Onsite Services
We aim to provide a welcoming environment and enjoyable experience for people who choose to visit our three record offices. There is no substitute for the experience of using archives in person. We want people to benefit from their visit to us and to want to come again. We therefore try to ensure that our reading room teams are as knowledgeable and helpful to visitors as they possibly can be.
An exciting new development was the launch of a Family History Club, which meets monthly at Staffordshire Record Office. Meetings alternate between talks by members of archive service staff on specific topics, and opportunities for members to share their own research and learn from each other. The atmosphere is warm and friendly and new members are most welcome.
To help people to maximise the value of their visits to the Service, in 2010/2011 we again ran 24 ‘Making the Most of Your Archive Service’ sessions. We also promoted the use of archives in person by means of a very full and successful events and learning programme. More information about our holdings was made available online and we extended the range of microform records available at all three of our offices.
This year our statistics show a reduction in visits to the Staffordshire Record Office and Stoke on Trent City Archives. Overall the number of new readers registering with the Service has continued to remain steady, and the number of registration renewals has increased.
Personal Visits
Staffordshire Record Office: 7,070 (7,777)
Lichfield Record Office: 3,773 (3,792)
Stoke on Trent City Archives: 6,456 (6,894)
Burton Family and Local History Centre: 557 (677)
Total: 17,856 (19,140)
Documents Consulted
Staffordshire Record Office: 17,752 (20,890)
Lichfield Record Office: 11,655 (14,108)
Stoke on Trent City Archives: 1,901 (1,215)
Total: 31,308 (36,113)
Our Charter Standard for Document Production
Our standard is to produce 95% of documents for consultation in the reading rooms within 20 minutes. This is how we did:
Staffordshire Record Office: 96% (96%)
Lichfield Record Office: 96.3% (97.6%)
Stoke on Trent City Archives: 100% (100%)
New Reader Registration
Total number of new readers registering with the Service: 2,390 (2,375)
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