Further TfL Resources
Genealogical records
Many of our staff registers have been digitised and are available via Ancestry.co.uk
Research guides
If you would like to find out more about a particular archive subject, these introductory research guides will help.
Top 20 highlights and online exhibitions
Webinars
The Corporate Archives Team have delivered numerous presentations and webinars on a variety of subjects. Here are links to a few of them:
Making the Case: Protecting the past and delivering future business value at Transport for London – Describing the journey TfL took to select and implement a digital preservation system for the Corporate Archive, and explaining how the Archives is ensuring the usability and authenticity of historical assets and the long-term business records in its care. Highlighting the processes used to acquire prized collections, including transport records from the London 2012 Olympic Games. 1hr
The Tfl Corporate Archives: Top 20 Highlights – A coronation souvenir from 1911, a Macdonald Gill Underground Map, outrage in the Thames Tunnel in 1885, a royal warrant, sketches of C69 stock, the 1914 Christmas truce, the Naked Boy of Panyer Alley, Wilfred the Rabbit, trademarks and patents books. In this talk we show you images of these items and more and explain why we think they are some of the best pieces in the collection. 1.5hrs
TfL Corporate Archives What’s That! – Discover how large the collection is, what it contains, how it’s managed, and how it can be used. Why do we have a property deed from 1556? What do over 300 people a year find to ask us about? It’s just about transport isn’t it? The answers to these questions and more are revealed in this talk as we give you an insight into what it takes to run an archives service for the most iconic and innovative transport provider in the world, why we do it, and just what it is that we’re actually collecting! 1hr
Journey of An Enquiry – You submit an enquiry, we locate the relevant information, we respond to your enquiry. Simple, right? Not so fast! For starters, our collection isn’t stored onsite. For seconds, it contains over 160,000 physical records that we can’t possibly know the entire contents of. And what if your enquiry has more than one element to it? In this session as we look at exactly what goes into answering an enquiry. Find out how much time it can take, how much it can cost, and why some requests are more complex for us to answer than others. 45mins
Using Our Online Catalogue – Our online catalogue contains descriptions of over 160,000 files and items but it has it’s quirks! How can you prevent a search for ‘bus’ returning 14539 catalogue entries? How can you hope to identify relevant files if our catalogue entries don’t list out every single topic mentioned in a file? And just what is Boolean and wildcard searching? In this session we explain why the catalogue is as it is and, more importantly, teach you the tricks and tips to use it as effectively as possible and actually identify the files you need. 45mins
Explore a Staff Register – Our staff registers contain over 50,000 names. Join us in this short session as we take a closer look at the types of information you may find when exploring our staff registers and, of course, show you how you can access them. 30mins
To sign up for future webinars or to access our full set of recorded webinars, please visit our online webinar pages.
Podcasts
Our Corporate Archivist has been a guest on various podcasts, which can be accessed below:
Max Communications – The pressures of working with and maintaining a large collection and numerous anecdotes about the fascinating materials found within the archive. 35mins
Tales from the Archive – Hosted by Preservica’s Nathan Voogt, in this podcast hear how the TfL archive is ensuring the usability and authenticity of historical assets and long-term business records, and the role of digital preservation in managing this explosion of content. 25mins
An Archivist’s Tale: A Mole Costume – The Corporate Archives Manager at TfL, tells us not only her own tale but also the often surprising history of her organization, which oversees almost all of the transportation in the capital. 1hr
Tales from the Archive: A Decade in Review – Favourite podcast heroes join host Nathan Voogt to discuss the evolving role of the corporate archivist and archives through the past decade and into the next. Digital Archivist at The John Lewis Partnership, Heritage Collections Manager at BT, and Corporate Archivist at TfL share career defining moments and lessons learnt across the last decade of their archival careers. Hear about the shift in attitudes and how it’s helping to elevate the archives and position it within the business as a valuable resource that can be utilised for product innovation, authentic brand storytelling, corporate governance, compliance and employee engagement. 30mins
Articles
Diginomica – TfL builds digital archive to preserve London history.
An Introduction to Archive Resources – This guide is intended to provide very brief introductions to the various organisations, companies, and standards that are used by the archives profession for regulation, supply, advice, and assistance.
Be More, Achieve More: Keeping TfL’s Archives on Track – Learn more about how the Corporate Archives team is working with Preservica to increase the scope, availability and capability of TfL’s archives, allowing them to be more productive and achieve more.
TfL Shifts Corporate Archive to AWS Public Cloud in Digital Preservation Push – London transport authority has begun moving its first 3TB of corporate archive data to the AWS cloud with the help of Preservica
