The records office for East Sussex and Brighton and Hove has released more than 5,000 unique and historic pictures and documents for viewing online.
East Sussex and Brighton and Hove Record Office (ESBHRO), at The Keep, has for some time been undertaking a project to start the process of managing and conserving its digital files.
This digital preservation project involves staff taking stock of the archive's digital collections, checking that the files are still correctly named, re-organising them if necessary, then uploading them to The Keep's digital preservation software.
This process, said archivists, is a lengthy one but will ensure that the digital files they care for are as well looked after as their paper counterparts and predecessors.
Digital files need to be actively preserved to ensure their survival — just leaving them on a hard-drive or uploading them to cloud storage is not enough.
They need to be checked for damage, backed up in different locations, and monitored for the future viability of their format.
So far, the end result is that over 5,000 files are now available for free online viewing.
You can begin browsing the archive by following this link: https://esccbhro.access.preservica.com/
Archive leaders said that this is the start of the digital preservation process for ESBHRO and the new online viewing portal, Universal Access, now allows members of the public along with customers to browse some of The Keep's most popular digital files.
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