“The register connects the Pitcairn people to the first chapter of their story;a story that has been retold by countless non-Pitcairn authors. The entries in the register were handwritten by our forebears.”
Mr Young,who is the descendant of mutineer Edward Young,said there were precious few original documents from Pitcairn.
“As far as I know,it is the earliest surviving document penned by Pitcairn islanders,” he said.
“The only other written record known to predate it,was the journal of mutineer Edward Young.
“The journal was taken from Pitcairn beyond our living memory and as far as we know,it is lost. We hope the register will not meet the same fate. Please preserve it.”
Angus Dorney,co-chief executive of digital asset management business Kablamo,says digitising the material is only one part of the challenge for the Archives.
“The next question is,how do they make that content available to public? And how do people search it?” he said.
Loading
Kablamo has worked with the ABC on its digital archives. Mr Dorney said the smart search capabilities that could be used on digital media led the broadcaster to unearth footage no one knew existed,such as fresh film of Tasmanian tigers.
Other technology allows people to search video collections using a photograph or other images.
“Instead of typing in a word to search it,you can upload a photo,or you could upload a link to a YouTube clip and say search my archives for that something that resembles this video clip,Mr Dorney said. “It absolutely unearths things of value to the nation.”
Mr Dorney said any digitisation process would take time because films and audio had to be played out on “all types of weird and wonderful physical machines that nobody’s seen for years” to be captured anew.
The ongoing degradation of the tapes,film or reels added further complications.