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.
Finn Macdiarmid reports.
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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.