The Public Record Office is a unique place – millions of government documents from the Domesday Book to files on Jack the Ripper and the secret services to … you name it. How does the PRO protect those files from misuse and theft – without restricting public access’ Security Operations Manager Peter Slade speaks to Mark Rowe.
First, a couple of scenes – the back and front ends of the operation, if you like. Peter Slade is walking through one of the file stores – repository areas, affectionately known as ‘the floors’. On either side of the aisle are bank after bank of movable shelving. You see one labeled brown box after another (and a gauge to test the humidity). You feel the chill of the air-conditioning. This is part of the 174km of shelving at the PRO. It’s growing by a couple of kilometers every year, which is the three to five per cent of government papers the Record Office preserves by Act of Parliament (the Public Records Act). Second scene – a researcher, one of dozens, reads a file at a desk in the reading room, too engrossed in study to notice the patrolling security staff and the CCTV surveillance. Quietly and politely and in fewer words than it is taking to tell this story, the security officer asks the researcher not to hold back the file with his hand, in case such rough handling damages the papers; instead, use a necklace-sized rope-weight that the officer provides. It works.<br>
The officer was following the ‘invigilation handbook and care of the documents’ (third edition, August 2000): ‘The greatest care must be taken to prevent tearing, folding, bending or creasing – especially when turning pages …’ Peter Slade’s staff have responsibility for the physical security – patrolling and key-holding – of the PRO at Kew, a 1977 building on the south bank of the Thames, by the Tube line to Richmond. Most of the security department’s work, though, is to do with customer care, and care of the documents when the files are in the hands of the readers (as users of the PRO are called). There are Philips CCTV cameras on poles in the grounds, and the security office looks out on the main entrance. That office is on the staff-only side of a door with access only to holders of proximity cards. As soon as visitors come through the revolving main entrance, a sign asks them to report to security (‘black special’ is the state of alert according to a notice on the counter). A uniformed security officer checks your bag. That a visitors first encounter is with ‘security’ is deliberate; it sets a standard. Peter Slade elaborates: ‘The reason is two-fold: obviously we don’t want people to put bombs into our lockers, and wander off site; and it shows readers we care about security.’ Security staff will direct first-time visitors (and the Keeper’s Report 1999-2000 says that up to a quarter of visitors are first-timers) to another desk to register. There, on showing proof of identity, you get a magnetic swipe card to give you access upstairs, and are advised to take an induction tour. On your way from registration you pass a wall-mounted colour monitor showing CCTV surveillance – there are several around the public parts of the PRO. You can visit the shop, cafe, toilets, internet cafe, and the EVC (Education and Visitor Centre) opened last year. It’s a small exhibition area, like any museum, with original artifacts – such as Lord Haw-Haw’s watch, the World War Two Enigma code-breaking machine and the Domesday Book – inside heavily alarmed cabinets. In the security control room, a wall-mounted colour monitor shows images from the discreet dome cameras covering the EVC. If you have any outer clothing, umbrellas, food or drink, cigarettes, gadgets (cameras, mobile phones), even pens, you are not allowed to take them through the turnstile. Instead, you deposit them in £1-returnable lockers with transparent doors in the cloakroom. If you have a bag too large for the locker, you can padlock it. To make research notes, you can take a notebook or up to ten sheets of paper, and pencils, and you can carry them in a transparent folder – all with the aim of protecting documents from scissors, glue, ink, newsprint, whatever. You swipe your card, click through the turnstile, and you climb stairs or a lift to the business end of the PRO – the reading rooms. There are a couple of rooms of PCs and shelves for readers to search on-line or in books for which of the 8.5 million archive items they want to order. Thanks to DORIS, the PRO’s two-year-old, computerised document ordering system, over 90 per cent of files ordered are delivered within 30 minutes – a remarkable achievement, given that in 1999-2000 Kew carried out some 550,000 document productions. Reader satisfaction is high. Security staff patrol the desks and monitor colour CCTV at a podium in one corner. They are in contact with each other to act on anything suspicious and to make sure that documents are being handled properly – which means staff have to understand proper handling. Peter says: ‘It certainly doesn’t make them archivists, but it makes them aware of the right way to do things, so they can correct people.’ Care of document points that security staff have to learn include: no leaning on or pressure on the documents; and – no use of pencil erasers, pencil sharpening only outside the reading rooms (where sharpeners are provided). Staff also have to know and act on the many labels on PRO documents – from ‘fragile’ and ‘store horizontally’ to ‘document to be seen only under supervision’. A researcher may have gained written permission to see a document before it is released to the public under the 30-year rule, or the file may be fragile; in those cases the reader has to work in a small room with a static and dome CCTV camera and colour monitor besides a member of staff to enforce the many care of document rules. As Peter Slade puts it: ‘What we have is unique, and if something is unique, someone wants to see it.’ Some files stay confidential beyond 30 years to protect living people; many files are newsworthy. Each Christmas before the latest batch of 30-year-old files are released, scores of journalists under embargo are let in to view the most newsworthy files, supervised by public affairs staff. Such professionals are used to proper handling of files and obeying embargoes. Others – family historians and students – may break the handling rules, most often out of ignorance. Yet theft of documents – centuries-old maps, say, can fetch tens of thousands of pounds – from archives internationally is a matter of record. The Times of July 25 reported the theft from the Bodleian, Oxford, of 400-year-old theology books, thought to have been smuggled out under clothes; the nearby Ashmolean has suffered losses too, including a Cezanne. The Royal Library in Copenhagen admits that its collection of older foreign books was ‘depleted’ through systematic theft of perhaps thousands of books in the 1970s. Peter Slade feels that the PRO is as secure as it can be without conflicting with the PRO’s aim to promote the public use of documents.
