DIGITAL ARCHIVE PLATFORM FOR LIBRARIES, LOCAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS AND COMMUNITY ARCHIVES

Preserve your community's history. Help people find their place in it.

YourArchive gives libraries and community archives one platform to preserve their collections, make them discoverable and invite their communities to contribute the stories, photographs and memories that make their history unique. Because no one knows your story better than the people who lived it.

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Cloud-based and secure
Built for everyone
Trusted by libraries and community archives globally
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HOW IT WORKS

Everything your library or community archive needs, in one platform

Preserve
Keep the stories safe

Digitise and protect your collections

Bring everything together in a single, secure, cloud-based archive. From community photographs, to historical maps, videos and oral histories.

  • All major file formats supported
  • Professional archival standards including Dublin Core, customised to your requirements
  • Hierarchical folder structure to fonds and series level
  • Preservation masters held separately from published content
  • GDPR-compliant throughout
Discover
Help people find their story

Make every name, face and word findable

Facial recognition, OCR and audio transcription make your entire collection searchable. A name searched once returns results across photographs, documents, videos and oral histories simultaneously.

  • Facial recognition across your entire collection
  • OCR on every document, image and handwritten record
  • Audio and video transcription with timestamps
  • Search by name, family, date, place, keyword and more
  • Personal galleries auto-generated for every identified individual
Contribute
Invite your community to add theirs

Invite your community to help it grow

Open your archive to the people who know it best. Community members contribute photographs, documents and memories. Every submission is moderated before it goes live.

  • Community uploads with full moderation workflow
  • Community identification of unknown faces
  • Comments and memories on individual items
  • Spoken Stories for audio, video and written oral history and memory capture
  • Branded community portal with access control

From archive to audience

Your stories, ready to share.

Once your stories are preserved and discoverable, YourArchive gives you everything you need to share them with your community, your supporters, and to reach and engage with new audiences.

🌐 Publish to your community portal
🎬 Create videos from archive content
📱 Share to social media
📧 Email your community
🎨 Push to Canva for branded materials

WHY IT MATTERS

The moment someone finds their place in history

Behind every photograph is a story. Behind every document is a life. YourArchive connects them.

YourArchive · Margaret's discovery
Starting point
🖼️
Hartfield High Street, street party, 1953
Photograph · Local studies collection
Margaret identifies her grandmother in this photograph
Facial recognition
54 more photographs found automatically
YourArchive scanned the entire collection and identified her grandmother in every other photograph she appeared in. None of which Margaret knew existed.
One search across the entire collection
A name searched once. Everything surfaced at once.
55 Photographs identified across the collection
4 Newspaper clippings from the local studies collection
1 Oral history recorded in 1987. Her grandmother's voice, preserved.
2 Records found. Marriage certificate and death record.
Community contribution
MH
Margaret Hollis · added a comment
"The woman on the left is Dorothy Holt. The man beside her is her husband William. I recognise this from my mother's description of the street party in 1953."
Submitted for moderation before going live

The more your community engages, identifying faces, adding context and contributing memories, the richer your archive becomes.

FEATURE SPOTLIGHT - SPOKEN STORIES

Capture the stories only your community can tell

Affordable oral history collection from anyone, anywhere.

Oral history collection has traditionally been expensive, logistically complex and geographically limited, often requiring equipment, trained interviewers and in-person visits.

YourArchive’s Spoken Stories removes every one of those barriers. Anyone in your community can record audio, video or written memories via a simple link, on any device, from anywhere in the world. No equipment. No scheduling. No technical knowledge required.

Every submission is automatically transcribed, catalogued and added to your searchable archive.

