National-Archive Access Recovery Leader

The mandate

A building-safety closure reduced reading capacity while digitisation demand and retrieval backlog continued to grow. Researchers receive confirmations before records are located, fragile items enter conservation queues without visible return dates, and cancelled visits create duplicate pulls. The public-services director left after trustees discovered that open requests were being counted differently by channel. The interim takes executive control of access operations while archivists, conservators and statutory record officers retain collection judgments.

The appointment begins within three weeks and lasts ten months through reopening, peak academic demand and a permanent search already authorised. The first month reconciles requests, protects high-value custody and establishes equitable urgent access. Months two through seven rebuild booking, retrieval, conservation handoff, digitisation and communication. The closing phase proves service across a reading-room outage and high-demand release, then gives the successor two observed monthly cycles.

Handover is complete when the permanent leader has chaired two national access reviews, every active request has a verified collection state and next action, sampled retrievals preserve custody, and published response standards hold for twelve weeks. The successor inherits repository capacity, restricted-access dependencies, conservation queues, licensing constraints, researcher commitments, technology limitations and a ninety-day plan owned by permanent service and collection leaders.

The interim may reset booking and retrieval rules, reallocate non-specialist capacity, suspend unsafe movement, introduce temporary scanning support and close unsupported request states. Deaccession, access-restriction decisions, permanent senior appointments, conservation treatment, rights interpretation, site closure beyond safety direction or spending above GBP2 million requires authorised officers, chief executive or trustees. Archivists and conservators retain appraisal, authenticity, handling and treatment authority.

Catalogue scholarship, collection policy, building redevelopment, legal disclosure, wholesale repository relocation and enterprise-system replacement are outside scope. The interim will not digitise material without rights and handling approval, improve wait measures by cancelling complex requests, or treat a located record as delivered access. Work concerns dependable public service and traceable custody through existing channels; historical authenticity and statutory disclosure remain with qualified owners.

Why this seat is open

Closure pressure exposed incompatible request and retrieval states, and the resulting trustee challenge precipitated a leadership exit. Researchers and collection teams need credible operating decisions before reopening. The archive requires a public-service executive who can recover access without treating culturally significant records as ordinary inventory and can transfer stable routines to a permanent appointee.

What you will own

• Reconcile booking, request, location, retrieval, conservation, restriction, digitisation, delivery and return states across channels, repositories, rights conditions and researcher cohorts.
• Decide access capacity and sequencing within delegation against custody, vulnerability, urgency and equitable-service evidence.
• Reset reading-room, repository and digitisation workflows with explicit handoffs and expected researcher communication.
• Establish custody and exception controls for fragile, restricted, missing, misdescribed and externally held records.
• Close trustee commitments through sampled researcher journeys and collection-movement evidence.
• Exercise room closure, catalogue outage, damaged item, high-demand release and repository interruption.
• Induct the permanent leader and transfer queues, rights dependencies, risks and ninety-day priorities.

Candidate qualifications

• Has held executive authority across archives, libraries, museums or another custody-intensive public knowledge service facing access pressure, fragile holdings and statutory restrictions.
• Can evidence access recovery that preserved provenance, handling and equitable researcher treatment.
• Understands request, retrieval, conservation, digitisation, restrictions, rights, licensing and reading-room operations.
• Has worked with archivists and statutory record officers without appropriating professional collection judgments.
• Can distinguish located, available, cleared, delivered, digitised and safely returned records in service evidence.
• Has handed a visible public-service recovery to permanent leadership after facility disruption.

Non-negotiables

• Can start onsite in London within three weeks and visit regional repositories monthly.
• Will not make appraisal, authenticity, deaccession, rights, disclosure or conservation decisions.
• Brings direct custody-based public-service leadership; generic digital-content management is insufficient.
• Will preserve restricted, fragile, missing and complex requests in access performance reporting.

1. 49 words maximum. Which archive or custody state most seriously overstated public access in a service you recovered?
2. 49 words maximum. Confirm your earliest London start date and the largest collection-service operation you led.
3. 49 words maximum. How have you increased access without weakening conservation or statutory-record authority?