ARCHIVES & HERITAGE

Digital archives for schools, colleges
and universities

A secure, searchable home for every photograph, document, yearbook and film, with the tools to share your history with your community.

SocialArchive digital archive search showing a catalogued team photograph, an OCR-indexed Speech Day programme, a transcribed audio recording and a school magazine
See it in action
View Latymer case study
  • Bryanston Logo
  • Hutchesons' Grammar School Logo
  • Laytmer Foundation Hammersmith logo
  • St Peters School York Logo
  • Bournemouth Collegiate School logo
  • Brentwood School Logo
  • Delphian School Logo
  • Duke of York's Royal Military School logo
  • Gordons School logo
  • Stover School Logo
  • Pownall Hall School Logo
  • Rowan Prep School Logo
  • Victoria College Logo

Digitise, preserve and share your school archive.

One platform to catalogue your collection, share it with your community and bring your history to life.

Preserve

One secure home

Catalogue every photograph, document, recording and publication in one searchable archive.

Discover

Curate and publish

Build galleries from your collection and share them with the right audience.

Remember

Involve your community

Let people find themselves in your history and add their own memories.

Activate

Tell your story

Use your history to engage your community, through campaigns, events and anniversaries.

PRESERVE

Catalogue your whole collection, simply or to full archival standards.

Bring photographs, documents, audio, video and publications out of filing cabinets, hard drives and forgotten inboxes, and into one secure, searchable archive.

  • Every document OCR-indexed, every recording auto-transcribed, every face searchable

  • Drag and drop, bulk upload, or mirror your existing folder structure

  • Custom metadata, flexible taxonomies and hierarchical cataloguing

  • Permissions at collection, series or item level

  • Watermarking, redaction and GDPR removal requests built in

Photographs, documents, audio, video, publications and yearbooks from filing cabinets, shared drives and storage rooms brought together in one SocialArchive collection

Short on time? Let the SocialArchive team do it.

Send your photographs, documents, tapes and publications, and the team will scan, digitise, catalogue and organise your archive for you, ready to launch.

Ask about digitisation →

DISCOVER

Curate your collection and publish it to your community.

Build galleries from your archive by year, team, event, place or person, and publish them to your branded portal in a few clicks.

Curated galleries

Publish galleries to your branded community portal in as little as three clicks.

Scheduled and dynamic galleries

Set release dates to build anticipation, and let galleries update as new matching content arrives.

Audience control

Publish to everyone, or just to alumni, parents, staff or the public, all from one archive.

REMEMBER

Let your community find themselves in your history, and add to it.istory

The people who lived your history know things your archive doesn't. SocialArchive brings them back to it, and gives them easy ways to add their names, memories and voices.

Facial recognition and people galleries

Name someone once and every photograph of them is tagged, building each person their own gallery.

Memories and comments

Your community adds names, context and stories, and is notified when others reply.

Spoken Stories

Invite anyone to record audio, video or written memories via a simple link. Every one auto-transcribed.

Explore Spoken Stories →

Virtual Spaces

Immersive 3D tours of your historic spaces, layered with archive photographs, film and stories.

Explore Virtual Spaces →

ACTIVATE

Use your history to tell your story and engage your community.

The history you preserve today is the content your development team needs, the imagery marketing can't find anywhere else and the reason alumni keep coming back. Share it safely, without ever touching the original files.

  • Fundraising appeals and donor stewardship

  • Marketing and admissions materials

  • Scheduled content for your community portal

  • Anniversary campaigns and reunions

  • Automatic highlight videos

  • Engagement analytics across every gallery

Your archive is the foundation

Every SocialArchive solution is built on the collection you preserve here.

Explore all features >

GET IN TOUCH

Ready to give your archive a home?

Whether you're starting from scratch or digitising an existing collection, we'd love to show you what's possible. Get in touch using the form or use the button below to arrange a short demonstration, tailored to your institution.

Book a demo

COMMON QUESTIONS

Digital archive FAQs

Everything you need to know about SocialArchive's archive and heritage capabilities.

