Cogapp delivers an online community history for The Parachute Regiment and Airborne Forces
December 2008

The Parachute Regiment was formed in 1940 and since then has acquired battle honours from Arnhem and D-Day to the Falklands and Afghanistan.  The astounding history of the regiment, its associated Airborne Forces units and the people who served with them has been, until recently, locked up in filing cabinets in an outdated facility in Aldershot.  Thanks to an initiative of the Trustees of the Airborne Forces Museum assisted by their exhibition designers, rwdp, Cogapp has been able to take that archive out of the filing cabinets, digitize it and make it available for the whole community in a new museum and online on the web.

The result of this work, a system called ParaData, is installed at the new Airborne Assault facility at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, where it can be accessed through four touchscreen kiosks, and online at www.paradata.org.uk. The project turns the museum inside out - presenting the community with the opportunity and tools to showcase their own stories and personal material.

We digitised around 10,000 items from the archives of the Airborne Forces Museum, including films, interviews, maps, documents and photographs. Now that the collection is available online, members of the community can add their own comments and material as uploaded videos, images and text, as well as identifying people in photographs. ParaData is comprehensive in a way previously impossible, and even now unprecedented.

ParaData was conceived, built and delivered over a period of over 18 months. We undertook a feasibility and planning study, carried out user research and testing, interaction and graphic design, and all technical development. The content management system, based on heavily customised Drupal Open Source software, serves both the website and four kiosks. The complex structure underlying the system allows multiple cross-linking between people, units, campaigns, decorations and more, drawing connections wherever the community finds them.

Alex Morrison, Managing Director of Cogapp, said: "We have worked on some great projects but none that deals with quite such sensitive and important events.  We hope that ParaData will become the main repository for the history of the Parachute Regiment and Airborne Forces - a true living archive for their community.  If it succeeds in that aim it will provide a useful pattern for many other communities."

Major General Adrian Freer, Chairman of Trustees, said: "Just as the museum is not about objects and events, but people, their spirit and their values, so ParaData tells the human story of the airborne soldier. To make our archive available is a great step, but to bring it to life is something else entirely. Cogapp have added huge value to the museum, and we are grateful for their hard work."

Read coverage of the project's launch in The Times and The Telegraph.

Watch footage of Prince Charles opening the museum, and seeing a demonstration of ParaData, on ITV News (requires IE).