Liverpool Record Office choose Preservica for new cloud-based public archive

Oxford, UK and Boston, MA: January 15th, 2019 – The Liverpool Record Office, part of Liverpool City Council’s Libraries and Information Services, has chosen Preservica’s cloud-based active digital preservation software to create a new online archive and to digitally preserve culturally significant records dating back to the 13^th century.

The new cloud-based system will enable greater use of the archive’s digital collections by academic researchers, the local council, community groups and the general public. Currently many requests to the archive are handled manually with material transferred and made available on CDs and memory sticks.

The Record Office, based at Liverpool Central Library, will start with the ingest of its large photography collections, including thousands of digitised images from the City Engineers collection, dating from 1897 to 1995, which documents the work done by the department and is of local and national value. It is a detailed record of almost every aspect of the development of the city, which was, for much of the period in question, the second commercial city in England.

The archives also include the Letters Patent from King John, signed on 28^th August 1207, to mark the beginning of the city of Liverpool. Other highlights feature the large archive of the Merseyside Jewish Community that dates back to the 18^th Century, and the Everton Football Club collection containing football shirts, programmes and correspondence from Liverpool’s first football team.

Much of the material requires digitising, including oral histories collections, which are stored on a combination of VHS, audio cassette and other obsolete mediums. Some of the analogue material has not been accessible for many years and so the Record Office will use Preservica to ensure the council’s digitised (and born-digital) materials are not only useable by future generations, but also readily accessible online today.

Complete out-of-the-box digital preservation

In its search for a digital preservation system, the archives team used the UK government’s G-cloud digital marketplace to learn about Preservica, do comparisons and streamline the procurement process. Preservica’s active digital preservation software provided a complete and affordable cloud-based solution. This included an out-of-the-box connector to the existing CALM catalogue and an easily customised online portal for controlled public access to digital collections and records.

Liverpool City Council’s Digital Archivist Carl Kenneally highlights how the new system will increase the value of the archives, “Previously, public access to digital collections was limited but as the collections are uploaded to the cloud, Preservica will enable us to showcase and drive interest in them online to a much larger audience than ever before. This will help us to really demonstrate the value of the archive and the role it plays in highlighting the incredible cultural history of the City of Liverpool.”

Preservica CEO Mike Quinn says, “We welcome the Liverpool Record Office to the growing community of UK local authorities choosing Preservica to meet government mandates to safeguard and provide greater public access to digital records and collections. Using Preservica hosted in the cloud is a secure and cost-effective solution for many local government institutions, and we look forward to working with the team at Liverpool City Council to protect and showcase the value of Liverpool’s unique cultural and historic assets.”

About Liverpool Record Office - Liverpool Record Office is an accredited archive service. It collects, preserves and makes accessible archives and local studies materials from the 13^th century onwards relating to all aspects of the City’s history.

About Preservica - Preservica is changing the way organisations around the world protect and future-proof critical long-term digital information. Available in the cloud (SaaS) or on-premise, our award-winning active digital preservation software has been designed from the ground-up to tackle the unique challenges of ensuring digital information remains accessible and trustworthy over decades.

It’s a proven solution that's trusted by business, archives, libraries, museums and government institutions around the world – including UK public sector organisations such as Dorset, Swindon & Wilts, West Sussex, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Bucks, Nottinghamshire, Cumbria, Transport for London (TfL), the Met Office, and the UK National Archives. Preservica is an AWS Government Competency Partner meeting the highest levels of availability, reliability and security for government workloads and data.

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