Association of Mirror Pensioners (AMP)
Ovation Data digitizes a paper archive built over more than three decades, giving AMP a searchable, permanent record of its history
Background
The Association of Mirror Pensioners (AMP) was established in 1991 by pensioners and staff at Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), a leading UK media company, in the aftermath of the Maxwell pension scandal. MGN employees and pensioners recognized that their pensions and future pensions were at risk, and fought a long battle to secure their rights.
Today, AMP represents around 1,500 members of the MGN Pension Scheme (MGNPS). They are pensioners, deferred members and pensioners’ dependents living across the UK and abroad with a connection to Mirror Group titles – including the Daily and Sunday Mirror, Sunday People, The Sporting Life, Scottish Daily Record and Sunday Mail, and other local and provincial publications.
The organization’s core purpose is to represent its members and protect their pensions by monitoring pension-market developments and parliamentary business, and by liaising with the sponsoring company, Reach plc, and with the Trustee of MGNPS.
The AMP publishes a twice-yearly magazine, Mirror Pensioner, and maintains an active website. Over more than 35 years, AMP built up an extensive paper archive of correspondence, committee records, financial accounts, legal documents and historical material.
Challenge
Over the decades, the AMP archive had been stored and maintained by various officers at different sites and had grown into a substantial collection, housed in physical storage boxes. Following the death of the archive’s final custodian in 2024, the storage crates remained in a residential garage. In early 2026, AMP took possession of the archive, and the committee faced a choice between moving the material into rented physical storage, or digitizing it. Some of the paperwork was in poor condition, although most had survived intact. Locating any specific document meant someone had to physically search through the boxes.
Solution
AMP secretary Carol McNamara researched possible partners to help move the archive into the cloud, rather than keeping it in physical storage. She identified Ovation Data as a specialist in data digitization, preservation and transformation. Ahead of digitization, AMP deputy chair Caro Cluskey condensed the archive from ten crates to four containing roughly 50 box files, each holding multiple sub-files, reports, correspondence and bound documents.
Ovation Data talked the AMP officers through the process before the project began, and transported the materials to its facility in Orpington. Throughout the scanning process, the Ovation team liaised closely with AMP. Once scanning was complete, Ovation retained the original paper archive in secure storage while AMP became more familiar working with the digital version. The digitized files are now securely preserved within Ovation’s archival data storage. Ovation gave AMP officers a guided walkthrough of its Showcase platform, which provides controlled access to the archive.
1,500 AMP members represented today
35+ years of AMP history preserved
50 box files scanned and indexed
Controlled search and access through Showcase
Results
Ovation digitized and indexed AMP’s full archive, which spans more than 35 years, and ensured access on demand through the Showcase platform. The collection is securely preserved in Ovation’s archival data storage, while Showcase gives AMP officers fast, intuitive access to the documents through full-text search. This removes the need to physically search through boxes to locate a specific document. Ovation helped to safely preserve decades of institutional history, and now the AMP is no longer dependent on a single record-keeper.
“We needed the archive to be saved, accessible and viewable in a manageable way. Once we connected with Ovation Data we were confident they could handle the challenge and see the project through to the end. The association has no hesitation in recommending Ovation to other membership organisations or pension bodies facing a similar challenge.”
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