Skip to main content
Funded and Managed by
City of London Corporation
The London Archives

Mediatheque

Images, film, audio
meditheque-computer-at-the-london-archives

What is a Mediatheque?

A Mediatheque, or ‘media library’, is a place dedicated to exploring and researching audio and visual material.

The term 'Mediatheque' was first used during the 1980s, when the importance of film, video and audio material to historians and cultural researchers was finally recognised.

Mediatheque at The London Archives

The London Archive's Mediatheque provides on demand access to the films and audio recordings in our collection.

It also allows researchers to access our extensive photographic series and the digitised images of our varied collections of maps and plans.

The Mediatheque provides a dedicated space for researchers who come to The London Archives to access digital scans of our images alongside our sound archive and video collection and to build a rich, multi-sensory picture of our capital city.

Using the Mediatheque

There are three sections within the Mediatheque space.

The Big Screen

Visitors, or groups, can experience a film on the big screen. Researchers can borrow wireless headphones for privacy and to prevent other researchers in the space from being disturbed.

The Terminals

Our eight, individual terminals provide access to our digital image collections, film and sound archives. Using these terminals researchers can access:

  • Digital scans of archival documents
  • The London Picture Archive Researcher. This allows visitors to search across digital scans of the visual material in our collection (prints, maps, photographs etc). This on-site version includes many items which are not rights cleared and therefore cannot be made available online.
  • Digital records of our previous exhibitions
  • Films. Including films which are not rights cleared and therefore cannot be made available on our YouTube channel.
  • Oral History – Explore our collection of oral history recordings. Including interviews with staff employed at Peabody Estates in London in the early to mid-twentieth century, and interviews with six ex-mariners, part of the Black Experience Archives Trust (BEAT)'s work.

London’s Maps

Explore digitised images of our collection of large maps, each documenting the geographical landscape of London over six centuries. Included here are a range of facsimiles and the Alan Godfrey reprints of old Ordnance Survey (OS) maps for the Greater London area.

Reference material is also available within the Mediatheque, including a small library of books and a series of catalogue listings that detail the multimedia holdings within The London Archive’s collection.