About The Archive-Skills Consultancy Ltd

The Archive-Skills Consultancy ltd partnership consists of Margaret Crockett and Janet Foster. It was formally established in the early 2000s to deliver archives and records management training and to provide consultancy in all aspects of recordkeeping.

Our training portfolio is anchored by the original Basic Archive Skills Training Day which we designed for the Specialist Repositories Group of the Society of Archivists in 1992. Since then we have continuously reviewed and updated the content to meet the current needs of those working in the archives and records management sector. Over the past two decades we have offered training courses in preservation, digital archives and records management and nineteenth and twentieth century palaeography. Our prospectus now consists of four courses: Basic Archive Skills; Building Blocks of Records Management; Archival Arrangement and Description Explained; and Managing Photographs in the Archives. We aim to offer affordable and effective training to anyone who works with archives and records. For details of current training see our training page.

Our first joint project together was to reorganise the filing system of the Finance and Planning Division of the (then) Department of Culture Media and Sport - we followed that up with a larger filing reorganisation project for the Pilgrim Trust. In the early 2000s we also carried out a scoping project to inform the planning and implementation of automation for the holdings and procedures of Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre and drafted the South East of England’s regional archives strategy. We developed functional classification schemes for implementation in EDRM systems for most of the research councils and we have carried out record surveys and developed retention schedules and records management programmes for national museums and landed estates. We have delivered smaller projects involving listing and packaging archives for charities and schools. In preparation for the Freedom of Information Act coming into effect we supported many public organisations to establish or improve their records management policy and procedures. We enjoyed several trips to the West Highlands to survey community archives, historical societies and museums and support the establishment of a branch archives for the Lochaber area.

News of recent and current projects is on the see what’s new section of our website.