Celebrating digital archives with National Archives Week

@explorearchives: “A world without records is a world without memory”

This week, running through to Sunday 22^nd of November, is National Archives Week. The Explore Your Archive campaign, which is now in its third year, is coordinated by one of our customers, The National Archives, and the Archives and Records Association (UK and Ireland).

The campaign aims to increase public awareness of the essential role that archives play in our society and to celebrate the wonderful network of collections held in archives. It also aims to emphasise the skills and professionalism of the sector.

From our point of view, it’s a great opportunity to increase awareness of how digital technologies are changing the nature of archives as more digitised and “born digital” content gets added to collections.

Digital content gives archives a new set of challenges to ensure that the file formats used today remain readable and useable for generations to come. This means having an automated way to migrate files to newer formats as they become old or obsolete. During our user groups meetings, we get to hear about the unique challenges many archives face when trying to “future proof” collections – many who are at the same time also using the Cloud to preserve their collections.

To whet your appetite here are just a few of the UK Archives using Preservica to safeguard their digital content. You might like to take a look at the great work they are doing!

• The Wellcome Library
• Dorset History Centre
• Oxfordshire History Centre
• The UK Met Office
• BT Archives
• The UK National Archives
• HSBC Archives
• Unilever Archives
• RCAHMS

To find out how you can make the most of National Archives Week, download the Explore Your Archive Campaign Toolkit and follow #explorearchives on Twitter for the latest campaign updates.

Participating archivists also take note – The Guardian is celebrating National Archives Week by inviting all archives to upload and share items and stories here. Files can be video, photos or stories.