ARCHON and the indexes to the National Register of Archives: past, present and future

Abstract

The Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, currently funded by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in the UK, has been in existence since 1869. Its terms of reference are defined by Royal Warrant and include “to make enquiry as to the existence and location of manuscripts, including records or archives of all kinds, of value for the study of history, other than records which for the time being public records by virtue of the Public Records Act”. Since 1945 it has assembled in the National Register of Archives (NRA) a unique research resource of over 1.5 million pages of catalogues, for the most part freely contributed by archivists working in record offices, libraries, museums and other institutions. The indexes to the NRA are the principal means by which information about British manuscript collections and repositories is accessed online. This article describes how the NRA has developed in response to the challenges of computerisation and the advent of the World Wide Web, giving rise to a dedicated UK archival links server, ARCHON (Archives Online), and how both information structures might develop in the future.

Citation

Mortimer, I. (1999), "ARCHON and the indexes to the National Register of Archives: past, present and future", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 225-233. https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000006918