Porsche Club Great Britain (aka PCGB) was founded by a small group of like-minded enthusiasts in the early 1960s to enjoy and celebrate the Porsche 356 which, race cars apart, was the only Porsche production model at that time. 70% of all Porsche cars built are still on the road today with over 160,000 new cars joining them each year. No wonder the PCGB has over 12,000 members. The club has stunning headquarters based in the Gloucestershire country side and is split into 30 membership regions. Additionally every owner is affiliated to the ‘Club Register’ of their Porsche model type.
Over the years various online member services had mushroomed, most using different web addresses. December 2014 saw the launch of a new PCGB website to bring together all the individual services. Now the Club Shop, Forums, Events, Track Days, Motorsports, News and Publications, etc. were all under one roof, on a single website www.porscheclubgb.com.
All that was missing was a media archive to let members, the press and researchers browse through possibly one of the most extensive collections of Porsche material in the world. And you’ve guessed it … racing along, over the finishing line, at the chequered flag comes MediaFiler. Well we do have 911 in our UK phone number, 0845 50 50 911 but that was not the clincher, Porsche owners always look for speed … they found it in MediaFiler.
First to the post
Porsche Post, the club’s award winning members magazine will be using MediaFiler Digital Asset Management Software to accept photographs from the various events and races organised by the 30 regions and 35 Registers allowing the editor to instantly search and select current material for the publication.
Club Magazine Porsche Post
The club archives
The archive collection is massive, going back to the 1950’s; Posters, Brochures, Workshop Manuals, Trophies, old cine film and of course, photographs by the bucket load – OK, carefully archived in filing cabinets.
Racing is in the Porsche bloodline – the marque has a very long motorsport heritage and the archive contains photographs from races around the world including outstanding shots from Le Mans, many never ever published.
Over the years some images had been placed on CD’s, perhaps 3% of the collection and other CD’s contained born digital photographs. So far members have uploaded the CD’s into MediaFiler, about 150,000 images, including the first 1000 B/W photographs from the famous Ferrets Fotographics collection – a visual feast for members designed to show how easy it was to use MediaFiler.
Before MediaFiler
When you have one of the finest Porsche collections at your fingertips, club archivists constantly received research requests, not just from club members but from all over the world. Porsche owners, other Porsche Clubs, publishers, news media, journalists and Porsche themselves. And who does all the work? The Club archivists Peter Cook and Ches Ringrose.
MediaFiler is not going to solve the problem overnight, another 97% of the material needs to be scanned, captioned and uploaded, but it is a start. Alastair McDavid (UK Distributor for MediaFiler – and the man at the end of 0845 5050 911) commented “From now on the archivists don’t have to cover the same ground twice, all the work they do servicing enquiries can be placed directly in MediaFiler”.
PPCGB Archivarists Ches Ringrose & Peter Cook
