THE CHALLENGE OF PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT WITH PARLIAMENT: REINVENTING OUTREACH AT THE PARLIAMENTARY ARCHIVES

Until the late 1990s outreach at the Parliamentary Archives (or the House of Lords Record Office, as it was then known) was based around publications, talks, a permanent display of records in the Palace of Westminster and occasional exhibition and display projects. The last volume of the calendar of House of Lords manuscripts, begun by the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts in 1869, had been published in 1977. Following a review in 1999 David Prior and his team developed a new approach to outreach driven by rotating displays, major exhibition projects which marked key parliamentary anniversaries, web resources and a community-based programme of events with regional partners which took the promotion of the collections to an audience beyond the environs of Westminster.