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With apologies for any inconvenience caused by cross-posting.
sjaf

~~~~~
*A2A Update, July 2002*

The first Phase 2 update to the A2A database at http://www.a2a.pro.gov.uk
took place on Tuesday 2 July.  Over 1,600 new catalogues have been added to
the site - which now contains over 3.84m catalogue entries from 184
repositories.  The new additions come from three single-repository projects:
*Norfolk Records* from Norfolk Record Office; *Unlocking the Past*, a
project delivered by East Sussex Record Office and supported by the New
Opportunities Fund (NOF); and *Salters' Estates* - retroconversion of the
finding aid to the deeds of the Salters' Company.  Catalogues from the local
government archives services of Bedfordshire and Luton, and Wiltshire and
Swindon, have also been added to A2A.  This update follows the final Phase 1
update which took place in May.

*Norfolk Records* has contributed over 11,000 catalogue pages to A2A,
describing the archives of Norfolk institutions including several hundred
Church of England parishes, Nonconformist churches, Norfolk County Council,
the city of Norwich and the boroughs of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn.  The
catalogue pages from *Unlocking the Past* total over 3,000 so far, with
several thousand more to come; they relate to the archives of the public
authorities of East Sussex including parish councils, health authorities,
water and rivers authorities and the police.  *Salters' Estates* has
provided a catalogue of the 13th-20th century deeds to the properties of the
Salters' Company in the City of London and in Monks Risborough, Bucks - the
first finding aid submitted to A2A by a livery company's archive.

Further to the usage statistics I gave in the last issue of *A2A Update*,
readers may be interested to know that in May the total number of searches
made on the A2A database since launch passed the half-million mark, and the
total number of catalogue viewings reached over a million.

Lastly, I am very pleased to announce that the Heritage Lottery Fund has
already made two grants to A2A Phase 2 projects: *Cosmic Rays and the Solid
State* and *Antients and Moderns*.  *Cosmic Rays and the Solid State* will
be delivered by a consortium led by the National Cataloguing Unit for the
Archives of Contemporary Scientists (NCUACS) at the University of Bath; it
will provide 'born digital' finding aids to the personal papers - all
previously uncatalogued - of 6 leading 20th-century Bristol physicists for
the A2A database.  *Antients and Moderns* is based at the National Museum
and Library of Freemasonry in London; it will add over 15,000 catalogue
pages describing archives of the United Grand Lodge of England (relating to
English freemasonry from 1750 to 1820) to A2A, through both retroconversion
and new cataloguing work.  Other applications for additional funding for A2A
projects have also been made to HLF, or are being prepared, by regional
consortia, by user groups, and by single institutions.

A2A is the English strand in the UK archives network: its database at
http://www.a2a.pro.gov.uk already contains the electronic equivalent of over
400,000 catalogue pages describing archives held across England in national,
local and specialist repositories and dating from the 900s to the present
day.  The A2A programme will make a further 300,000 catalogue pages
available on the web by March 2004.

* * * * * *
Sarah J A Flynn
Regional Liaison Co-Ordinator, A2A
Public Record Office
Kew
Richmond
Surrey TW9 4DU

Tel (direct line): 020 8392 5328
Fax: 020 8392 5281
Email: [log in to unmask]
www: http://www.a2a.pro.gov.uk

* * * * * *




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