The Dorset Coast Digital Archive gives an exciting opportunity to make important treasures, natural and man-made, available to the widest possible audience. The project will create a geographic information system (GIS) for the internationally recognised Dorset Coast and immediate hinterland. The resources digitised will be of national and international importance, reflecting the cultural heritage, natural environment and local histories of Dorset. The digital archive will contain "primarily maps [...]. Other materials include local newspapers pre 1832, aerial and other photographs, watercolours, engravings, marine wreck images, historic charts, seafront surveys, fossils, entomology and herbarium species, archaeological and social history objects".