The #archive I work at has been re-open for a whole month! I’m truly grateful and surprised at how little grumbling there’s been from staff or visitors, considering anti-lockdown and anti-mask sentiment seems to be spreading as quickly as the virus. Let's celebrate with a THREAD

In light of that, and some of the recent debate on Twitter, here're some thoughts about why we’ve done what we’ve done from someone who’s spent the last few months working behind the scenes on this. And I don’t work at TNA, so this isn’t a comment on their specific situation. /2

First, restricted opening hours. Staff clean the public areas. The cleaners are fantastic, but they’re not here all the time. It falls to us, and then we have to let the tables, book trollies, door handles and other surfaces dry completely before documents are issued. /3

Restricting hours also help us with staffing. In the last month we’ve had staff self-isolating, staff ill for non-Covid reasons, and staff off because their children's schools closed suddenly. We can’t operate 100% service with an unknown and unpredictable % of staff. /4

People are having leave cancelled and re-arranging their normal working hours to provide the public service that we do.

Document limits: for the first time, we’ve had to limit same-day requests and impose timed production. We pride ourselves on being flexible, but... /5

we can’t do it right now. Despite what people think, it’s very common that two people want to look at the same documents because *that includes staff doing routine work*. We quarantine docs for 3 days after use. Advance ordering helps us plan.

And quarantine takes space! /6

We turned swathes of shelving into quarantine bays for library books and archives, all of it climate-controlled and secure, because we can’t leave original material sitting around in offices.
Speaking of offices, our public searchroom is large and social distancing is pretty.../7

straightforward. Back of house is not. Offices, archive stores, digitisation, and the break room all have limited capacity. Staff have to work from home some days because we can’t socially distance from each other.

And none of this is cheap to work around. /8

The screens, hand sanitiser, wipes, masks, signage, and tape all have to be paid for out of stretched budgets. The cleaning, quarantining, moving around the building using the one-way system, the endless planning and training for any and every eventuality takes up staff time. /10

And archives are not special in that regard, of course we're not! But it eats away at the time and energy we have to give to public service. So if it takes longer to get your copies or book you a seat, please bear with us. This isn’t fun for anyone. /11 [end]