As well as making 1000 years’ worth of historical documents available to present day researchers, Essex Record Office also has a role in preserving current information for researchers of the future to access. As it is World Digital Preservation Day, we thought we would share some of the work we have been doing on the latter, preserving digital records for future generations.

Types of media in the archive: clockwise from top left – minidisc, CD-R, floppy disk and mini-DV tape

Digital preservation is defined as ‘the activities necessary to ensure the continued access to digital materials as long as necessary….beyond the limits of media failure or technological and organisational change’. (Definition taken from the Handbook: Digital Preservation Handbook, 2nd Edition, https://www.dpconline.org/handbook, Digital Preservation Coalition © 2015, accessed on 29 August 2024). It encompasses documents and files that are created and only exist digitally, known as born-digital; scans of paper records that have been destroyed, known as digitised records; and digital copies of existing paper and analogue records, known as digital surrogates.

Essex Record Office does not have many digitised records, but we do have a considerable number of digital surrogates and a growing number of born-digital records in our collections. Put together, we have over 83 terabytes of digital records, up from 64 terabytes in 2021. 97% of these are digital surrogates e.g. images of parish registers and wills. Only 3% are born-digital, but these include Word-processed documents, images, and sound and video recordings that form part of the Essex Sound and Video Archive.

Looking after digital records poses some challenges that are very different to looking after paper and parchment. Risks to the survival of digital records come from the fact that software is needed to view them, which can become obsolete; and hardware is sometimes needed to view them, which has the same problem. For example, we have quite a number of floppy disks in our collections. How many people have computers that still have floppy disk drives? Some risks are however similar to those faced with physical documents. Just as paper can decay through high acidity levels or the effect of moist environments, digital records can decay electronically, often when being copied from one file location to another.

We have been looking at the risks our digital holdings face and how we can mitigate against them, and have been benchmarking our activities against various digital preservation standards that have been devised by the National Digital Stewardship Alliance and the Digital Preservation Coalition. The risk to the holdings has been assessed against a framework provided by the UK National Archives. This was first done in 2022, and revisiting the framework this year has shown that we have made significant progress in lowering the risk of the records becoming inaccessible. This is largely owing to the fact that in 2022, our digital holdings were not particularly well documented, particularly in terms of technical information. We now have a lot more information about the digital records that we hold, which means that it is easier to establish where vulnerabilities exist. This means for example that we can transfer the content kept on file types most at risk of obsolescence onto file types with more longevity.

We are also making progress against the standards, partly through the extra information we now have, but also because we have been busy copying all the files kept on CDs, floppy disks and other portable media onto the cloud. This reduces the risk that this information will become inaccessible because the hardware can no longer be read, either because readers are not kept or maintained, or because the CDs or floppy disks themselves have degraded.

We have also invested in a dedicated computer to carry out digital preservation work, and with it, some specialist software to help. When we have any digital records deposited, we now check it to see what file formats are included and what size they are. File formats are also checked against the National Archive’s PRONOM directory, which helps us see how much longevity they have and if we therefore need to move anything to a new format. If we move records from one file location to another, we now always use a piece of software to check that the transfer has completed successfully and not caused any damage to the files.

We are additionally trying to plan for the types of records that we are likely to receive in the future to make sure we can take them when offered them. Two examples of this are websites and emails. We have a system that can capture copies of websites and present them offline as they would have looked. Consequently, if anyone runs a website of Essex interest that they feel should be preserved, please contact us on ero.enquiry@essex.gov.uk to discuss giving to us to look after. This is particularly pertinent if it can no longer be maintained, but a copy of it is wanted for posterity. Emails are particularly complicated as there can be replies from multiple people, they can include attachments and links and they are littered with personal information. We now have software that allows quite a sophisticated search function for email collections. Names of people and keywords can be searched for as well as labels that we can allocate to an email or groups of emails. It also allows personal information to be identified and redacted and access restrictions to be put on emails where necessary. We can currently only accept email mailboxes in mbox format, which limits it to people with Hotmail or Gmail email addresses, but we would certainly welcome deposits of email mailboxes from these accounts.

More media: clockwise from top left – VHS tape, reel-to-reel tape, cassette tape and cartridge

Much more work needs to be done here in the area of digital preservation, particularly relating to how we provide access to these records. Furthermore, even the cloud is not infallible and back-up copies need to made of the information kept on it in case of disaster. We also need to develop our email preservation to include outlook mailboxes. Importantly, we are beginning to work on a long-term plan for digital preservation activities alongside how our records are presented online generally.

Digital Preservation is going to become ever more relevant with increasing quantities of information now being digital only. It is incredibly likely for example that people will now have collections of digital rather than printed photographs, and we have done a lot of preparation to make sure that we are ready to accept these types of collections. This is a rapidly developing area and one with many future uncertainties, but it is one we feel we can tackle and advise on.

