Back in April I mentioned that I was looking at new software for a catalogue. I’m hoping that the catalogue will be online for people to have a look at by the end of the year. I’ve now spent a few months adding to it, and at the moment I’m working on all the societies and other activities.
An archive is arranged hierarchically, so that the context is kept. I’m working on ‘series-level’ entries for the whole archive (a series is a group of records, within a larger group, that all relate to the same purpose, for example we’ve got a series of Natural History Society annual reports). After that, we’ll be working on adding more detail for specific parts of the archive where this is likely to be most useful, although that is a long term project!
What is exciting is that it will be much easier to search the new catalogue, and explore it using all the connections to people, events, places, other records and so on. We can also add digital images of the records to the catalogue, so we can gradually increase what people can access online.
Watch this space!
A photograph of a gymnastics display from 1920 that I came across last week while I was working on the sports records.