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David Underdown @davidunderdown9 22 November 2013

Learn about the project digitizing the Home Guard personnel records in County Durham, the challenges faced, and the progress made. Explore the complexities of storing and managing digital files of historical significance. Discover the strategies employed to ensure data protection and compliance. Follow the journey of preserving and making accessible valuable records from the past.

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David Underdown @davidunderdown9 22 November 2013

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  1. Digital Records and the County Durham Home Guard Catalogue Day 2013 David Underdown @davidunderdown9 22 November 2013

  2. About me • Worked here 8 ½ years • Involved in our digital preservation activities throughout • A techie • But – • Also carry out my own family history and other research as a reader

  3. Project background – digital records • Initially we had focused on “born digital” records • Increasing realisation that we also needed to protect better the investment represented by digitisation projects • How to deal with the set of MOD personnel records, covering post First World War service • Large collection and personal nature of information challenging • Some previous examples of us taking material in forms that would normally be used only as surrogates • “Digitised records” concept

  4. About the project • Home Guard personnel records initially selected as a priority for early transfer • Comprise around 4.5 million individual records, 720m of shelving • County Durham selected as pilot, approx 2% of total • Model for overall population, variety of industrial areas/urban/suburban/rural, also coastal and inland areas • Sampling from whole series had suggested only about 10% would be closed

  5. The Home Guard • Organised by county • 1 or more battalion each • Local companies or platoons • Large employers had own units • Duties carried out on top of usual work • Active 14 May 1940–3 December 1944 (disbanded 31 December 1945)

  6. Challenges and issues 1 • Piloting digitised record process, but also infrastructure upgrade and new version of digital repository software • Record volume still potentially a problem, even if challenge is storing digital files not paper • To store County Durham set as Tiff images, approx 7TB, 2% of total Home Guard collection (and we make 3 copies) • Therefore entire Home Guard around 380TB • JPEG2000 with lossless compression roughly halves storage required

  7. Challenges and issues 2 • Closure: record for any person under 100 closed under data protection legislation and code of practice for archives • Can be opened via FOI request if proof of death provided • Some records also contain medical information – closed for 100 years from date of record • What information to transcribe for Discovery and supporting FOI work? • Also provenance information about digitisation process

  8. Break down by birth year

  9. After matching with death registers

  10. Where next? • Developed Scanning and Transcription framework • Also sets our basic standards for digitisation projects, even those outside framework • Not intended to set standards for others, necessarily • Naval personnel records • 1939 National Registration records

  11. Further details of our image and metadata specifications can be found on our website at: http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/digitisation-at-the-national-archives.pdf Questions?

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