Securing funding in the local government bidding culture: are records sufficiently ‘sexy’ to succeed? Available to Purchase

This paper presents some of the findings from research into the effects that the emergent bidding culture has had on the development of English local government archive, library and museum services. The project was funded by Resource and undertaken by the Information Management Research Institute at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle. The research revealed that the extent of involvement by archives and record management services in competitive bidding for external funds was dependent on a number of factors including the level of existing resource bases of archive services; the geographical and cognitive locations of archives; and the focus of external funding opportunities. However, the need for archives and records management services to engage in effective bidding is not likely to disappear, and it is suggested that these organisations must adopt a dynamic approach to bidding and marketing, asserting that their needs – ‘sexy’ or otherwise – deserve appropriate funding.