M&S Archive

Summary

On 1 February 2023 the M&S digital archive was launched, featuring thousands of assets from the collections. It includes a variety of records, including store photographs from the 1890s, 1960s cinema adverts, staff magazines dating from 1927 onwards and internal training films and recordings of internal conferences transferred from VHS videos. The route to this point, however, had not been direct or easy. It involved the team finding support for their business case outlining the need for this work from an unexpected source within the organisation, and a delivery partner became a key advocate.

The M&S Archive was founded in 1984 as part of Marks and Spencer’s centenary celebrations. An exhibition “Marks in Time” was held at the University of Leeds in 2009 as part of the organisation’s 125th anniversary and saw select highlights from the archive being shared with the public to tell the M&S story to much acclaim. This led to a decision to move the entire archive into a new purpose-built facility on the University of Leeds campus that was opened in March 2012. The centre houses a permanent archive exhibition and spaces to support research use of the collections and educational and community programmes.

Digital preservation was always a key priority for the archive service, which knew it had a quantity of both digitised and born-digital material but lacked the technical infrastructure to manage this content. When the M&S Archive first secured Archive Service Accreditation in 2018, acquiring this technical infrastructure was identified as a goal for future development. Staff undertook a range of professional development opportunities as they sought to follow what other practitioners across the sector were doing.

Challenges and opportunities

As early as 2015, colleagues followed the ‘textbook’ approach for advocating for digital preservation: alongside extensive stakeholder engagement, a business case was developed to increase awareness of the challenge they faced with a growing quantity of digital material. There was also an attempt to highlight both the benefits to the organisation and the risk of data loss if no system was put into place. While there was widespread acceptance of the premise of the business case, they were repeatedly told ‘now was not the right time’ for the business and were unsuccessful in progressing the project for several years.

In 2019 a new director of Information Technology was invited to visit the archive in Leeds, as was customary for new senior appointments. In seeing the care and attention extended to the physical archives, the new director immediately appreciated the need to replicate this for the digital archives. Crucially, this director was able to approve the purchase of a digital preservation system as an IT solution.

“I had a brilliant few hours at the archive today. In addition to getting a great tour of the archive, we talked about what we need to do to properly archive our digital assets – I understand the problem and I’m confident we can help.”

Former IT Director, M&S

Having already undertaken analysis of the systems available on the market the team were able to quickly progress the procurement of their preferred choice, Preservica’s Private Cloud solution, in January 2020. There was an awareness that the introduction of the digital preservation system would require considerable staff resource. However, the business was in the middle of an organisational restructure which ruled out any new recruitment at that time.

The archive service has subsequently added an additional archivist post to its team, boosting the archive’s capacity for digital preservation work while maintaining other collection work, core services and public engagement programmes.

Outcomes

The service implemented two distinct portals from the single instance of Preservica – one for internal access and the second for public access. The launch of the portal for internal M&S colleagues came first, which served as a useful pilot to address minor issues ahead of the public launch.

The launch of the system for public users was linked to the re-development of the archive service’s website to provide a more engaging ‘shop front’. There are a few minor differences between the two versions, with the colleague site offering download options and containing slightly more content – for example, commercially sensitive material that is not made publicly available.

There has been positive feedback from within the business, especially from colleagues from the product and print design teams who appreciate that the digital archive allows them to visually browse material of interest. Ready access to store photographs has proved popular with the Property team, while colleagues in various teams across the business have shared archive film clips in meetings and presentations with their own teams.

Most external enquirers are now referred directly to the digital archive for the material they are interested in, which is arranged into user-friendly sections, with the archive team able to share links to specific assets or relevant folders for individual enquirers where appropriate. The improvements to the website including the digital archive have saved the archive service staff an estimated three-and-a-half hours a week on responding to enquiries.

Further benefits of this digital resource have also already been identified. For example, thanks to optical character recognition, it is now possible to undertake precise and specific searches across a large body of content like the staff magazines. Several international researchers, interested in M&S as a growing global retailer, have been able to access material via the digital archive rather than through in-person research visits.

What was learned from the process?

Colleagues in IT had been identified as a critical stakeholder in delivering a digital preservation solution, but they had not been seen as the key advocate, as the business processes had traditionally been orientated around the organisational structure. M&S had commenced an extensive digital transformation programme and the IT department had a mission to ensure that M&S teams had the right digital infrastructure to perform their functions effectively.

By inviting the IT director to the archive, the team was able to demonstrate that M&S valued and invested in its heritage in analogue format, but now needed digital equivalents of its strongroom and reading room to replicate this for digital content. As well as understanding the need for a digital solution to preserve digital records, the IT director also saw a parallel for the need for a digital reading room, in order to make these records accessible to users. Business meetings were increasingly happening online, rather than in person, so M&S had invested in the technology needed for effective online meetings, in addition to physical meeting rooms. In this context, digital accessibility to digital records was a clear practical need for the archive service.

“The Archive and IT teams have always worked well together on delivering projects, but for digital preservation our IT director’s advocacy became the key to progressing successfully.”

Head of Archive, M&S

By re-framing the business case for digital preservation in this way, with the full support of the IT director, the archive service was able to move swiftly to procurement. When the system was in place, members of the IT team were among the first internal ‘pilot’ customers to use the digital archive and enjoyed browsing the archive content and finding out about the early days of IT at M&S.

Time and effort were invested in the usability of the digital archive website. An FAQ section details permitted use of the images for personal study or research and a reminder about the need to contact the archive before publishing any of the images. There is also an introductory video guide which highlights the main features of the digital archive, including how to browse and search the system.

Key advice

The M&S Archive team found that, in their case, securing the support of the IT department for a digital solution to a digital problem was crucial to their success in progressing this major strand of work. Demonstrating that digital preservation is simply a new way of performing the same archive function that the organisation already values and invests in was the key to unlocking unanimous stakeholder support.

A visit to the M&S Archive forms part of the induction programme for new senior staff and an e-learning induction for all new starters. These provide excellent opportunities to demonstrate the role the archive plays in supporting the current work of the business. Getting senior leaders to the archive for a first-hand experience of the power of archives to engage and enthral, and showing their value to the organisation, can be more effective than the best of written reports or verbal presentations.

Having a digital preservation system in-place means that the archive service is in an excellent position to safeguard the digital assets that it receives. The archive service has established a network of Archive Ambassadors in departments across the business, who help to ensure that analogue and digital material is transferred to the archive on a regular basis.

How will this work be developed in the future?

The archive service team is working on adding content to the digital archive on a regular basis, with a programme of work which sets annual targets for ingesting born-digital and digitised material, based on demand from internal and external customers. This work is closely linked to other activity, such as their digitisation programme.

Find out more

Contact archive@mands.com

Relevant resources

Digital Preservation Coalition’s Digital Preservation Business Case Toolkit

The Novice to Know-How basic digital preservation online training course

The National Archives has case studies on digital preservation implementation

The National Archives’ guidance on writing a job description can be useful when you are thinking about employing a digital archivist