About
Online Transport Archive (OTA) was established as a company limited by guarantee in 2000 to administer a growing collection of cine films, slides, negatives, prints and commercial postcards relating to all forms of transport. It is the aim of the archive that the collections are accessible to publishers, authors, researchers and film producers to share the Archive’s contents with the public at large. Charitable status was achieved in January 2004.
The collection now stands at over 2,000,000 still images and over 4000 hours of film footage, and is constantly growing as more and more choose to lodge their collections with us for safekeeping in perpetuity. We now have one of the finest collections of transport images in Britain, with extensive collections of maritime, canal, aviation, heavy and light rail and road-based subjects, with particular strengths in the canal, bus, trolleybus, tram and railway areas. Collectors and photographers from as far afield as Germany and North America have entrusted us with their images and we have an increasingly extensive collection of material from outside the UK, courtesy of those individuals and British transport enthusiasts who have ventured abroad in pursuit of transport subjects for their cameras.
We work extensively with publishers, authors, researchers and film producers to ensure that our collection is used and its contents enjoyed by as many as possible. A high number of books utilising the archive’s material are published every year, and we regularly collaborate with other archives and work with a number of other organisations to help achieve our goals.
OTA has aims and objectives, which formed part of the charity application process and in all we do we endeavour to follow these key objectives:
To receive transport-related film and photograph collections as and when they become available.
To undertake essential conservation work on collections, for example, digitising existing film and slide material to protect the integrity of the image against deterioration and to enhance it if this has already taken place.
To continue to develop agreements with appropriate bodies to facilitate making the material available to the public at large.
To work with bona fide researchers seeking access to the archive material.
OTA is managed by its Board of Trustees who represent a broad swathe of transport enthusiasts and authors. More about the current Trustees can be found here. We've all admired the work of earlier enthusiasts, OTA endeavours for their work to be properly preserved and accessed by the enthusiasts of the future. OTA's directors hope you will endorse our aims and objectives.