A NEW online resource will help “unlock history” by giving access to First World War archives.

The Ogilby Muster (TOM) has launched following a four year project funded by a LIBOR grant from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Salisbury-based Army Museums Ogilby Trust.

It is an online platform which provides access to archives held in regimental museums across the UK - preserving the experiences and memories of those who served in the First World War for future generations.

Trustee of the Army Museums Ogilby Trust the Hon Katherine Swinfen Eady, said: “With the opening of the TOM Platform we are given a wonderful key to unlock history. As historians this is an invaluable gift, as family members researching their beloved lost relatives, it is equally as important.

“TOM allows us to piece together the truth left behind by the subjects, to build up that wonderful pattern of a jigsaw and find the missing fragments of information. It is especially important as it will help us all further our knowledge and understanding of not just the military side of the First World War, but the social aspect of an event in history that affected and shaped this country and the world.”

With more than 75 participating collections, and more set to join in 2022, TOM will eventually hold more than two million items including some never-before-seen material.

Covering the period 1900 to 1929, the platform contains documents, photographs, letters, diaries and more, all related to the British Army and the men and women who served.

The Trust’s director Andrew Lloyd says the digitisation of these archives provides a legacy for the future and that a key aim of the project was to make as much of this material as possible available to the public.

At the moment there are about 1.7 million items on the online platform.

You can read more about this new online resource in an article by Kay Griffin published in the Salisbury Journal at: https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/19687940.ogilby-muster-first-world-war-online-archive-set-launch/.