Explore Spoken Stories →
YourArchive · Spoken Stories
Recent submissions
🎙️
Dorothy Holt · Former Mill Worker
Audio · 7:42 · Submitted from home
7:42
🎙️
Robert Hartley · Local Historian
Video · 5:18 · Submitted from home
5:18
🎙️
Margaret Hollis · Community Member
Audio · 9:04 · Submitted from home
9:04
✍️
James Alderton · Village Resident
Written memory · 847 words
Complete
All submissions auto-transcribed and catalogued
Singing River Genealogy and Local History Library
Pascagoula, Mississippi · America250 Legacy Grant

Selected as the platform of choice for the America250 Legacy Grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Singing River Library is using YourArchive to digitise and display its archival collections — oral histories, local television programmes and family collections from Jackson and George Counties. In an area prone to natural disaster, preserving these collections digitally is not just convenient. It is essential.

Local history collection Oral histories Genealogy

"History should be easily accessible for all and be curated with the user in mind. In an area so prone to natural disaster, it is imperative that we do our part to preserve what we have for posterity."

Laura Thompson, MLIS — Manager, Singing River Genealogy and Local History Library
Caru Dolgarrog Community Archive
Dolgarrog, Conwy Valley · Wales

Set in the heart of the Conwy Valley, the Caru Dolgarrog archive documents the life of this unique Welsh village — its hydroelectricity power station, aluminium works, waterfalls and close-knit community. Using YourArchive, the archive has brought together photographs spanning decades of village life, running exhibitions and community events that invite members to contribute their own historical material and memories.

Community archive Industrial heritage Community events

Organisations using YourArchive

CUSTOMER STORIES

Ready to see how YourArchive could work for your anniversary project?

Book a free demo tailored to your occasion or explore everything the platform offers.

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COMMON QUESTIONS

Frequently asked questions

Yes. YourArchive is designed for organisations of every size and resource level, from fully staffed public libraries to volunteer-run community archives. The platform is intuitive enough for non-technical users while giving professional archivists the depth they need.
YourArchive automatically scans your collection and groups photographs by the faces in them. Identify a person once and every photograph of them is tagged instantly across your entire archive. Community members can also help identify unknown faces, subject to moderation. A family name searched once returns results across photographs, documents, audio and video simultaneously.
Yes, if you wish. Community members can contribute photographs, documents and memories directly. Every submission passes through a full moderation workflow before anything goes live, so your team stays in complete control of what is published.
Anyone can record audio, video or written memories via a simple link on any device, from anywhere in the world. No equipment or technical knowledge required. Every submission is automatically transcribed, catalogued and added to your searchable archive.
Yes. Your preservation layer and community portal operate separately. You decide what gets published, to whom and when. Permissions are manageable at collection, series or item level, from fully public to invitation only.
All images can be watermarked without altering the original files. You can also choose whether to allow users to download files at item or collection level.
YourArchive supports redaction of faces using facial recognition technology. Once a person is redacted, they are removed from every image they appear in across your collection, without altering the original file. Sensitive information such as telephone numbers and email addresses can also be redacted.
YourArchive supports photographs, documents, PDFs, audio recordings, video footage, maps, plans and publications, all major file formats. Preservation masters are stored separately from display copies, ensuring your originals are always protected.
Yes. YourArchive supports Dublin Core and other standard metadata schemas, with hierarchical folder structure to fonds, collection, series and item level. You can customise metadata fields to meet your exact requirements, or keep things simple if that works better for your team.
Yes. Your branded community portal can be made publicly accessible, allowing researchers, family historians and genealogy groups to search and browse your collections from anywhere in the world, at any time.
All content is stored on UK-based cloud infrastructure with regular automated backups. Preservation masters are held in a secure, separate environment from published content. The platform is GDPR compliant and all data is held to industry-standard security protocols.
YourArchive is priced on an annual licence basis, with additional storage charged on top. We do not charge per user, so there is no penalty for growing your team or community. Get in touch for a quote tailored to your organisation.

GET STARTED

Every community has a story worth telling.

YourArchive gives libraries and community archives the tools to preserve it, share it and invite their communities to help it grow. Book a free demo tailored to your organisation.

Book a demo
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RESOURCES

Guidance & thinking

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