RESOURCES AND INSIGHTS
Latest News from YourArchive®
Practical guidance and ideas for heritage organisations, libraries and community archives on digital preservation, oral history, community engagement and storytelling.
How to Host a Community Scanning Day
A step-by-step guide to planning and running a community scanning day, from equipment and permissions to recording the stories behind each photo. Includes a free printable checklist.
How to Preserve Your Sports Club's History
Every sports club has a history, but few have an archive. This guide shows clubs, fans and heritage groups how to bring photos, programmes and memories together in a digital archive the whole club community can explore and add to.
American Archives Month: 31 Ideas for Libraries and Historical Societies
October is American Archives Month, and you don't need a big budget or a dedicated archivist to take part. This day-by-day calendar gives libraries, historical societies and community archives 31 practical ideas, from #AskAnArchivist Day to Halloween, to get your collection seen, shared and added to all month long. Includes a free printable calendar to download.
How Searchable Is Your Archive? 10 Questions to Ask
Being digitised doesn't mean being discoverable. This article puts your archive to the test with 10 practical questions, covering full-text search, handwriting, photographs, audio and facial matching, and shows you where the hidden gaps in your collection are likely to be.
Consent, Copyright and Permissions in Community Archives
Donations, uploads, oral histories: each one raises a different consent question. Whether a photo is donated or uploaded, or an oral history is captured and stored, permission isn't a single yes or no.
Here's a look at consent, permissions and copyright within community archives.
Archive Storytelling: Why Every Collection Has Stories Worth Telling
Every archive contains stories worth telling. The challenge isn't finding them, it's bringing them to life. Discover why organisations across every sector are investing in storytelling, what heritage organisations can learn from leading brands, and how archives, museums, libraries and local history societies can transform collections into engaging content that attracts visitors, volunteers, supporters and funding.
YourArchive + Canva: Turn Your Collections into Beautiful Designs
Announcing the new YourArchive + Canva integration: making it easier than ever for heritage organisations, museums, libraries and charities to push archive content directly into Canva and turn it into beautiful, on-brand designs in minutes.
What Should You Digitise First?
Digitising a collection is easier said than done when you have limited time, budget and a backlog that stretches back decades. This practical guide helps libraries, museums and historical societies decide what to tackle first including a free prioritisation matrix, a 12-month roadmap, and a worked example showing the framework in action.
The People Who Keep History Alive: A Volunteer Guide for Libraries, Museums and Historical Societies
Volunteers have always been the quiet backbone of heritage work. They sort the boxes nobody else has time for, transcribe the documents that would otherwise remain unreadable, and carry in their memories the contextual knowledge that no catalogue entry can fully capture. This guide explores how libraries, museums and historical societies can find the right volunteers, involve them meaningfully, reach them remotely, make them feel genuinely valued, and perhaps critically, capture what they know before it is gone.
Centenary Celebration Ideas for Charities and Nonprofits
A centenary is more than a celebration. It is a rare opportunity to reconnect communities, capture disappearing stories and create a lasting legacy. This article explores meaningful centenary celebration ideas for charities and nonprofits, from oral histories and digital time capsules to supporter storytelling campaigns and digital archives that continue growing long after the anniversary year ends.
How to Build a Digital Archive: A Complete Guide
Every community has a history worth keeping but photographs fade, documents deteriorate, and social media was never built to preserve what matters. This complete guide covers everything heritage organisations, libraries, museums, and community groups need to know about building a digital archive: from your first collection audit to choosing a platform, engaging contributors, and keeping your collection safe for the long term.
Digital Preservation for Public Libraries: A Practical Guide
Public libraries hold irreplaceable local history. This guide covers what digital preservation means in practice, how to get started, and how community contribution builds a collection that outlasts any single project.
What Funders Want to See From Archives, Libraries and Museums
Heritage funders no longer just want to know what you're preserving, they want to know who's involved. This guide helps archives, libraries, museums and historical societies demonstrate meaningful community engagement in their funding applications, with practical advice on measurable impact, legacy outcomes, and the digital tools that make participation visible.
How Community Archives Can Identify People in Historical Photographs
Unidentified photographs are one of the biggest challenges facing community archives and local history collections. This article explores why identities are lost over time, how organisations traditionally approach photo identification, and how modern digital tools (including facial recognition) can support research without sacrificing ethics or control. Discover practical strategies to turn unknown faces into lasting historical knowledge.
When Facebook Isn’t Forever: Why Local History Needs a Home You Control
Social media has become the default place where communities share their history, but it was never designed to preserve it. From lost early 2000s photos to comments and context disappearing over time, this article explores why Facebook isn’t a reliable home for local history and how libraries and historical societies can create a digital space they truly control.
Community Anniversaries: Creative Ways to Collect, Share and Preserve Local History
Community anniversaries are powerful moments to reconnect people with place, surface overlooked stories, and preserve shared history. But the most meaningful celebrations go beyond one-off events. This article explores creative, practical ways libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies can use anniversaries to collect stories, engage communities, and build lasting digital resources that continue to grow long after the milestone year has passed.
Webinars: January 2026
Two practical webinars for community groups and local historians, focused on organising existing collections and creating a digital home to preserve and share community history.
10 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Your Digital Archive
Modern digital archives do far more than preserve historical records. From creating instant videos and social media content to supporting genealogy research, community storytelling and privacy-aware facial recognition, today’s archives are dynamic platforms for engagement. This article explores ten powerful (and often unexpected) ways digital archives can bring heritage to life, grow community participation and turn collections into living, evolving resources.
Beyond Preservation: How to Turn Your Archive into Videos, Stories and Shareable Digital Content
Digitising an archive is no longer the end goal…it’s the starting point. Today’s audiences expect stories, videos, and interactive experiences, not static repositories. This article explores how heritage organisations can move beyond preservation to activate their archives as living content engines. From video creation and podcasts to virtual tours and community storytelling, it shows how modern digital tools can transform archives into dynamic, shareable resources that build connection, relevance, and long-term engagement.
5 Easy Ways to Capture Oral Histories in Your Community
Oral histories preserve the voices, memories and lived experiences that shape your community. This guide shares five simple ways museums, libraries, and local heritage groups can record oral and video stories using YourArchive (no specialist equipment needed). Preserve the past, capture the present, and inspire the future by documenting and sharing the voices of your community.