Creating an AM resource
Strong partnerships are at the heart of our resources. We work with curators, archivists, conservators, licensing teams, and collection heads to understand the content and nuance of every archive we digitise.
We build our resources with the support of editorial boards of experts and scholars, and ask key stakeholders in the library community to offer feedback on our early project ideas. Enlisting this advice is crucial to developing resources that meet the needs of the student and academic community we aim to serve.
Spending time in the archives
Many of our publications are thematic in scope and contain content from multiple archives around the world. Others focus on a single collection. In every case, time in the archive is paramount to the creation of a resource.
From understanding the history, suitability, and relevance of the content to mapping the physical structure and condition of the collections, our approach centres on deep engagement with the primary sources and the people who preserve, catalogue, and protect them.
Highlighting undiscovered narratives
We take time to create and commission contextual pieces that help to situate and familiarise the user with the wealth of primary source content in each archive; from interactive maps to geo-locate geographically diverse material, to glossaries, chronologies, and biographies for reference, and academic essays and video interviews for a deeper understanding of the themes and research topics.
Our digital databases allow for greater search and browsability. We harness the latest technology to bring previously hidden, undiscovered narratives and resources to the fore, as well as taking a thorough and considered approach to the metadata we add to each document.
Investing in archival technology
We invest heavily in our proprietary collection technology, AM Quartex, to ensure the primary source content we publish is managed, surfaced, and contextualised in the most discoverable and accessible ways, taking into account the needs of as broad a community of users as possible.
We are proud that libraries, archives, and museums around the world have recognised our commitment to developing a best-in-class archival technology solution by adopting Quartex to manage and showcase their own unique digital collections. From the University of Delaware and Perkins School for the Blind, to the University of Liverpool and Shakespeare's Globe, the Quartex community is setting the standard for digital access to our world's rich heritage.