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2023-03-31-accounts

William Salt Library Stafford iYwi¢Y Annual Report 2022-2023

Agenda Item No

WILLIAM SALT LIBRARY

ANNUAL REPORT APRIL 2022- MARCH 2023

AN OVERVIEW

This year the Library building remained closed with access to its collection delivered through the Archive and Heritage Service in the temporary base at Eastgate House.

The significant achievement of the year was the raising additional funds from several funders to cover the £1.7m inflationary pressures and enable construction to start on site on 1 February 2023. The Trust continues to play a very active role on the Project Team and Project Board represented by the Chair, Mithra Tonking, and Vice Chair, David Marriott.

Access to the Library collection is restricted but there continues to be an enquiry service, copying and in some circumstances onsite access. Cataloguing of the collection is ongoing now supported by a Project Cataloguer. I would like to record my thanks to all of the Archive and Heritage staff, volunteers, and trustees.

THE TRUST

Trustee meetings were held in person for the first time since March 2020 at Chillington Hall and at Eastgate House. At the Trust’s Annual General Meeting on 23 May 2022 the following people were re-elected as trustees: Mithra Tonking, Randle Knight, Frances Beatty and David Jacques. Mithra Tonking was re-elected as Chair and David Marriott re-elected as Vice Chair. Mr Charles Hawley was appointed Honorary Treasurer and Mr John Thorneycroft was re- appointed Honorary Advisor. Staffordshire County Council appointed Carolyn Trowbridge as its representative on the Trust. Dean’s Accountants were appointed as Honorary Auditors of the Trust. Two further meeting took place during the year for the Trust on 5 September 2022 and 23 January 2023.

STAFFING AND VOLUNTEERS

Establishment

The key staff working with the Library collections were Chris Copp (Collections Manager), Dominic Farr and Liz Street (Collection Officers) and Lisa Williams (Conservator) who planned and delivered the relocation of the collection from December 2021 – May 2022. Louise Crompton started her post as Project Cataloguer in October 2022 and is working closely with Dominic Farr.

Access to the collection was delivered by the History Centre Assistants (Claire Jackson, Henrietta Martinez, Amanda Spearman, Joanne Peck and Bev Sutherland) led by Julie O’Neill (History Centre Manager) and supported by Collection Officers (Liz Street, Dominic Farr and Rebecca Jackson).

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Copying, photography, scanning, social media, website amendments and coordination of volunteers were delivered by the Engagement and Access team led by Sarah English (Engagement and Access Manager) and Helen Johnson (Community Engagement and Partnership Officer), Ben Cunliffe (Digital Officer), and Melanie Williamson (Volunteer Coordinator).

Cataloguing of the Library’s collection is led by Dominic Farr (Collection Officer) and supported by the Louise Crompton (Project Cataloguer) with support from their manager Chris Copp and our volunteers.

Volunteers

Our volunteers Catherine Nichols and Randle Knight continue to work on the Library collection at the temporary storage location. Catherine has been working on the WSL accession material that was not used during the A2A project. She has been adding them to CALM and editing the records. Currently she is up to the accession collections received in 1940. Randle has been listing the Library’s ‘Miscellaneous’ collection that contains for the most part unpublished research material. He has completed 78 items from this collection to date. As part of the NLHF funded project, Louise has been cataloguing the volumes from the old Reading Room that were not already on the online catalogue. So far she has added 823 volumes to the online catalogue.

THE LIBRARY BUILDING

Prior to the start of construction the Library building continued to be maintained along with servicing of alarm systems in the Library. Staffordshire County Council covers the costs of the maintenance and monitoring.

Since the 1 February 2023 the site has been handed over to the construction company Pave Aways Limited. Julie O’Neill is the key contact between the service and Pave Aways liaising with the site manager and ensuring the site is secured. Fire and intruder alarm maintenance is continuing for both sites.

The garden has been largely removed to accommodate pre-construction archaeology, demolition of the strongroom and foundation work for the new glazed link.

