Coventry University, in partnership with BT plc and The National Archives was awarded a major grant by JISC to create a digitised online version of BT’s physical archive, containing much of the information currently held in London. The project is cataloguing, digitising and developing a searchable online archive of almost half a million photographs, documents and correspondence preserved by BT and predecessors over the last 165 years.

It is possible to argue that the modern age has been shaped by telecommunications; it is the history of Britain’s leading role in the development of this science and technology and its impact on society that is contained in the internationally-important BT Archives. The significance of the collection is immense in its scope both in the period covered and in its range of subjects: technical reports and other documentation reveal, for example, the development of telegraphic transmission, telephonic communication, optic fibre networks and computerisation.

The need to open up access to existing and newly-created knowledge-bases is growing rapidly, and the need to do this in creative and innovative ways presents us with new and exciting opportunities. At the same time, there is a constant need to reinforce just how important archives themselves are as a repository of knowledge. As progress has been made, the value of the project becomes ever clearer. For researchers from a wide range of other disciplines, and especially historians, digitization will allow the collection to be searched in a way that brings a leap in research productivity. Digitisation processes allow collections to be looked at and even identified in new and unexpected ways, whilst lessons are also learnt about the technical aspects of digitisation. Finally, this project is an excellent example of how partnership working between business and universities can be mutually beneficial and open up content for the benefit of students, researchers and wider society.