Jersey Archive says it urgently needs four more staff members to preserve vital records, and meet the island’s legal data handling obligations.
The service says it continues to be under-funded and under-resourced.
A business case submitted to the States last September is still being considered.
” Jersey Archive is currently underfunded to carry out the governance requirements placed on the service by Public Records, Freedom of Information and Data Protection legislation.” – Linda Romeril, Director of Archives and Collections
The end of a three year funding deal with the Chief Minister’s department has led to a 35% reduction in archive staff numbers (from 12.5 FTE to 8.1)
Linda Romeril says that is despite the archive now managing more records, transferring more data to digital records and handling more public enquiries.
“In our view, Jersey Archive is not currently provided with sufficient resource to carry out its core functions properly under the Public Records Law” – Jeremy Harris, chair of the Records Advisory Panel
In 2017, Jersey Archive:
added 30,000 catalogue entries to the archive’s online resources.
responded to 4,000 public enquiries
saw a 65% increase in online use after Jersey records launched on ancestry.com
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