The Joint Venture Development Agreement and associated legal documents were completed on 1 February 2023 between the Trust and Staffordshire County Council. The first rent payment is due after practical completion of the construction work in Summer 2024.

STAFFORDSHIRE HISTORY CENTRE PROJECT

The procurement process for construction of the History Centre completed in September 2022 with only one compliant bid and with an inflationary increase of £1.7m. The project team and Project Board value engineered some construction elements and then raised the additional funds by submission of a grant uplift request to the National Lottery Heritage Fund of £894,599, additional funding from Staffordshire County Council of £310,000, a grant of £100,000 from the Wolfson Foundation, grant of £250,000 from Stafford Borough Council from the UK Shared

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Prosperity Fund, additional funding of £20,000 from the William Salt Library Trust, and £32,000 from the Hildegarde Simon Trust. There is also a commitment to raise £25,000 through a public appeal.

The revised project costs are:

Imagemakers were appointed as interpretation consultants and commenced work in November 2022. The Archive and Heritage team are drawing up lists of items for display and inviting feedback through Twitter polls and events. Two focus groups will be established to seek more detailed feedback on all aspects of the project.The Audience Agency have been appointed as Evaluation consultants for the project.

Procurement of the new website has been more complex requiring additional advice from legal services and assessment of the G-cloud Framework which has been rejected as it did not include a relevant package from the supplier. Progress is now being made through an open procurement process and engagement with a suitable supplier. In the interim a microsite for the project has been launched: https://staffordshirehistorycentre.blog/

As mentioned in the section on talks and visits (below) a very popular tour of the empty Library building was offered showing the recently revealed features. Three different types of wallpaper have been discovered from the Victorian and Edwardian periods and panels of each one will be preserved.

The construction contract commenced in January 2023 with the whole site handed over to Pave Aways Limited on 1 February 2023. Work is well underway with piling at the rear of the site for the new strongrooms. Demolition of the WSL strongroom has been completed. During groundworks additional asbestos was removed which was found at both the rear of the site and in the courtyard.

Archaeology work to meet the requirement for a watching brief was completed with some additional costs. The County Archaeologist assisted the project team in ensuring work was concluded to his satisfaction. Additional costs were absorbed by County Council property budgets and underspends in service budgets.

During the preparation work more significant issues have been revealed in the Library building. In the cottage the wooden beams underneath the floor are rotten, they have been laid directly on to the soil, which is very unusual. The stairs leading to the first floor have sagged and need structural work. There are issues with the floor levels in the Trustees Room and water damage on the first floor. These items are all

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variations to the contract and a request to use the contingency budget has been made to the NLHF.

Based on the construction start date the anticipated completion is summer 2024 and opening date in the autumn of 2024. At the moment the programme is on schedule across the construction and the activities.

Three progress reports and claims have been submitted to the NLHF and received favourably.

FINANCE

The Annual Accounts have been prepared by Mr Hawley and the Librarian in preparation for audit by Dean’s Accountants. The Library’s general expenditure was £36,673 which was £6,013 over the allocated budget. This was due to additional costs on the History Centre project. The Trust has paid the first instalment of £20,000 as its contribution to the project.

Income was £19,450 and exceeded the estimated targets mainly due to receiving the NLHF grant to cover History Centre Costs. The Library received its annual grant of £3,000 from Staffordshire County Council and late payment of the 2021/22 grant. Funding of £8,709 was received from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for work in connection with the Staffordshire History Centre project.

Key sources of income continued to be reproduction fees and digital images plus increasing royalties from Bridgeman Images. There was no spend on the conservation of printed books or the main conservation programme. There was spend on purchasing boxes for the collection.

COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT

Conservation of Printed Book Collections

No work has taken place on the conservation of printed book collections. Conservation cleaning and packaging, supervised by conservator Lisa Williams, will commence once space becomes available at the storage location from July 2023. This will be supported by volunteers.

