‘A2A - Access to Archives’

Sarah Stark of the National Archives
16 Feb 2005- speaking at the BerksFHS Computer Branch, Woodley

The A2A programme is co-ordinated by the Central Team, housed at The National Archives in Kew, although not part of the Central Reading Room. A2A aims to provide access to archives through the catalogues drawn up by archivists across England. These catalogues are the key to the archives they describe, but many of them are not available elsewhere on the Internet. Typically, A2A catalogues have previously been available only at the relevant archives repository, in paper form or on a local electronic system.

Most of the major archives in England contribute material to A2A who index it, put it online and return a copy to the owners of the data. Some organisations, such as Essex RO (SEAX), Durham RO and the Bodleian already have their own online indexes. At present there are 7.5 million records in 86,000 catalogues from 383 Record Offices.

A Standard Search starts from a Keyword (or phrase). This is not case sensitive and can contain the usual wild cards:- ?, to replace a single character or * to replace several. It also includes [,] which defines a choice bigam[y,ist] finds the words "bigamy" or "bigamist" (NB. use no spaces!) An additional feature is to use NEARx eg 'John NEAR2 Smith' will find both 'John Smith' and 'Smith, John'. This is a useful extension of the normal use of AND, OR or BUT NOT.

In addition to the keyword the search can be restricted to an Archive, an English Region or a date range. A recent enhancement is to restrict the search to archives added since a certain date; this means that only recently added items will be displayed.

Two other types of Searches are possible: Extended Search or People Places and Subjects. In the Extended Search it is possible to restrict the results to an Archive Category or an A2A theme. The People/Places Search has options to search terms which have been specially selected and added to catalogues describing archives which are particularly rich in information about individual people, specific families or organisations, places, or subjects.

updated 1 Sep 2007