW have nominated GP].

9	Strategy sub-group
	This matter was dealt with under matters arising from the minutes. See Minute 5.4

10	Llandrindod (ex Gregynog) meeting
	TS.McI, on behalf of the Society of Archivists, explained that Gregynog at £29 a head was extremely expensive. A meeing held at County Hall, Llandrindod would be much cheaper. It was agreed to hold the meeting at Llandrindod on 8 October with a contribution on archive awareness, a talk on the Welsh taxation project by Helen Watt, and shorter presentations on archives.

11	Secretary's Report
11.1	National Digitisation Preservation Group
	PS reported that he had attended one meeting of the Group but was unable to obtain any information at all about meetings or what was discussed, or about the Group. He will try again and report back to the next meeting.
11.2	EAD Group
	ML had been invited to represent Wales on the EAD Group.

12	Date of next meeting
	The next meeting, which will also be an AGM will be held at CyMAL offices, Aberystwyth on Tuesday, 8 November at 11.00.

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