Aerial view of Birmingham City Centre, Inner Ring Road, Rotunda and Bull Ring

The challenge

The Library of Birmingham instance is where our story begins. We created the platform in association with the library as part of its digital innovation programme.

Bringing together our digital expertise with the library’s knowledge of archives, we developed Corals as an intuitive, contemporary website to share photographic collections with a range of different audiences. Crucially this included those who were not typical library and archive users, but simply had an interest in the city.

What Corals delivered

The Library of Birmingham has an accessible, intuitive and contemporary website to engage its audiences. With a user-friendly design, it is ideal for non-academic audiences who simply want to graze the collection, often on a mobile device.

The collection features over 8000 images from the library’s Warwickshire Photographic Survey (WPS). Started in 1890, the collection documents changes to the city’s social, economic and cultural landscape.

Customers

From city archives to community heritage projects, Corals is used by organisations across the UK to publish and share photography collections that would otherwise be invisible. Here are some of their stories.

Name, Role