Churchill Archives Centre is delighted to announce that a pilot version of
the electronic catalogue of the Churchill Papers is now available online at:
http://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/churchill_papers/
The Churchill Papers:
The Churchill Papers consist of the original documents sent, received or
composed by Sir Winston Churchill during the course of his long and active
life. The papers contain everything from Churchill's childhood letters and
school reports to his final writings. They include his personal
correspondence with friends and family, and his official exchanges with
kings, presidents, politicians and military leaders. Some of the most
memorable phrases of the twentieth century are preserved in his own drafts
and speaking notes for the famous wartime speeches. The Churchill Papers
comprise an estimated 1 million individual documents. In April 1995 grants
from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the John Paul Getty Foundation purchased
the Churchill Papers for the nation.
The catalogue:
The Churchill Papers have been catalogued in a project lasting over 6 years.
The catalogue now contains over 70,000 entries and the pilot Internet
version allows you to search for catalogue descriptions using free text,
keyword and date range searching. Searching methods will be improved and
refined over the forthcoming months but we'd be interested to receive
comments and suggestions in the meantime. If you would like to comment on
searching the catalogue, please let us know.
The catalogue data has been migrated from STATUS IQ (a text retrieval
system) to a Structured Query Language (SQL) database which will enable
powerful and effective searching. It will also ensure that the data can be
exported into Encoded Archival Description (EAD) format.
Part of the migration programme has included the updating of the index
terms. The local thesaurus terms used to catalogue the papers have been
mapped to UNESCO thesaurus subject terms and to name authority terms
constructed according to the National Council on Archives Rules for the
Construction of Personal, Corporate and Place Names.
Further information/contact details:
Natalie Adams
Archivist/ Information Services Manager
Churchill Archives Centre
Churchill College
Cambridge
CB3 0DS
Telephone (01223) 336222
Fax (01223) 336135
Website http://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/churchill_papers/
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