About Us
For some time, we have been receiving more and more 'born-digital' material in archive and manuscript collections arriving at the Bodleian Library. Digital material comes to us in a variety of forms - whole computers, computer disks and other types of external media. The files stored on these devices are encoded in a range of contemporary and older file formats. The types of material we typically expect to find include: audio, documents, email, images, presentations, spreadsheets and many more. Much of this material has no equivalent in paper form and must be preserved and accessed digitally.
Bodleian Electronic Archives and Manuscripts (BEAM) is being created to provide a trusted digital repository service for the management of born-digital archives and manuscripts acquired by the Library. BEAM will provide the means to gather, describe, manage and preserve the digital components in archive and manuscript collections while maintaining their relationship with more traditional components of the same collection.
The first phase of development (2008-11) will be undertaken through the futureArch project.
