23 DECEMBER 2024
2024 marked the 25th anniversary of CityArk, the Medway Council online archives catalogue (cityark.medway.gov.uk) significant as the first UK public sector (and possibly the first UK) piece-level, hierarchical archives catalogue to be published online, preceding the National Archives ProCat (now Discovery) and Essex Record Office’s Seax (now Essex Archives Online).
We look at the 2km of historical documents in Medways Archives
Liveryman Stephen Dixon specified the system and created or edited its digital content. Such systems are now commonplace and taken for granted as the principal tools for remotely identifying documents of relevant to research. The catalogue entries were gradually also augmented by images of the original documents including the first parish registers published online.