We look at the 2km of historical documents in Medway's Archives

It's been 25 years since City Ark, the first internet database of it's kind in the entire country was published.  Finn Macdiarmid reports.

Transcript

00:00When the internet was new and relatively unexplored territory, most archive centres had to search

00:04for specific documents, pages and words by hand, except for one.

00:09Twenty-five years ago this weekend, the Medway Archive Centre published CityArc, an online

00:14database that allowed for anyone around the world to search for specific articles they

00:19had at the centre.

00:20And because of the sheer amount of documents, it was definitely needed.

00:23If you were to take all of the paper, all of the documents down here in the Medway Archive

00:28strongroom and lay it out piece by piece, document by document, and you started at Chatham,

00:34you'd be able to reach Rochester.

00:36There's two kilometres of paper down here.

00:39That can be a lot to search through, and CityArc was the first database that could do this

00:43specific search, beating even the National Archives to the punch.

00:48On its anniversary, I spoke to the database's creator to get a better sense of its origins.

00:53We were the first to commit to using the internet and internet technology to put our finding

01:02aid online.

01:03I believe we were the first in local government to do this, and I think possibly the first

01:07in central government.

01:09There are various central government record offices as well in the UK, and although they

01:13all had internal query tools and search engines or databases, I don't recall they were available

01:22until about 2000, so we were the first by a few months, as I recall.

01:26The event kicked off with a speech from the Head of Culture and Libraries, and allowed

01:30visitors a guided tour of the environmentally-controlled strongroom that houses the Medway Archives

01:35themselves.

01:36There was also a selection of their most interesting items, like a document confirming the gravesite

01:41of Pocahontas in Gravesham, a limited edition Gillingham FC annual, and a top-secret map

01:47showing the Chatham garrison's plans if the town was invaded during World War II.

01:52I spoke to the portfolio holder for Heritage, Culture and Leisure about what the database

01:56and the archive centre means for Medway and the world's history enthusiasts.

02:00I have spoken to our archivists and the team members, and they tell me that people are

02:07searching about Medway and the history and the connections and the families' stories

02:13by contacting us, and they are guided as to how they can find those stories.

02:19The point of an archive centre is to make sure that everyone has equal access to their

02:22local history, and thanks to CityArc, Medway's archives are that much easier to access, even

02:2825 years on.

02:29Finn McDermid for KMTV in Medway.