The Heritage Lottery Fund is continuing to make a big difference by helping organisations and communities to preserve, protect and open up important records such as local history archives, photographic collections, film, spoken history records, digital material, rare books, manuscripts and archives of all kinds.

We give grants to make sure that these records are properly conserved and better housed and presented. This could range from the development of a new Record Office or Local Studies library through to better facilities for local community archives. We can also help buy important items to add to existing collections, and can make grants for appropriate projects to convert information about the collections into digital formats.

We want to support projects that help people to get better access to the records and understand more about them. This may involve people using archives for the first time, researching family and local history or encouraging volunteers to do practical work to help with the project such as repackaging, listing, cataloguing or scanning.

By supporting the compilation of oral histories, we are helping to emphasise the link between personal experience and family history and the broader themes of both local and national heritage. Access to local historical records is also being extended through the use of new communications technology. However we cannot fund cataloguing or digitisation projects that do not have additional activities to help more people access and learn from the material.

The good news is that we have already awarded over £165 million to more than 720 projects for archives and records.