Society of Archivists’ Annual Conference 2010: We are what we keep: challenging tradition in appraisal and acquisition

Integrating and developing services in a digital world: appraisal, acquisition and access at the British Library

Integrated Archives and Manuscripts System Project - IAMS

deliver a powerful, flexible integrated cataloguing and resource discovery system that will unite and broaden

access to the British Library’s archives and

manuscript collections and will provide standards

compliant data for external co-operative projects

IAMS project running for 3 years – so an interim report!

Achievements:

Business:

systems integration

process and workflow

management reporting

User:

single point of access

IAMS Catalogue

Single catalogue developed in-house went live July 2009!

from 40 different systems to one for archives and manuscripts

data migration in progress – aim 1 million records by March 2011

from many different data structures and cataloguing practices to one system based on ICA Descriptive Framework and new cataloguing guidelines

Bringing together process, workflow and reporting for 6 collection areas

Picture of IAMS

Search Our Catalogue Archives and Manuscripts - SOCAM

First-cut of resource discovery interface developed October 2009:

One point of access to information about all the Library’s archive and manuscript collections

Up to date functionality: faceted refinement of results, and user tagging, bookmarking and commenting

System undergone extensive formal and informal testing; new release expected early 2011

Picture of IAMS

Available at http://searcharchives.bl.uk/

IAMS: Innovative Data Model

Archive Institutions

held by

Persons, Families, Corporate

Bodies

created by

Archives & Manuscripts

Places, Concepts, Things & Events

have subjects

Projects &collections

acquired and funded by

IAMS: Innovative Data Model

In-house development of data model allows us to meet needs:

Description of overarching collections and projects allows integration of different collection types and full acquisition and funding context to be represented

Flexible interpretation of standards especially ISAD(G):

greater granularity in the hierarchy with allows description and access of e-resources

Additional data elements for accurate temporal context and relationship of manuscript works to published versions

Challenges Ahead

While progress still need to:

Enable automated ordering for users

Enable users access to born-digital and digitised versions of material by integration with digital library systems

Develop standards based data exchange to allow

sharing with federated catalogues internally, nationally and internationally

Re-use of our rich contextual data in world of semantic web

Contacts

Lynda Barraclough:

Jeremy John:

Bill Stockting: Catalogue Integration Manager - william.stockting@bl.uk