Welcome to Memory Lane

The Bedford Archive holds a collection that encompasses the whole of school life through the ages. This includes administrative records, photographs, memorabilia, private papers, rare books, artwork, and of course a comprehensive stock of Ousel volumes. With its digitisation, the archive enters a new phase in its development and further digitisation of the wider collection is a long term goal.

The magazine itself has been published since 1876. Therefore, its digitisation is a large task that is being undertaken with the utmost care and attention to detail, but also with cost effectiveness in mind. The process can be seen to have two distinct parts. Firstly, the actual copying of material; and secondly, the presentation of it on the School’s website. After consulting the School Archivists’ Group, and a tender process SDS Heritage – who have completed similar work for the likes of Harrow and Rugby - were selected to undertake the task. The digitisation takes the form of photographic quality scans of the original 1204 issues. This means that approximately 22,000 pages of varying size (as well as supplementary related documents) are currently being processed. Needless to say, the delicate state of early issues has been taken into account. The interface for users will be easy to understand so that the whole school community from the youngest member of the Prep school to the oldest Old Bedfordian can benefit from the project, but at the same time the indexing of the volumes will be highly detailed, and all issues fully searchable in the manner of JSTOR