Nick Kingsley22 April 2010

Towards a National Archives Network?

• Archival holdings consist of collections (or fonds) representing any number of archival objects; the collections are the primary units of management

• Collections consisting of more than a few documents are likely to have a natural or imposed internal hierarchical structure, which should be reflected in detailed catalogues

• Ideally catalogues are linked to authority records for names and places, and to taxonomies for subjects, which serve as access points, disambiguate terms and provide context

• Online representations of detailed catalogues need to render the hierarchical structure and linkages successfully

• Archive users typically use a combination of search and browse approaches in resource discovery

• Catalogues compiled over a century or more are not consistent in style, language or structure but the basic elements in the modern international standard, ISAD(G) can usually be recognised

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Non-archivists start here...

A short history of archival networking

• In the beginning there was the National Register of Archives• Archives Online report published by National Council on Archives in

1998o Articulated the concept of a single online point of access from

which it would be possible to search and browse all the available catalogue descriptions of UK archives, linked to a name authority file

o The technology envisaged at the time, of course, has changed. But the objective remains valid.

• The realities of the funding silos meant that this report was taken forward by a series of different projects which committed to a basis of interoperability to protect the potential for future integration or cross-searching

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Many flowers bloom...

• A2A: multi-level lists mainly from local authority archives in England

• Archives Hub: often new or edited collection-level descriptions mainly from University and specialist institutions

• AIM25: often new or edited collection-level descriptions from specialist archives in London

• Archives Wales: collection-level descriptions (perhaps multi-level in future) from all archives in Wales

• SCAN: collection and multi-level lists from mainly local authority archives in Scotland

• JANUS: lists from higher education institutions in Cambridge• ...but how sustainable are they in the current funding environment?

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Repository catalogues

• Individual repository online catalogues were thought likely to replace the networks, but they have usually proved disappointing by comparison with the facilities supported by the aggregators:o Sometimes constrained by lack of technical support from parent

organisation or by use of platforms acquired for other purposeso Two widely adopted commercial platforms, whose suppliers

prefer to take forward only developments commanding majority support among user group

o Rarely offer robust and flexible search and browse facilitieso Rarely comprehensive in coverageo Will a next generation of the technology be affordable in the

current climate? ICA-AtoM represents an open source competitor which may become more widely adopted.

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The National Archives and Linked, Open Data

• The National Archives, as the UK regulator for the EU Public Sector Information Directive, is committed to supporting and promoting open data

• The National Archives has also been a pioneer in exploiting the potential of Linked Data through its website www.legislation.gov.uk – one of the first large-scale implementations of linked data

• Experience with legislation has led us to rebuild the PRONOM file format registry using a linked data approach. This is available on the TNA labs site: http://labs.nationalarchives.gov.uk/wordpress/

• The third area where we are exploring the use of linked data is around resource discovery.

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• We have recently launched the Discovery system on the TNA Labs site. This does not employ a linked data approach but uses the Autonomy category classifier to create a taxonomy which can be applied automatically across the 11,000,000 records in the dataset.

• We are exploring using a linked data approach (Open Annotations) to connect entries in the catalogue to user generated content relating to them

• We are about to review the business purpose and technical infrastructure of the NRA and will explore using a linked data approach to connect elements of a distributed name authority file and also to connect different levels of description of the same collection on different sites: for example a short description in the NRA, a collection level description in AIM25 and a multi-level description on a repository website

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Future of resource discovery at TNA

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That’s it folks!