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City of London Corporation

Accessing Documents that are ‘At Risk’ or ‘Unfit’

Collections care

Intensive or inappropriate handling can damage and degrade documents. To reduce the risk, and safeguard our documents, our conservators assess their physical condition and make decisions on what level of access is appropriate for each document.

Fit, at risk or unfit

A 'fit' document is available for general access. Handling will not cause damage to the structure of the document or the text. You may be able to see some minor damage, but appropriate handling will not cause the document to deteriorate. Documents assessed as ‘fit’ can be consulted in the Archive Study Area. Our Handling Guide explains how these documents should be used.

An ‘at risk’ document is in poor condition and unstable in parts. Even though the item’s structure has been compromised, the text is in fair condition and careful, supervised handling should not cause further losses.

Documents assessed as ‘at risk’ can still be consulted, but under staff supervision, at a desk close to the Archive Study Area staff desk. Users will be warned about the fragile state of the item and given advice on how to handle it.

An 'unfit' document is highly unstable. The structure is severely weakened, the text is compromised, and further handling could deteriorate and compromise the state of the document even more.

Unfit items are not available for general access. Only conservators can handle these documents as they work to repair and stabilise them. Once the item has been assessed as ‘unfit’, a note will be made on the catalogue. This prevents it from being ordered or produced.

Accessing unfit documents

Unfit documents often hold information that is of interest to researchers. So how can you access this information when you can’t consult the document itself?

If you need to consult a document that has been categorised as unfit you can make a request either through The London Archive’s enquiry service or by filling out an Unfit Enquiry Form, available from the Archive Study Area staff desk. Requests are then discussed in a monthly meeting between the conservation and archive team.

The teams assess how much conservation work is needed to stabilise the item so that it can be safely handled.

If the work needed can be done within seven hours, then the item will be treated and made available within about six weeks.

If more than seven but less than 24 hours of work is required, then the item will be treated and made available within about four months.

If the work needed would exceed 24 hours the team will try and find other ways for you to access the document. If the item can be safely handled by a conservator, you may be invited to look at the item in the Conservation Studio where a conservator can help you handle the document safely. Another option is to scan the document and make a digital copy.

However, in some cases, the item is so damaged that there is no way of accessing the information it holds without extensive conservation. In this situation a decision needs to be made as to whether the document has enough historic and cultural relevance to justify the amount of work required and to prioritise it above other items already awaiting conservation.

If the decision is made to go ahead, the treatment of the unfit item will be added to the annual work plan of the Conservation Studio or, in some cases, grant-funding will be sought. (Especially if the item is part of an important series or collection, which contains a number of unfit items.)

A balancing act

The condition of the collection at The London Archives is regularly monitored. However, it would take years to go through every item on the 100km of shelving that is filled by The London Archives’ collection. Therefore, we rely on the expertise of the team to alert conservators when they come across documents that are potentially unfit for access.

Each item is then assessed to determine the level of damage and define its condition. After assessment by conservation staff, the item is repaired (if this can be done in under three hours), returned, or listed as unfit/at risk.

Over 36,500 items have already been marked as unfit in the Conservation Database. It has been estimated that it would take 600 years to treat all of these items and return them to full public access.

It is difficult to balance the need to preserve every item while also making sure that the public has the greatest possible access to our collection.

Every archive user can help to ensure that our collection is as safe as possible by making sure that you handle documents appropriately. Our Handling Guide is a comprehensive guide to using archival material safely. The conservator team also provide monthly document handling training, usually the on first Wednesday of the month.

If you come across an item that you believe needs conservation during your research, please immediately alert the Archive Study Area staff.

We ask our readers and researchers to join with us in the on-going task of caring for our archives so that everybody can benefit from well-maintained and accessible archives.