The Digital Preservation Coalition are launching a toolkit for community archives today, so if this article has prompted questions about how you safeguard your own digital records for the future or those of an organisation you are part of, please feel free to make use of this, or ask us for guidance. More details can be found at https://www.dpconline.org/.

In his latest blog on fruits and vegetables, ERO Archive Assistant and Orchard Authority Neil Wiffen, considers quinces.

Cydonia Oblonga – the Quince

The autumn is when the English apple and pear season really gets in its stride. What a delight that the D’Arcy Spice is soon to be back in season, the Ribston Pippin on the shelves, a Doyenné du Comice pear slowly ripening in the fruit bowl. A poor relation to these well-known orchard fruits is the quince. Such a jolly, good-looking fruit, glowing all gold and yellow among the foliage but as hard as iron!

Yellow quinces in a wicker basket.

The quince is not native to Britain, it probably originated far to the east, in Turkestan and Transcaucasia. It was known on Crete at an early stage, and it was from here that it derives its name, Cydonia, from the city of Cydonea, now known as Canea. It appears that it was not introduced into Britian until after the Norman Conquest, and it is recorded that Edward I had some in 1275. (F.A. Roach, Cultivated Fruits of Britain: Their Origin and History (1985), pp.221-223).

Possibly the quince was generally a fruit of the gentry and aristocracy as being hard and gritty it must be cooked, often with wine, sugar and honey. Quince jelly and quince cheese perhaps have their origins here. Philip Miller, in The Gardener’s Dictionary (1731), goes as far as to say that ‘the fruit is sour and astringent’ (ERO, D/DU 588/1). The recipe ‘To p[re]serve Quinces’ (ERO, D/DBy Z1) uses a lot of sugar along with rose water and cinnamon – all expensive ingredients in early modern England.

Extract from D/DBy Z1 a recipe for preserving quinces.

It can also be used in savoury dishes, so perhaps this is where it would have found a role in most households. However, in the first half of the eighteenth century, someone decided to note down a recipe for quince wine (ERO, D/DRe Z5, c.1725), another way to make use of them, although with you still needed ‘3 pound of sugar’ to ‘every gallon of licker’.

Extract from D/DRe Z5 a recipe for quince wine

It is generally a very good ‘keeper’; it would have found a welcome shelf in the fruit store to help provide a supply over winter in an age before refrigeration and imports from around the globe. Mixed in with apples, it makes a wonderful crumble, bringing a lovely, distinctive taste and colour. I can imagine that it was ‘valued’, as an addition to the diet, but possibly not loved.

Quince Hall in Blackmore 1st ed 25 inch OS 1873-4

The quince has left little in the way of records, the odd place-name, such as Quince Hall in Blackmore, and Quince Tree Farm in South Ockendon – perhaps both named after a distinctive and unusual quince tree in their gardens? The quince as a landscape feature.

Quince Tree Farm 1st ed 25inch OS c.1875

If you want to find out more about apple days and all things celebrated around orchard fruits see: https://www.commonground.org.uk/apple-day/

If you want to see how the ERO got on ‘p[re]serve[ing] Quinces’ or how the c.1725 quince wine recipe came out then take a look at our video.

You can download the recipes here:

Preserved Quinces Recipe – Transcription

Quince Wine Recipe – Transcription

If you would like to see the quince recipe in D/DBy Z1, it will be on display in the ERO Searchroom until the end of November.

Take a trip to your local farm shop to hunt out a quince – let’s put it back on the menu!

Back in August, we were delighted to welcome the Care Contractors to the ERO Searchroom to explore the records of the Basildon Development Corporation. In this guest post, they tell us about their work and how the archives have helped them.

We are a newly formed art collective called Care Contractors, interested in public art, its maintenance, commissioning, and fabrication. Our members are Emma Edmondson (sculptor, educator and organiser), Lu Williams (artist, publisher), Shaun C. Badham (sculpture, artist, technician) and Laura Whiting (designer, researcher). Our first project commissioned by Creative Basildon is to develop a pilot cultural trail and community engagement for public art in Basildon that will take place this autumn.

Publicity photograph, opening ceremony of Wendy Taylor’s Armillary Sundial (1989) part of the Roundacre Improvement Scheme. Wendy Taylor is shown standing in front of the stainless steel sculpture with Harry Bacon and Gordon Roberts from the Commission for New Towns (catalogue ref: A8287 box 4)

As part of our research we want to understand how early public artworks were commissioned by the Basildon Development Corporation, what funds were allocated and how conversations between artists and government officers unfolded. To prepare for our visit to Essex Record Office, we were introduced by Alina Congreve of New Jerusalems to archivist Victoria West for an initial video call. This helped to plan our research day, as the collection features an enormous 1,065 boxes of Basildon Development Corporation material.

