Raising the profile of your archive service
The following guidance shows how you can develop effective communication to support development of your archive service by informing others about the purpose, role and achievements of your service.
Effective Communications: Raising the profile of your archive service
Measuring satisfaction
An essential part of good performance management for archives is knowing who is and is not using your service, and what users think of the service on offer.
The sector has a strong track record of using this information to plan improvement, for example working with particular groups or communities to deliver specific outcomes that they value, or to improve visitor experiences. Below are some of the methods that can be used to measure participation and satisfaction.
Participation
- while a residents’ survey relating to the use of archives is not undertaken, local authority archive services can make use of CIPFA archive services actuals (registration required) of local archive services usage
- the Public Services Quality Group survey archives gather socio-economic and demographic user data relating to users of museum, library and archive services
- the Taking Part Survey offers a high level snapshot of participation in leisure, culture and sport
Satisfaction
The following user surveys include satisfaction questions for users of museums, libraries and archives:
- MUSE survey Museums
- Public Library Users Survey
- Public Services Quality Group survey archives