Trinity Mirror has announced plans to bring together its regional and national newspaper picture libraries to create an archive of more than 100m photographs.

Around 60-80m pictures are already archived at Trinity Mirror’s central library in Watford, mainly from the Daily Mirror and its sister national titles.

Now the group’s regional picture archives are to be transferred there and digitised to create a single shared online resource for all its journalists.

Trinity Mirror believes the plan will create one of the biggest photographic archives in the world as well as preserving it for future generations.

The plans are likely to lead to up to 11 potential redundancies, mainly among regional newspaper library staff, although eight new roles are being created.

The National Union of Journalists earlier this week hit out at the plan to move the Liverpool Post and Echo’s picture library from the city to Watford with the loss of one job.

However it has since emerged that the Liverpool proposal is part of a much wider nationwide project which also involves its other regional centres.

Although all of the regional newspaper picture archives will transfer to the new centre, they will be catalogued and maintained there as separate entities.

The group says that in addition to making fuller use of the content across core brands the move will also enable increased publication of stand-alone products, such as magazines and books.

The decision over whether to transfer text cuttings to Watford or retain them locally has been left with the regional businesses.

Fergus McKenna, Mirror Group head of syndication and licensing, said: “We recognise that this collection is of national and international significance which is why we’re taking these steps to organise it, conserve it and, most importantly of all, use it.

“There are few photographic collections of this size in existence and by creating one central library – but keeping each relevant title archive distinct – we’re going to be able to open these archives up like never before.

“Having all the collections in one place will give us the freedom to actually explore and understand them, which wasn’t always the case when they were managed across multiple centres.

“For the first time we’ll actually be able to discover the role our journalists played in documenting some of the events that shaped modern Britain.”

Ken Rogers, managing director, Trinity Mirror Sport Media, said: “This project is enabling us to refocus on what we have got while starting the crucial process of digitising and commercialising this content.

“We have had hundreds of thousands of hard copy pictures sitting on shelves in dusty picture bags. A resource like this has no relevance unless we begin to categorise what we have got and use it to capture the imagination of our readers.”