One box (from accession A8287 box 4) containing letters, papers and publicity material from the administrative department proved really useful for our research: photos of the iconic Mother and Child (1962) fountain being built in Maurice Lambert’s studio (that for a time was also the Basildon logo); photographs of the bronze Homer (1961) by Frederick Edward William in Brooke House, now sadly missing; along with photos of the opening ceremony of Wendy Taylors’ Armillary Sundial (1989) attended proudly by the Commission for New Towns officials Harry Bacon and Gordon Roberts. As we looked through the materials some common questions arrived – what plans were put in place for maintenance? Who is responsible for this work? And what might be a sustainable vehicle to undertake this today?

From looking through promotional brochures in A8389 box 3 the role public art played in attracting new business, residents and shoppers was very apparent. Basildon produced its own district guides, commonly featuring well-loved artworks such as Pussiewillow III (1981) by Rowland Emett outside Savacentre (now ASDA) on its cover. We wondered what would be the equivalent today? And the contemporary role public art plays in promoting the town.

Booklet: Welcome to the District, published by Basildon Council, No date, estimate 1982, cover featuring a crowd admiring the newly installed Pussywillow III sculpture (catalogue ref: A9389 Box 3)

Booklet: Welcome to the District, published by Basildon Council, No date, estimate 1982, aspirational quote set against photograph of Mother and Child Fountain (1962) Maurice Lambert, and Keay House (now Southgate House) in the Background before remodelling (catalogue ref: A9389 Box 3)

With our project we had already decided to focus on the work of Wendy Taylor for its hybrid approach to public realm design. Still innovative today, Taylor’s approach was feminist, pedestrian and cycle focused; her designs wove together a series of roundabouts and underpasses at the Eastern and Western gateways to the town centre. Commissioned by the Development Corporation, The Roundacre Improvement Scheme Underpasses (1985-90) were designed to increase safety with curved walls that prevented attackers from pressing their victims up against the sides, and coloured patterned tiles specified for their light reflective qualities, as seen with The Avenue of Trees underpasses. Since 2013, these underpasses have been left with half the tiles removed after the installation of new lighting. Now under the care of Essex County Highways, since the disbanding of the Development Corporation, advocating for their repair is a more complex task. 

Amongst the archive photos, we rediscovered the currently overgrown sculptural letters of Taylor’s Compass Bowl (1980) at Southernhay / Long Riding. Understanding the original intention of these environmental works could, for example, inform instructions given to gardening teams today, and reinject the meaning to this unique outdoor sunken ‘room for contemplation’. We also found photos of another currently underloved artwork – Taylor’s Animal Fesco Underpass, completed in Phase II of the Roundacre improvement works connecting Gloucester Park and what was previously a boating lake and public swimming pool. Its sloped sides are just steep enough to climb if you have good shoes, it encourages you to scramble over the silhouettes of life size animals cast with dyed concrete. Common across public art in New Towns is its availability to be climbed and played on, and intentionally or not, concrete of all textures has proved useful over time, which might not be the most ecological material choice today, but is nonetheless easy to maintain.

As Basildon reaches its 75th year, we can reflect on the generosity, co-ordination and ambition of the late stages of the Development Corporation projects. With new redevelopment plans afoot, what opportunities may arise for thoughtful and sensitive new infrastructure? How will public art be integrated, and most importantly who will care for, clean and curate it? Through our project we will be establishing conversations with residents, council officers, shoppers, festival goers, artists and commissioners with what new forms of artworks are relevant today, and who does the work of care in a time and cash poor society? 

Photograph, year unknown, Wendy Taylor’s Compass Bowl (1980) at Southernhay / Long Riding roundabout showing directional floor paving and angular raised planters and stylised compass letters (catalogue ref: A8287)

Colour photograph showing present day Compass Bowl conditions, resurfaced floor, and abundant vegetation that obscures stylized lettering. Members of Care Contractors Art Collective Lu Williams, Poly (dog) and Shaun C. Badham in the mouth of the tunnel (credit Emma Edmonsdson, 2024)

You can follow the Care Contractors on Instagram here: www.instagram.com/care_contractors/

For full list of public activities and events please see: creativebasildon.co.uk/care-contractors/

You can find our more about the New Jerusalems project here: www.newjerusalems.info/ and follow on Instagram here: www.instagram.com/new.jerusalems/

Essex Record Office has two guides to the Basildon and Harlow Development Corporations records: Guide to help you start exploring the New Town Development Corporation Records and Harlow and Basildon in the Essex Sound and Video Archive