SocialArchive supports physical, digital, born-digital and audiovisual records including photographs, documents, yearbooks, film, audio recordings and more. New file types and format support are added on an ongoing basis.
Yes. Rather than being built around a single standard, SocialArchive is fully customisable. You can store exactly the data you need and nothing you don't. The platform can be configured to work with any established schema or your own custom structure.
Yes. SocialArchive supports fully customisable hierarchies, which can be configured to match your specific archival structure and requirements.
Yes. SocialArchive supports custom workflows, allowing you to manage accessioning, appraisal, deaccessioning or any other process in the way that works best for your institution.
The platform can be configured to comply with specific archival standards and best practices. For many of our users, rigid adherence to formal standards is not feasible given available resources. SocialArchive is designed to work for you, whether that means full compliance or a more pragmatic approach to preservation and organisation.
Yes. SocialArchive is completely customisable. You can store all the data you want and none that you don't, with the ability to create custom fields, taxonomies and controlled vocabularies.
Yes. SocialArchive monitors file integrity and alerts specified users in the event of any anomalies.
By identifying file formats across your collection, SocialArchive can flag high-risk formats to specified users and allow batch migrations to be approved and tracked. Original files are preserved alongside migrated versions for verification purposes.
SocialArchive includes a bespoke user portal that can operate privately, publicly or in a hybrid model, giving your community a single destination to view and explore all published content.
You have complete control. Material can be uploaded, downloaded or removed at any time, individually or in bulk, without needing to contact us. Your data is always yours.
Yes. The SocialArchive portal presents content in a clean, accessible way for non-technical users, keeping detailed archival data in the background while allowing community members to easily find and explore their own history.
Yes. Archivists can publish facial recognition to allow users to find themselves and identify others in archive material. Community members can add comments at an individual item level, record their own memories in audio or video format, and submit their own content to the archive for appraisal and possible inclusion.
Most institutions are up and running within a few weeks. We recommend starting with a focused collection rather than migrating everything at once. Building your archive gradually tends to drive stronger community engagement, as there is always something new for people to discover.
Yes. SocialArchive accepts data imports in a wide range of formats, either via direct import or handled by our delivery team.
SocialArchive integrates with many major CRM systems and databases, including Raiser's Edge, Potentiality and Veracross. Whilst we do not have a published API, we can discuss integration with specific platforms. Get in touch to find out more.
Yes. SocialArchive has been designed to serve all audiences within a single platform, with a professional cataloguing environment for archivists and an accessible, intuitive portal for community members and non-technical staff.
Full user training is provided as part of the deployment process. Documentation covering all key actions is available to archive-side users on demand.
Yes. SocialArchive supports an unlimited number of user groups, ensuring the platform can always be configured to reflect the specific roles and structures within your institution.
Yes. The platform was designed with accessibility in mind and works equally well for non-technical users. Whether you want to follow formal archival standards or simply preserve your content in a way that feels manageable for your team, SocialArchive can adapt to your approach and resources.
Yes. If you don't have the time or resources to digitise your collection yourselves, the SocialArchive team can do it for you. Photographs, documents, publications, film and audio can be scanned and digitised, then catalogued and organised in the platform, so your archive is ready to launch. Scanning and digitisation are available to UK institutions, and cataloguing and organisation are available worldwide. This service is quoted separately, based on the size of your collection. Get in touch to discuss your requirements.
Yes. SocialArchive is fully cloud-based. No local software installation is required. All data infrastructure is hosted in the UK.
SocialArchive can be accessed from any modern web browser with a standard internet connection. There is nothing to install.
We have a dedicated team focused on security and vulnerability testing. All content is stored on UK-based infrastructure, and we continue to develop features that keep your data safe, including alerts when new devices or applications are linked to your account.
Our helpdesk is available Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00 GMT/BST, excluding English public holidays. Response times are based on issue severity, starting from a one-hour response time.
New features are continually being added. Functional updates are typically released monthly, and fixes can be deployed immediately without any disruption to your use of the platform.
SocialArchive is priced on an annual licence basis, with additional storage charged on top. We do not charge per user, so there is no penalty for growing your team or community. Get in touch for a quote tailored to your institution.

RESOURCES

Guidance & thinking

News
How to Use Alumni to Identify People in Old School and University Photographs
How to Use Alumni to Identify People in Old School and University Photographs

From reunion identification projects to digital crowdsourcing and facial recognition, discover how schools, colleges and universities can turn their alumni communities into an invaluable resource for preserving institutional history.

Read more →
School Archives: What Should You Digitise First?
School Archives: What Should You Digitise First?

Most schools are sitting on decades of history (photographs, VHS tapes, school magazines, year group records) and not enough time to tackle all of it. This practical guide helps schools and universities decide what to digitise first, with a free prioritisation matrix you can use with your team today, a 12-month roadmap, and a worked example showing the framework in action.

Read more →
School Digital Archives: The Complete Guide
School Digital Archives: The Complete Guide

Most schools are sitting on decades of photographs, publications and records that are at risk of being lost. This guide covers everything you need to know about building a school digital archive, from choosing the right approach, to using your history to reconnect alumni, support fundraising and make the most of a milestone anniversary.

Read more →
View more articles >