Product guide
Your council’s records, read, checked and open to everyone
Civil Archive turns boxes of minute books, registers and correspondence into a searchable archive. It reads every page, people check what it found, and the council decides what the public sees.
The three stages
Digitise
Upload scans. Every page is transcribed and its names, places and dates are pulled out.
Check
Archivists confirm or reject what was found, with the original page always in view.
Publish
The council publishes what it has signed off, to a portal anyone can search and ask.
How it works
From a box of minute books to a public archive
Five steps, all in the archivist workspace.
- Step 1
Create a collection
In the workspace, open Collections and choose New collection. Give it a title and, if you like, a description: a series of minute books, a register, a box of correspondence.
- Step 2
Upload the scans
Add PDF, TIFF, JPEG or PNG files to the upload area. Each file becomes one document, and Show pages lets you follow every page through processing.
- Step 3
Let the pipeline read every page
Each page is prepared, transcribed, and searched for the people, places, organisations, buildings, events, dates and subjects it mentions, which are linked to records the archive already holds. A document is Ready when every page is done. If a page fails, it says Partial failure, and Retry runs only the pages that need it.
- Step 4
Review what was found
The review queue lists every document with an open question and says what kind: a low-confidence item, a GDPR question or a possible duplicate. On the review screen the scan sits beside its transcription. Select an item to highlight the exact words it came from, then approve or reject it, or approve everything that remains.
- Step 5
Sign off and publish
When a document has no open questions, an archivist approves it and records the GDPR decision. A council admin publishes the collection, and each approved document in it can then be published. Nothing reaches the public portal before that.
For archivists
The workspace
Where staff sign in at /login to process, check and publish.
Review queue
Every document waiting on a decision, grouped by the kind of decision, with a link to the screen where it is made.
Entities
Each person, place and organisation, with the pages that mention it. Merge duplicates into one record, undo a merge, and approve or reject a record.
Search
Search every transcribed page by name, phrase or meaning, then narrow by collection, document type, entity type, place or date. A result opens the viewer at the matching page.
Source viewer
Page through a document, zoom into the scan, and copy a link that opens at the page you are reading.
Keyboard shortcuts in the viewer
Select the page image first. The page and zoom shortcuts also have buttons.
- ←→
- Previous and next page
- HomeEnd
- First and last page
- +−0
- Zoom in, zoom out, reset
- ↑↓
- Move around the page image
For the public
The public portal
Each council’s portal has its own address, such as /your-council. Visitors need no account, and see only what the council has published.
Browse
Collections, then documents, then pages: every page shown as the original scan beside its transcription.
Search
Find a name, a place or a phrase across everything published, and follow a place through to every page that mentions it.
Ask
Ask a question in your own words. The answer is built only from published pages and lists the page and passage behind it. If the records hold no answer, it says so.
Safeguards
Built for a public record
An archive is only useful if people can trust it. These rules are enforced by the system, not left to good intentions.
People decide what is public
Nothing appears on the portal until an archivist has signed the document off and a council admin has published its collection.
GDPR is a recorded decision
A document flagged for GDPR review cannot be published, and a published document has to be withdrawn before its flag can change.
The scan is the record
Transcriptions are produced automatically, so the original page is always shown beside them, and it is the page that counts.
Answers show their sources
Every passage an answer quotes is checked against the page it cites before anyone sees it. A citation that fails that check is removed.
Originals are checked on a schedule
A scheduled job, weekly by default, re-reads each original file and records any change from its stored checksum. It never repairs a file silently.
Each council is kept apart
Every council’s records are isolated from every other council’s in the database itself, not only in the screens.
Who can do what
Each role can do everything the role before it can.
| What | Archivist | Council admin | Super admin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Create collections, upload, review and approve documents | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Record GDPR decisions and publish or withdraw documents | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Merge, approve and reject entity records | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Publish or withdraw a whole collection | No | Yes | Yes |
| System health: metrics and processing queues | No | No | Yes |
FAQ
Common questions
Which files can I upload?
PDF, TIFF, JPEG and PNG. Each file becomes one document, and a multi-page PDF or TIFF becomes one document with many pages.
Why does my document say “Partial failure”?
Some of its pages could not be processed. Choose Show pages to see which stage failed, then Retry: only the pages that need it run again.
Why can’t I approve a document?
It has to finish processing and have no open review questions. The review queue shows what is still waiting and where to resolve it.
Why can’t I publish a document?
The reason is shown in words beside the button. The document may not be approved yet, it may be flagged for GDPR review, or its collection may not be published.
The transcription is wrong. What do I do?
Transcriptions are produced automatically and can contain mistakes. The scan is always shown beside the text and is the authoritative record.
Can visitors see material that is not published?
No. The portal reads published material only. A search for something unpublished shows the same “No results” as a search for something the archive does not hold.
Can the council take its archive with it?
Yes. A collection can be exported as a ZIP of Dublin Core metadata, as JSON and CSV, with the original files. Only documents an archivist has signed off are included, and the ZIP lists what was held back. Export is currently available through the API rather than a workspace screen.
How do I get an account?
Ask your council’s Civil Archive administrator for a staff account. Visitors to the public portal need no account at all.
Ready to start?
Sign in with the account your council was given, and create your first collection.