Information for depositors
Information for Depositors
We actively collect materials that tell the histories of therapeutic living and learning as well as contemporary materials which reflect the sector today.
Archive materials
We accept a wide range of original materials including, but not limited to:
- Administrative records (ie. minutes of meetings, admission records, finance records)
- Daily records of a community of group (ie. community books, day books)
- Residents’ records
- Correspondence (ie. personal and official)
- Building plans
- Community artwork and creative works
- Photographs and film
We can accept these materials in both analogue and digital format.
For more information about what we do and don’t collect, please see our Collections Development Policy [LINK]
Library materials
We accept gifts of books and other publications that fit within the remits of either the Planned Environment Therapy Library [LINK: PET Library page] or the National Childcare Library [LINK: NCCL page].
Before you deposit
A good place to start is our guide for organising your records [LINK: Advice on recordkeeping].
Before we can accept a collection we need to know:
- What it contains
- Rough covering dates
- General condition of the items
- How much there is in total
- Where it is currently stored
Undertaking some simple tasks to organise, label and clean your papers before they are transferred to the Archives will also help our team process the collection quickly and help researchers understand the records once they are open to research.
Confidentiality and closure
We support accountability and transparency in the sector and encourage all depositors to open as much of their archive to public research as possible.
However, not all records deposited in an archive are ‘open’ for public consultation. Some items will need to remain ‘closed’ to comply with UK data protection legislation (ie. those that contain personal information). The PET Archives are permitted to hold and process this type of information Under Article 5 of the UK’s General Data Protection Regulations 2018 (GDPR).
There might be other records in your collection that fall outside these restrictions but which you don’t want to be accessible to researchers for a limited time period (for example, records that contain business-sensitive information). In these cases we might agree to a bespoke closure period, but this would need to be for as short a period as possible.
If you are a public body the all information created by the organisation is open to the public under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2005, except where there are specific exemptions for records holding personal information.
You can read more about how we process personal data in our two policies: Privacy Statement (collecting) [LINK] and Privacy Statement (service users) [LINK].
Is there a charge?
There is no charge for depositing your materials with us. However, depending on the condition, size and location of the papers we will ask you for a contribution towards certain costs. This can include essential conservation work needed to make the materials safe to handle, preservation supplies such as archival boxes and folders, or transporting the collection to the archive stores in Gloucestershire.
Speak to an Archivist
We’re always happy to talk through the process of depositing with us. We can provide more detailed information about our terms of deposit including confidentiality, copyright, ownership and promotion of the archive.
T: 01242 621 200 (ask to speak to the Archivist)