York St John team help to preserve Yorkshire Air Museum archives

The Yorkshire Air Museum & Allied Air Forces Memorial, at Elvington, is the largest independent air museum in Britain and has around 90,000 visitors per year. Their new Collections Building is designed to the latest industry standards of humidity and temperature control and will house the Museum’s internationally important archive of photographs, artefacts, uniforms and records.

Dr Mike O’Dea and Dr Carl Hetherington from the University have been on site updating the wireless network infrastructure to connect the new building to the rest of the Museum’s computer network.

Dr Justin McKeown, Head of Programme for Computer Science, said: “The project has not been straightforward as we have been dealing with buildings from WW2 vintage, not designed for office activity, to specialist newly built structures which, while well specified internally, are not easy to connect to from the outside.

“However, we have enjoyed the challenge and working with the Museum team. The University’s networking team from our Information Learning Services has also been a valuable source of technical advice.”

Museum Director, Ian Reed, said, “We are very grateful to York St John’s CS and ILS departments for their invaluable help, which maintains the strong connections we have had with the University on a number of fronts over the past 20 years – long may it continue”.

Dr John Wright, the Collections Co-ordinator at the Yorkshire Air Museum, stated that what had been achieved by Mike and Carl had enhanced this Museum's Collection Department's record keeping abilities. It is hoped to continue and increase the already good relationships with York St John by accepting some undergraduate students from the Computer Science Department for potential work experiences in the near future.