1.  I was invited to accompany the committee on its visit to the BAT Record Depository, on 26 January 2000, to assist in its enquiry into the public service provision and access provided by BAT to records disclosed as a result of the Minnesota litigation against US tobacco companies. I was asked to comment on the archive service available and the potential for the online electronic publication of the records in the Depository. These are my observations and conclusions:

THE NATURE OF THE DEPOSITORY

  2.  The Depository is not an archive: that is, it does not hold original records selected for permanent preservation by BAT.

  3.  It is better described as a record centre, that is, a storage warehouse for records required for legal or evidential purposes but which may not all have long-term historical importance.

  4.  Furthermore, the records kept there are not original documents, but photocopies or microfilms of originals which have been made available for the purposes of providing information for potential litigants in the UK.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL AND STORAGE CONDITIONS

  5.  The record centre storage areas appeared dry and secure, although no environmental controls are installed in the building to monitor temperature and humidity.

  6.  This is not a threat to the photocopied files or microfilms at present, as they are only expected to be housed there for 10 years.

  7.  Providing there is not a flood or fire in the records centre, there is no reason why this lack of environmental control should significantly endanger the record copies over 10 years.

PUBLIC ACCESS

  8.  There are currently six places for members of the public in the reading room provided, but in my opinion there is space for a further six desks in the reading room.

  9.  Delivery times for files are around 30 minutes for 20-25 files. This is about average for many archival services, but is not particularly speedy.

  10.  There is no archival reason why 12 reading room places could not be provided for 12 different visitors. The constraints imposed on the number of visitors allowed to book into the Depository on a single day relate to the amount of staff and equipment BAT employs at the Depository in order to retrieve documents, and not to any issues of handling or preserving the documents.

CATALOGUING

  11.  There are two networked PCs in the reading room providing access to the catalogue.

  12.  The catalogue used to identify files in the Depository is a simple, flat-file database of file titles and their reference numbers.

  13.  Searching is performed by keyword. There is no controlled subject indexing on the database, and in the past the file titles were created randomly by secretaries and filing clerks. This means that not all information in files will necessarily be reflected in the file title. However, this is not unusual in older filing systems.

  14.  The database is an off-the-shelf database package called Concordance. The searches performed on it seemed rather slow, but it is unclear whether the database software itself was operating slowly, or whether the PC processor was not fast enough.

  15.  Access to the catalogue is only available in the reading room on site. There is no technical reason why such a simple database could not be made available on the Internet. Indeed, it would require relatively little time and money to mount it on a web site.

STAFF LEVELS AND QUALIFICATIONS

  16.  A maximum of nine depository staff are available to staff the Depository when visitors are due, but staff levels on different days are allocated according to the number of bookings made.

  17.  Junior staff performing manual tasks are unqualified, which is to be expected, but it is surprising that the records manager who hosted the visit is also unqualified. A major international company of the size of BAT would normally be expected to have a qualified records manager of some standing in the profession performing this role. However, it is possible that the records manager has acquired sufficient experience to perform this role effectively at the moment.

COPYING AND ORDERING

  18.  There is no provision for the advance ordering of documents by visitors, even where they have visited before.

  19.  When copies of individual pages of documents are requested by visitors, the page in question is scanned to optical disk. There are two scanners in the Depository for this purpose.

  20.  The disk is then sent to BAT's legal department to check for privileged or trade secret information, and once approved, a paper copy is produced for the visitor and posted on to them.

  21.  There is therefore a growing corpus of checked, scanned images (or possibly electronic text if the scanning has been performed by optical character recognition) available within BAT which could be made available online.

  22.  If the scanned pages have been converted to electronic form by optical character recognition, it will be possible to search their contents by keyword, thus bypassing visitors' reliance on file titling to find specific subject topics.

CONCLUSIONS

  23.  The committee may like to consider recommending the following improvements if it believes that the information service provided at the BAT depository is inadequate:

—  An increase in the number of desks available for visitors to the Depository

—  Abolition of the restrictions on visitors from more than one organisation

—  An increase in the number and speed of PCs displaying the catalogue in the reading room

—  An increase in the number of scanners available to scan documents required for reproduction

—  An increase in the number of staff which can be called upon to staff the Depository, to service larger numbers of visitors

—  An increase in the number of staff which can be called upon to staff the Depository, to speed the delivery of documents

—  Mounting the catalogue database on an appropriate, and well-publicised, web site so that intending visitors can search the available file titles for themselves in advance of their visit

—  Providing links to existing, checked, scanned images already in the possession of BAT on the web site database

—  Creating a programme to scan those pages of records not already available in electronic form at BAT: this could be done relatively speedily by a commercial reprographic company

—  Permitting advanced ordering of documents by visitors via the web site, so that documents are available for use by visitors immediately on their arrival.

  24.  For the Committee's information, I am a qualified archivist and records manager. I am currently managing two projects for the Parliamentary Archives, the creation and implementation of a records management strategy for Parliament, and the automation of the Archives' reading room services, including the creation of an automated catalogue to its holdings. I was formerly Senior Archivist at the Public Record Office, Kew, where I was responsible for creating and developing its web site, and was a senior member of the team which is creating an online catalogue to the PRO's 8 million records.

Caroline Shenton

8 February 2000