Today is the sixth day of Explore Your Archive, a of celebration of archives of all kinds across the nation, organised by the Archives & Records Association for UK & Ireland, and today’s theme is ‘Mythology’.

The St John Archive does not have any dragons, mermaids, ogres, or other mythological creatures in the Archive, but there are some archival myths. One particularly prevalent one is the belief that archival material is, or will be, all available online, and unfortunately that is not correct.

The bad news is that the St John Archive is not currently all available online, and it will never all be available online either. Digitisation is costly, both in terms of finances and time. Financially, it can cost a significant amount to undertake a digitisation programme (costs are involved in buying or outsourcing digitisation equipment), employing qualified people to undertake the work, ongoing costs of digital storage. It can also be costly in time, as the digitisation process can be lengthy (depending on the type of digitisation you are doing), it is time-consuming to record the correct metadata for the records, and also in the ongoing processes of digital preservation.

The good news is that digitisation is not off the cards completely. Digitisation is a great way of widening access to records and allowing researchers to undertake their own research (especially as St John is an international organisation with international interest), and we will still consider digitisation of records for the purposes of conservation, preservation, and access (we just won’t be digitising everything).

The Archive has already digitised a number of collections which are freely and publicly available and searchable online, including the Order of St John’s annual reports (1868-1970), First Aid journal (1894-1957), St John’s inaugural first aid manual – First Aid to the Injured (1878-1957), Cadet magazines (1940s-1950s), and some First World War resources. They can all be accessed through the Museum’s website, or via our online hosting platform, issuu.

Why not take a look at what we have available and see what you could learn!