Activities

The Archives Discovery Forum 2012 will be held on 21st March at The National Archives, in Kew, London.

The event will run from 11am, with registration from 10.30. As in 2011, it will combine a few plenary sessions with multi-track talks and workshops. Speakers will explore the possibilities of digital development, from improving user experience to the opportunities of linked data. Some new features for 2012 will include bookable workshops on key topics, including retroconversion techniques and map data, and a quickfire session to give several exciting projects a moment in the spotlight. Finally, the Forum will celebrate the launch of the British Library's Integrated Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue.

The Forum is organised by UKAD to bring together those interested in opening up archives for discovery. We are looking to provide as many chances as possible for serendipitous encounters between projects that can learn from each other, so it will be a relatively informal event with lots of opportunity to network. The aim is to involve archivists and raise their awareness of the archives discovery agenda, while bringing in potential partners, developers, funders and others who can contribute to the debate and who could benefit from developing partnerships with the archives sector.

The Forum is free to attend, but places are limited. If you would like to attend the Forum, please book a place by emailing Last year, we booked up very quickly, so please do get in touch if you want to attend.

We are also looking for volunteer diarists to give a personal view of their experience of the Forum, and have reserved at least two places for bloggers. When booking, please let Melinda know if you're interested in producing an account of your day to share with UKAD.

Indexing and Name Authority Group

The group exists to discuss issues relating to name authorities and indices. The particular remit is to look at how we can promote best practice, share expertise and move forwards towards a more interoperable and UK-wide way of working, to create consistent and effective authority files and indices.

A survey was carried out in 2009 to develop the knowledge base of name, subject and place indexing as currently practised. This will help facilitate data sharing between archive management systems, inform the workings and usage of the National Register of Archives and enable the proper implementation of mapping and other technologies.

We are hoping to provide a summary of the UKAD 2009 survey on the Website.

The group developed an Indexing Tutorial as a result of this work.