Electronic records in Plymouth and West Devon Record Office

In today's digital world, more and more records are being kept electronically and are no longer printed onto paper. These records are now being passed to the Record Office for safe keeping and permanent preservation.

Problems

Digital records are not like other records. You cannot see them or hold them and they normally require a piece of equipment (such as a computer or mobile phone) to use them or look at them. Digital records are often stored on disks or portable devices such as flash drives, which can become scratched, damaged or stop working all together.

Computers, software, and the hand held devices we use have come a long way in the last 25 years. Everyone upgrades to the latest version and buys the newest gadget. But what happens if you want to keep a Word document or an email or a database containing thousands of items? Will they still be useable in 50 or 100 years?

Preservation

Plymouth and West Devon Record Office seeks to collect electronic archives and catalogue them, making them available to the public as it would conventional material such as paper and parchment. In order to do this, a procedural framework has been introduced to ensure that material can be efficiently processed when we receive it. This will include the collecting of information about the digital material, for example:

• Information relating to copyright and provenance
• File format and any associated technical issues relating to file and media types.

Digital archives will be appraised in the same way as all other records and only material deemed appropriate for long term preservation will be retained. Details can be found on our Digital Preservation Policy page.

Search for electronic records using or online catalogue

Details of most of the electronic records we hold can be found on our online catalogue. Those currently kept on a disk in the strong room are marked with ED in the catalogue entry and those marked with ES are held on a corporate network drive.

• See all of the electronic records in the online catalogue

If you would like more information on electronic records or have records that you would like to deposit with us, please contact us.