Churchill Archives Centre

The Churchill Archives Centre faced several challenges in managing its digitized and born-digital materials. Dispersed content was spread across platforms like SoundCloud, Flickr, and social media, which, while functional for specific purposes, were unsuitable for hosting complete archival files that often included hundreds of images or documents requiring context for full comprehension. Additionally, limited accessibility hindered the sharing of certain media types, and born-digital content, such as transcripts from the British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, lacked centralized, full-text search functionality. These issues were compounded by contextual challenges, as highlights from collections could be shared, but the broader context within full archival files was frequently lost. Furthermore, the absence of seamless integration with existing catalogues and metadata systems led to manual updates and duplicated efforts. To address these issues, the Churchill Archives Centre implemented Libnova’s preservation platform, incorporating its OpenAccess component to deliver a unified solution for both preservation and access.