The National Archives has been developing its catalogue, Discovery, to provide a single point of online access to catalogue and organisational data from across the archive sector.
The upgraded Discovery will enable users to search all the record descriptions we hold digitally for collections in repositories across the UK, not only those held by The National Archives. You can visit the beta site<http://beta.discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/> now to see how this will work.
In November 2013, we announced the first beta version which included content from the National Register of Archives and the ARCHON Directory. Information from Access to Archives and the Manorial Documents Register is now searchable too. We are still testing and developing this version, and some major features remain to be built, so expect to see some changes on subsequent visits. Please be aware that the beta version may be unstable. If you try and use the system and find it is not working, please try again later.
At present the service contains 22 million descriptions of records held at The National Archives and 10 million from across the archives sector, and over the next eighteen months we will be building some new tools to enable archivists to share and upload catalogues and name authority data easily, so that Discovery becomes a bigger and more useful resource. We will also be arranging to talk to our data contributors about how they can share their data most efficiently
When we are confident that Discovery meets the needs of the sector and our users, we will begin to close the National Register of Archives<http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/default.asp>, ARCHON Directory<http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archon/>, Access to Archives<http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/> and Manorial Documents Register<http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/mdr/>. Find out more<http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-sector/finding-archives.htm> about how and why we are doing this.
We always welcome feedback, so please use the 'send us your feedback' link in the beta Discovery service to offer your views or suggestions. Please share the link with your colleagues and invite users of your service to try the beta.
Jonathan Cates
Collections Knowledge Manager (Finding Archives) | Archives Sector Development
The National Archives
+44 (0) 20 8876 3444
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