COLLECTIONS DEVELOPMENT

Accessions

A total of 164 accessions were received during the year. The range of subjects covered by the year’s accessions has been very wide and details have been reported to the Trust meetings in the regular lists of accessions.

A total of 72 printed books were added to the Library’s collections of which 8 were donated.

Cataloguing

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Not all new accessions received during the year have been catalogued as the priority has been work relating to the Staffordshire History Centre project. The cataloguing backlog from has improved from 97.28 to 87.53 linear metres. A total of 1,628 (compared to 1,427 for 2021-22) individual catalogue descriptions for new items were added to the online catalogue during the course of the year.

Progress was made on the expansion of the online catalogue by the addition of legacy data on our holdings. In total 1,425 (compared to 1,065 for 2021-22) retrospective catalogue descriptions were added to the online database during the year.

A key component of online cataloguing for Library items is the preparation of biographical information about authors and personal subjects associated with a particular work. These are called name authority records and, during the year, an additional 1,800 (compared to 348 in 2021-22) of these have been created.

PUBLIC SERVICES

The Library collection is in storage with limited access and no items have been produced for in person visits. An in-person service is only being offered to readers whose request cannot be met through the copying/research service and meet the access criteria. The number of enquiries received has increased compared to the previous year.

Photography and scanning orders were supplied through Staffordshire Record Office. The categorisation of orders is more limited and just identifies Library orders from the Record Office orders.

Visitor sessions to the Staffordshire Views pages on the Past Track website have remained consistent.

Public Service Statistics

2022/23
2021/22
Personal Use via Staffordshire Record Office
Number of individual visits 0
118
Number of documents/restricted access items
produced for readers		 0
802
Distance Use
Number of postal and email enquiries 118
88
Numberof telephone enquiries Not recorded
0
Total 88
Talks andvisits 156
0
Reprographics Services
Number of photocopies supplied Not recorded
0
Numberofphotocopy orders Not recorded
0
NumberofStaffordshireViews prints sold Not recorded
28
Number of digital images other than Staffs Views
supplied		 Not recorded
37

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Numberofphotography orders Not recorded
3
Total number of orders 45
Online Use
Numberof visitorsessions onStaffsViewsweb site 1,633
1,651

Permissions to Publish

Eleven permissions to publish or exhibit items from the Library’s collections were granted to:

Talks and Visits

A tour was developed to offer a unique opportunity to see the William Salt Library without the collection in situ and with the historic features revealed. Tours were offered from September 2022 - February 2023 with additional dates added due to the popularity of the tour. They included interpretation based on the research of Ben Cunliffe and the Conservation Plan. In total there were 13 tours and 97 visitors. The

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tour has now been converted to a talk to be offered for groups. The talk was given in January to Gnosall Phoenix group to 59 attendees.

Social Media

There are combined Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts for the Archive, Museum and William Salt Library from which a number of staff post items about the collections and work of all three services.

Twitter: @ArchandHeritage Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/StaffordshireArchivesandHeritage Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archandheritage/

The posts about the Library have focused on revealing the period features which have been rediscovered since the collection was moved and tours of the William Salt Library.

Friends of the William Salt Library

The Friends of the William Salt Library held their AGM and Committee Meeting via Zoom on 24 May 2022 which was attended by the Librarian and Chair of Trustees. The Friends also held an event at Bishton Hall on Saturday 25 June 2022.

