Helena Clarkson is Project Digital Archivist at Bank of England
Preserving Digital Records at the Bank
Every November, World Digital Preservation Day gives archives and libraries a chance to spotlight the importance of actively preserving digital content. In this blog, Helena Clarkson shares how the Archive Team has been working to protect born-digital records—to ensure that all forms of historic records, not just the physical, remain accessible in the digital age.
As technology moves on, older systems can quickly become outdated. The Bank has now retired its previous intranet and social network, Bank Exchange, and transitioned to Viva Engage, part of a wider shift to the Microsoft 365 environment.
Viva Engage is our new private social network, where staff can continue to share personal and organisation-wide updates, social activities, and reflections on how we work. It’s a fresh platform that keeps our workplace conversations flowing - just as the intranet once did.
Why Do We Preserve?
Archives safeguard chains of custody to show how records evolve—capturing their format, authorship, and context. This helps build a clear picture of how the Bank has changed over time.
Preserving the intranet reflects our ongoing commitment to documenting the lives and work of staff. This tradition began with the Old Lady magazine (1921–2007), continued with Bank Fortnight (1994–2006), and lived on through the old intranet (2012–2024) and Bank Exchange (2019-2025). Today, it continues with the new intranet and Viva Engage - capturing our shared history as it happens.
The Old Lady, issue 1, March 1921 (Archive reference: E8/1) Image showing Masthead of Bank fortnight
Screenshot of header of a community page of the intranet, 2018
While reviewing these past formats, Helena encountered the final issue of the Old Lady, titled Gone but not Forgotten. It prompted reflection on how we respond to the end of print publications compared to digital platforms like the intranet and social network platforms. There often seems to be less sentiment attached to digital records, which highlights the importance of preserving them, they may be gone, but they shouldn’t be overlooked or forgotten!
It's exactly why archival work matters. We’re not just archiving data - we’re protecting the stories, voices, and experiences that shape the Bank’s identity.
A farewell note from the editor of the final issue of the Old Lady, 2007 (Archive Ref 24A22/1/346)
Virtual challenges
It’s easy to picture bound volumes of the Old Lady magazine neatly stacked on a shelf—complete with chapters and indexes. Once digitised, they’re straightforward to navigate, both physically and online.
But preserving an intranet? That’s a whole different challenge.
Unlike printed publications, an intranet is a sprawling digital landscape—filled with interconnected communities, pages, hyperlinks, and downloadable content. Capturing and maintaining this kind of environment is far more complex. And that’s exactly what the Archive team set out to do.
With the systems scheduled for retirement, time was of the essence. The sheer volume of content meant the team had to make careful curation decisions, focusing on preserving key sections of the intranet and Bank Exchange that best reflect the Bank’s digital history.
Spines of the earlier bound issues of The Old Lady Magazine
From Magazines to Hyperlinks: How We Preserve Our Story
Preserving the Bank’s intranet and Bank Exchange was no small task. To capture its dynamic structure, we used specialised tools designed to mirror the original browsing experience. The goal was to make it feel familiar—like navigating the sites as they once were.
Of course, some limitations remain. Certain downloads couldn’t be saved, and links to external sites may no longer work. Still, this approach offers a far richer experience than simply saving static pages as PDFs, which wouldn’t reflect the true nature of the systems.
The process itself was labour-intensive and largely manual. It took many hours and several team members scrolling through individual pages, clicking on documents, and carefully capturing content.
Despite the challenges, the result is a resource that preserves not just information, but the way we interacted with it. A step forward in how we document our digital workplace.
Viva Forever?!
Preserving intranets and social networks takes real effort—and it naturally leads us to wonder: how will recording such Bank systems continue to evolve? Is the current intranet and Viva Engage its final form?
It also raises questions for future archivists. Viva Engage, for example, is likely to generate far more content, reactions (e.g. thumbs ups) from colleagues and re-posts, but with posts that may only be kept for short periods. And because capturing and preserving this material is still a largely manual process, we’re faced with a choice: do we continue to archive it all, or rethink how we document this part of our history?