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Online public engagement during the pandemic: Push, Jump, Repeat

Date updated: 20/01/2023

The sudden disruptions which services were subjected to from March 2020 onwards were a challenge for all parts of the archive sector. For the staff at LMA this meant periods of time where we could not have researchers onsite or invite people in for public engagement activities like talks or workshops. Again, like every other archive service, we had to find a solution and that solution was online engagement. The question is, having been given a little shove by the circumstances of the pandemic, what have we learned from adopting this approach? Also, of course, how might it influence what we do in the future?

LMA has a long history of public engagement, most explicitly through the work of the Engagement and Learning Team. However, every one of our teams does outreach and engagement work - whether this is with stakeholders, students of all kinds or our committed public audience.

For the Public Services team, using the webinar format was not entirely new as a member of the team had delivered sessions online for family history audiences outside of the UK prior to 2020. What was different this time was the circumstances of lockdown and the need to address two key issues which this highlighted. These were how to continue to promote and explain our holdings to new or potential users and how to continue to advocate for particular categories of archives which we think are not as well understood or as fully exploited as they could be. These are things that we do almost every day in our contact with service users.

Boys sewing and drawing clothing patterns on tables at Highbury Industrial School in 1908
Tailoring class at Highbury Industrial School, 1908. LPA ref: 207681

Four online sessions about major categories of records in our collections were run by Public Services staff in 2021. The sessions were run as ZOOM webinars based on an illustrated presentation with time for Q&A. The topics covered were hospital records, Poor Law records, prison records and school records. All the sessions were recorded and should be back up on the LMA YouTube channel soon.

What we learned

The main conclusion about running online sessions is that there can be real advantages over running in-person sessions at the archive. The first is improved audience reach, with attendees joining the webinars from the UK, Europe, Australia and North America. With more concerted marketing, we could potentially reach an even wider audience geographically. It is also clear that this format presents opportunities to people who would ordinarily find it difficult to travel to LMA. This is an advantage not only for people with special mobility needs or other access challenges, but for people with limited time to travel to our site because of other commitments, such as work or childcare, or where the cost of travel is prohibitive for them.

The second advantage is the option for recording the session for access by people who could not attend the live webinar or who wanted to re-visit certain parts of it again. This means that although preparing quality material for presenting online takes time, that material can continue to be accessed as long as the information in it remains accurate. In similar work undertaken with student groups, who are still spending more time in virtual learning situations, the option for recording creates a resource with a longer lifespan and means no student need miss out.

Another benefit is that material researched for a webinar can fairly efficiently be shared with colleagues and exploited to create webpages, blogs and social media content as a way of getting more value out of the time committed to the initial project.

Bird's eye view of the female convict prison at Brixton, c.1800.
Bird's eye view of the female convict prison at Brixton, c.1800. LPA ref: 314022

Other insights

Just as in the physical world of service provision, there is a legal obligation to achieve certain standards for accessibility in presenting any media for public consumption. With the webinar format, therefore, it quickly became clear that information needs to be presented in ways that promote access. For example, the use of images and commentary in a presentation, rather than lists of text, can be more attention holding for most people. However, for people who are unable to see images, that element of the presentation will only be available to them if the images are described by the presenter. For the presenter themselves, this can actually create new opportunities to make links or expand ideas in the presentation.

Similarly, although most platforms like ZOOM or You Tube offer auto generated subtitles for hearing impaired people, these are famously error prone. It is not necessarily the obvious bloopers that are the most important. Regular users of live subtitles may be frustrated by these, but will probably see them for what they are, but small mistakes can be critical. For example, the accidental omission of a ‘not’ in the subtitle can reverse the meaning of the sentence. Manual editing of subtitles before permanent publication online is therefore important.

A final and unexpected take-away from the experience of preparing and presenting webinars is that they can offer many opportunities for collaboration across disciplines, sharing and gaining feedback. Although I have attended many good solo-run webinars, there is tremendous benefit in having a co-host to wrangle technical issues and follow the chat for comments and questions. Also, some people actually find webinars a more comfortable environment in which to contribute and participate. Having two presenters, a bit like morning TV, to kick off discussions and pick up on points being made can further put people at ease and encourage conversation.

As restrictions and other challenges come and go, some will be pleased that the webinar format is once again not the only option for public engagement. However, it is probably here to stay and personally I hope it is, offering as it does a flexible and potentially accessible medium, which is also always ready to be developed and improved.