If you are interested in donating digital records to Croydon Archives, it would be useful to consider the following factors before getting in touch:

• Do the records align with the Croydon Archives collecting policy/collection development policy?

  These policies outline our approach to accepting records relating to Croydon, and to developing the collection to address historic gaps in our past collecting. Records that we would accept include:

  Manorial records

·       Parish records

·       Council records

·       Records relating to the council’s predecessor bodies

·       Hospital records

·       Workhouse records

·       School records

·       Court records

·       Deeds and property-related records, excluding single or small collections of deeds

·       Records of Croydon-based religious organisations, excluding those of the Anglican church

·       Records relating to World War I and World War II

·       Records of notable families, estates and individuals with significant links to Croydon

·       Records relating to businesses, organisations, community groups, clubs, societies, charities, professional associations and activist groups which originated or spent most of their history based in Croydon.

We are also actively seeking to collect more records of historical significance from/of under-represented groups in Croydon from their own perspectives, to address previous gaps in our collecting:

       Global Majority communities, with particular focus on Croydon’s largest communities: African (10.3%), Caribbean (9.2%) and Indian (7.6%)

·       LGBTQ+ communities

·       Disabled people, and people with long-term physical or mental health conditions

·       Non-Christian religious groups, with a focus on Croydon’s largest faith communities: Muslims and Hindus

·       Children and young people (0-19)

• Are the records subject to data protection legislation or any other sensitivities?

  We aim to make most records available to the public on our online catalogue, however we may be able to accept records containing personal data and keep them closed to public access for a period of time, if they are in line with our collecting policy.

  Personal data includes names, email addresses, phone numbers, or other information that could be used to directly or indirectly identify a person, including data relating to racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, genetic data, health information, or sexual orientation.

  If your digital records do contain personal data, please provide us with further detail before organising a transfer.

• Are they subject to copyright restrictions?

  If would like to transfer records that are still within copyright, do you have the permissions or a licence to do this?

  Copyright relates to original works, such as books, music, films, photographs, computer programs, databases, and broadcasts. It protects literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic creations, along with sound recordings, broadcasts, and the typographical arrangement of published works.

  As digital records will be displayed on our online catalogue, and may be displayed in future exhibitions or on social media where appropriate, it is important to ensure that the correct copyright permissions are in place and agreed in advance of transfer.

• What format are the records in?

  Croydon Archives will reserve the right to reject donations of digital records if they are in a format that cannot be successfully preserved and made accessible. Croydon Archives is not currently accepting email formats such as eml, ost or pst. Please see our list of preferred file formats for digital preservation here.

• Where are they currently being stored e.g. on an external hard drive, a USB, Google Drive, SharePoint?

  Tailored transfer workflows have been developed for digital records held on different storage mediums, including hard drives, USBs and cloud storage platforms including SharePoint and Google Drive. These workflows seek to preserve the original metadata and ‘bit stream’ of a file where possible, and so it is useful to know in advance where your records are being stored. 

We also ask donors to complete our Donation Agreement/Records Transfer Form and Digital Records Listing Template. The minimum technical and descriptive metadata must be documented before transfer to ensure that Croydon Archives has the information it needs to successfully preserve the records in the future. 

To get in touch with Croydon Archives to discuss donating your digital records, or any of the documentation required for transfer, please contact archives@croydon.gov.uk

For more information about transferring oral histories, please contact the Museum team at museum@croydon.gov.uk.