Joanna Terry William Salt Librarian, May 2023

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Charity registration number= 1173509 THE WILLIAM SALT LIBRARY TRUST ACCOUNTS for the year ended 31 March 2023

The William Salt Library Trust General Purpose Account Year ended 31 March 2023 Contents Page Accountants's Report Income and expenditure account Balance sheet Income and expenditure account- ConseNation account Balance sheet- Conservation account

The W411ram Salt Llbrary Trust General Purpose Account Year ended 31 March 2023 Accountonts'5 report to the trustees otThe Wllllam Salt Library TN$t We have examined, without carrying out an audit, the Balanace Sheet5 dated 31 March 2023. together with the Income and Expenditure Accounts for the year ended on that date. and confirm that they are in accordance with accounting record5 and information supplied. Deans Chartered Accountsnts Gibson House Hurrlcane Court Hurricane Close Stafft>rd ST16 IGZ Date.. P38e I

The VTilliam Salt Library Trust General Purpose Account Year ended 31 March 2023 2023 2022 Income Staffordshire County Council Grant Other 8rant5 Interest 3,0(J) 260 896 596 8,709 1,387 904 169 COIF M & G Fixed interest Bank and Building Soaety Donations and grants Reproduction fees Bridgeman royalties Photographic permits Staffordshire views General income 71,937 225 122 105 396 785 236 635 435 12,889 77,914 Less Ex enditure Librarians salary Printing, postage and stationery Conservation work Insurance 350 469 453 798 184 372 690 455 Accountancy Subscriptions to 50cietTres Books and manuscripts 1,003 2,100 72 31,182 1,076 2,1 Bank charge5 Relocation projert 97 8,671 36,709 13,930 Net Ideficitl/surplus for the year 123,8201 63,984 Page 2

The Wllliam Salt Library Trust General Purpose Account Balance Sheet Year ended 31 Marth 2023 2023 2022 Investfflents COIF- Charitie5 Fixed Interest Date purchased 0610712￿J7 2810812007 0310412008 0310712008 3110312019 3110312020 3110312021 1111112021 3110312022 3110312023 Units 7.004.53 2.654.52 1.836.46 2,076.07 3.540.86 1.971.73 1347.(N)I 24,643.00 1300.631 1639.941 42,439.60 Cost 8.500 3,302 2,309 2,500 4,808 2.687 14651 33,250 13771 17541 55,760 Market value at 31 March 2023 £53.923 M&G- Chafltles Flxed Inte￿$t Date purchased 0610712007 1910712(KJ7 2ty0412IX)8 0210712008 1010512010 2110312011 1111112021 Unkts 2,214.846 2,800.566 1.951.488 2.189.142 5.733.006 4.084.968 27,301.090 46.275.11 Cost 2.589 3.302 2,309 2,500 7.000 5,000 33,250 55,950 111,710 111.710 Market value at 31 March 2023 £54.618 Total market value at 31 March 2023 £108,541 Bank accounts CAF Gold account Cash account 4.285 28.803 Débtor 178 6,000 Creditor 17621 18.0361 115,412 138,478 Reserve account Balance brought forward 139.232 75.248 IDeficitl/SiJrplus from income account 123.8201 63.984 115.412 139.232 Approved on behalf of the board of trustees C Hawley PaBe 3

The Wllliam Salt Llbrary Trust Coftservation A<¢ount Year ended 31 March 2023 2023 2022 Income M & G interest 26 18 COIF interest 728 359 754 377 Less Ex enditure Bindin￿reStO￿tI0n Net surplus for the year 754 377 Page 4

The Wllllam Salt Ubfary Trust Conservation Account Balance sheet Year ended 31 Mar¢h 2023 2022 Investments COIF- Charltles Flxèd Interest Date purchased l June 2009 Transferred 31 March 2019 31 March 2020 31 March 2021 31 March 2022 31 March 2023 Unit5 5.672 Cost 7,089 13.5411 11,9721 346 301 640 1.446 14,4271 12,4641 433 376 800 1.807 1.807 1,007 Market value at 31 March 2023 1,702 M&G- Charities Fixed Interst Date purthased Jun-09 Units 15,280 17.878 17,878 17,878 Market value at 31 March 2023 18.036 Total market value at 31 March 2023 19.738 Credltor 19.685 18,885 Reserve account Surplus for year Capital gain on units transferred 18,885 754 46 19.685 18,S09 377 18.885 Approved on behalf of the board of trustees C Hawley Pa8e 5