Churchill Archive
Propagator developed a vision and platform to sell the Churchill Archives to universities & schools globally
The Challenge
How to transform 1,000,000 documents into a simple, easy to use and profitable service available to everyone as well as ensure it could be used for teaching and learning of history.
The Churchill archives could previously only be viewed in person and by appointment at Churchill College, Cambridge. The opportunity existed to make this globally available.
The Solution
Churchillarchive.com is entirely unique, both in its approach and in the enormous breadth and depth of the material it offers. It makes one of the largest and most important collections of primary source material available to an international audience. The Archive also brings together all the different versions of Churchill’s speeches, from initial notes and drafts to the delivered speeches and the final printed form.
It is an essential resource not just for teachers, undergraduates, historians and researchers but also those in politics, business studies, linguistics and leadership, as well as any member of the general public with an interest in 20th century history. It includes extended essays specially written by experts in the field and designed around modules that appear on higher education courses internationally.
It aims to raise the bar for future archive websites with its sophisticated taxonomy and search functionality, whilst furthering what we know about 20th century history. For the first time ever the leading higher educational library consortia across three countries have joined forces to offer one product on similar terms to their members. These are JISC in the UK, CRL in the USA and CRKN in Canada.
Features of the system include:
- Full-text search across metadata and transcripts of the Churchill Archive microfiches
- Searching and filtering by subject, date and taxonomy classification
- Indexing and searching of CMS managed pages
- Essays and overviews of key topics
- Authentication and authorisation
- Free content, controlled via CMS
- Social DRM-protected PDF downloads of user-selected content
- Back-office features required by the library market, such as multiple authentication methods, usage statistics and compatibility with link resolvers
Results
Following its introduction, the Churchill Archive generated hundreds of thousands of pounds in revenue within its first three months of operation, with its subscriber base continuing to grow each year.