Centuries of Isle of Man public records made available online

Plans from circa 1840 are among the records, showing areas held by landowners

More than 300 years of public records on the Isle of Man have been made available in a new online resource, the Manx government has said.

The Isle of Man Public Record Office has launched its digital store and catalogue.

It was a three-year project to find record preservation solutions.

A government spokeswoman said the digitisation scheme ensured that "records survive as part of the national archives".

She said the collections currently "consist largely of paper, photographic and microfilm records, which are held in climate-controlled conditions".

'Technological change'

The majority of these records were from the late 19th and 20th Centuries, but some date back to the 1700s, she said.

The website would allow people to access more than 300 years of history "covering multiple aspects of island life", the spokeswoman said.

The launch of the website concludes the three-year project into establishing preservation solutions for records.

Digital preservation specialist David Heelas said: "One of the greatest challenges facing archive institutions today is the preservation of digital records."

Such documents were "vulnerable" for several reasons, including the "rapid pace of technological change" and various formats becoming obsolete, he said.

"We now have a solution in place which will safeguard digital records and make them accessible to future generations," he added.

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