Sarah has been a Director at Sarah Wickham Consultancy for the past 4 years. Her remit, and the objective that underpins all that she does, is to support organisations in transforming how people connect with our shared heritage.
Sarah's recent clients include charities, religious bodies, museums, arts organisations and local government archives. Prior to setting up her consultancy, Sarah was the University Archivist and Records Manager at the University of Huddersfield and before that managed Archives, Local Studies and Records Management services at Rotherham MBC. Sarah holds an MA in Archives and Records Management from UCL and a CMI level 7 certificate in Strategic Management and Leadership from the University of Huddersfield. She is a Chartered Fellow of the CMI and a Fellow of the Archives and Records Association.
Expertise
As you would expect, Sarah's archives consultancy services are far-reaching and comprehensive:
- Advocacy
- Community Heritage Development
- Consultation & Engagement
- Data Protection
- Document Management
- Disaster Prevention & Recovery
- Educational Archives
- Evaluation
- Feasibility Studies
- Fundraising
- Health & Safety
- Historical Research
- Information Governance
- National Lottery Heritage Fund
- Palaeography
- Project Management
- Rare Book Collections
- Records Management Strategies
- Surveys
- Training
Digitisation
When considering a digitisation strategy, Sarah likes to pose a fundamental question: you want to add value to your archives, but where should you start?
While there isn't a single definitive list of considerations relevant to every project, there are some common areas to explore:
- Produce collection surveys and significance assessments to help prioritise which parts of a collection to tackle first
- Undertake access reviews and audience development to help understand who will use the digitised collections and how
- Review the scope for developing income streams and benefitting from organisational/brand heritage
- Understand the planning required for copyright and data protection issues to inform how digitisation is likely to comply with legal frameworks
- Consider project planning and development
- Explore fundraising channels
