For the past year, the Greater Manchester Archives and Local Studies Partnership (GMALSP) have been working behind the scenes to develop the practical skills required to preserve born digital archives as part of the Practical Digital Preservation in Greater Manchester project.
Lots of the digital records we hold are stored on older storage media such as floppy disks, CDs and even internal hard drives. Prior to this project it was near to impossible to access these records and as digital records are so fragile, it was a priority for us to gain access to and preserve the digital records we hold already. This would allow us to build the skills to be able to continue collecting born digital records.
With the help of The National Archives Resilience Fund we were able to begin our digital preservation journey across the region by creating two traveling digital kits. Each kit would contain the necessary hardware to be able to access different types of storage media and software to collect the vital information required to maintain access to these records long term in an ever changing digital environment.
Our first steps involved creating a kit list and purchasing the necessary items as well as developing digital preservation documentation such as a workflow that could be followed and adapted to fit the needs of each authority archive.
From August 2024, the kits were ready to start traveling across Greater Manchester starting with Oldham and Stockport. Each authority archive had an initial 4 weeks to use the kits and gain experience on the practical aspects of digital preservation. This enabled us to start thinking about how to approach digital preservation at our individual archives. The kits then continued round the 10 authorities and finished their initial route in March 2025 at Bolton and Bury.
A big help to this project was the support already in place through GMALSP. A digital preservation sub-group was created which met following each authority’s time with the kit. This made it easier for us to keep in touch with each other throughout the project, ask questions and feedback on our time with the kit.
The Digital Kit gave me the chance to prioritise time for Digital Preservation – Wigan & Leigh Archives
I feel like I’ve developed more skills and knowledge – Tameside Local Studies and Archives Centre
We feel that we are all starting to climb the ladder with digital preservation – Rochdale Local Studies
To celebrate our achievements we held an End of Project Celebration at Manchester Central Library.
Where we first had some fun playing the digital preservation themed card game Millie’s Formats created by Émilie Fortin and Jean-François Ruest of the Université Laval and is available to use under the creative commons license. This was a great way to further our understanding of different and more obscure file formats and how best to preserve them, prizes were awarded to the winners. We then had some interesting discussions sharing the knowledge we had gained from the project and by the end of the day we had a plan of action for our next steps in digital preservation.
The end of this project marks the beginning of digital preservation within Greater Manchester which wouldn’t have been possible without the funding provided by The National Archives through their Resilience Grants. The project has given us the tools and skills to get to know the digital records we already hold and has made digital preservation a more manageable task for us all.