He has a military background; on leaving the Army in 1986 he worked abroad for several years, and on his return to the UK took over security at New Covent Garden market in London, working for a contract guarding company. He came to the PRO eight years ago, with his current title, which ended a division between a departmental and a physical security officer. In Peter’s time, the Office has left its original central London home in Chancery Lane. Internal rebuilding may lead to an extension of the existing internal CCTV system; meanwhile, Peter is looking at digital recording of external CCTV. As he tours the place, he says hello or has a few words with many people, and not only ‘his’ staff; his job takes in health and safety, hence he and his staff have a remit across the site to look for (and take reports about) dripping taps, slippy floors, left ladders, and the like. It looks like, and Peter says it is, a good place to work, a first-name-terms sort of place. The Office takes training seriously; Peter may be 59 and about to retire (though not intending to bow out of the security industry) but the Office is sponsoring him towards a distance-learning security management degree at Loughborough. ‘I enjoy it. I had to do a module on IT security – we have a separate department that does that in this organisation. I was able to find out an awful lot and it’s enjoyable.’ He is writing the archives part of the Re:source (formerly the Museum and Galleries Commission) security manual, second edition. He is happy with the time his bosses allow him to visit related sites (and to host visits from comparable security managers). He has particularly strong links with the British Library.<br>
How do you define the security of a unique place such as the Public Record Office’ In terms of what it is not. It’s not a retailer, where stock loss is indeed a cost, but a store’s loss prevention budget can be added to the prices on the shelves. It’s not a museum, where the valuables are behind glass or motion detectors, or in a store awaiting their turn on show. At the PRO, millions of items can be handled by readers, and staff. Don’t let your preconceptions of the civil service and archives blind you; in truth the PRO never stands still. Readers are allowed to bring in laptops, but a recent reader with a laptop with a digital camera caused a flap. He raised the question: what might be the implications for the PRO department that charges for reproduction of documents’ From a security point of view, such laptops taking snapshots might be a good thing, if they make it easier for readers to gather information they want. It’s a good example of how security is one facet of the PRO whole; Peter feels he is able to put the security point of view on a subject to superiors, and whatever the decision, it gets explained. (In this case the upshot was that such laptops are now allowed under certain conditions.) The Office is very much a paper world still, but PRO staff work with government departments on what files will become records in, say, 25 years. Hence the prospect of civil service records on disc, and the census on the internet. For now, documents are always being repaired, copied for a fee by request, returned to the repository by boxes on a kind of conveyor belt or little electric four-wheeled vehicles. Building and cleaning contractors have to have access. Peter’s responsibilities include vetting: all contractors have a basic criminal record check, and written into a contract will be a requirement that the contractor carries out their own vetting. Peter carries out a thrice-yearly auditing of access control – which means sending heads of department a list of staff access privileges: ‘It’s up to heads of departments to justify why a person needs to go to a repository, for example.’ The strongroom that holds the Office’s ‘crown jewels’ is covered by CCTV so that if the door is opened, a VCR starts recording in the security control room. That room also monitors the pager system (for first aiders), fire alarms, access control and the fountains outside. It’s a small control room, with Winsted furniture, and numbered tapes held according to the Data Protection Act, in a locked cabinet and de-gauzzed after use. In an evacuation, the fire protection officer of the day is always from security, while the daily officer in charge may be the Keeper of the Public Records, Sarah Tyacke (see separate box). Once everyone is evacuated from the building, they become the responsibility of the assistant officer in charge. Security is responsible for bringing people into the building again – bearing in mind that when the first readers re-enter, there must be staff in place to deal with them. The age range of the security staff mirrors the readers; there are few young faces. Peter reports that many of the security staff are in second careers, and some but not all are from the usual security industry backgrounds of the police and military. What security staff need, Peter says, is the ability to keep concentration even in a hushed reading rooms. In George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother’s idea of the Public Record Office was the Ministry of Truth, where any sensitive papers got incinerated. In 2001, the PRO offers access to public records to about 90,000 people a year. Security’s job is to make that access smooth, while keeping the records in place and intact. Peter Slade’s staff invigilating proceedings have the advantage that they have the support of almost all the law-abiding readers: ‘Ninety-nine times out of 100, people are happy to take the advice, and thankful.’ As with so many security operations, the trick is to deter that unknown, proverbial one in 100 person who may commit a crime.
