The Marketors’ Company –
A Complete Livery History
The Worshipful Company of Marketors (WCM) reached Guild status in 1975 and Livery status in 1978 and its records were resident in various locations including previous Clerks’ as well as many Past Masters’ homes and offices, in addition to their “official repository” in Stationers’ Hall.
In 2010 the WCM contacted and in 2011 contracted with SDS City of London for the progressive implementation of the WCM History project. From 2010 to 2014 the paper and electronic records available from 1975 to 2014 have been scanned, indexed and made available for browsing, searching and extraction. Since 2016 the WCM has continued to be contracted to SDS City of London to provide a hosted history web site, with various browsing, searching and data/file extraction facilities.
The Minutes & Records files for each year are made up of:
- Master & Wardens’ Meetings
- Court & Ceremonial Court Meetings
- Meetings of Committees and Sub-Committees reporting to the Court
Questions and Answers regarding SDS City of London’s services to the WCM
How safe are your unique and valuable “Heritage” documents – Royal Charter(s), original minutes and records, and other such items that cannot be produced again?
Answer: The WCM History project ensured that these historic documents were identified (and in some cases successfully unearthed from various odd locations) and are now scanned, digitised and indexed on a hosted website by SDS City of London. No longer are these records at risk from a single point of failure – whereas previously they were all vulnerable.
How protected is your more recent electronic data?
Answer: From 2008 the Minutes and Records of the WCM have been electronic. These have not always been “found” or available. After much detective work these records are slowly becoming more complete and made available for scrutiny, but most importantly they can now be searched from our office PC using whatever criteria we wish to employ.
How can your Members access your data – with different security levels dependent on the confidentiality of each item?
Answer: From the outset, the SDS City of London system has provided the WCM with five levels of security: the highest level being the Clerk’s office and the lowest the public. The WCM History Website requires a security level even for the public and is due to be integrated into the Public facing WCM website. The look and feel of the WCM History web site created by SDS City of London is identical to our main WCM website.
How easy is it for your Clerk to search for answers to obscure questions?
Answer: The SDS City of London System provides full Boolean search capability as well as a complete “browse” facility, so any question can be answered with just a few keystrokes on the Clerk’s office PC.
Can you guarantee to your successors that you have looked after and protected your Company’s most valuable asset – its knowledge and information?
Answer: The WCM, after four years of active project management has provided its successors with a searchable database of some 26,000 pages of Minutes, Records and Event records, all fully backed up securely in multiple locations. What greater guarantee could we possibly provide?!
