The Cataloguing Panel is a cross-departmental group of colleagues with oversight of The National Archives’ cataloguing programme. It reports to the Discovery Board.
The online catalogue presents the public inventory of our collections. Its purpose is to:
- Support transparency about and understanding of the collections by maintaining an authoritative dataset of accessioned records and the contexts in which they were originally created and used
- Enable use of the collections by allowing people to identify material of interest to them
Our cataloguing activity involves both creating new catalogue descriptions and improving existing ones. These additions and changes to the catalogue should reflect good practice by being accurate, clear and meaningful, enabling online searching and complying with standards.
The panel is responsible for:
- Maintaining an overview of the growth, maintenance and adequacy of catalogue content
- Monitoring project work to enhance the catalogue data for our existing collections and identifying where projects require additional support to meet their targets
- Sharing information between departments about new and upcoming physical and digital accessions
- Sharing information between departments about digitisation
- Providing expert input into the development of relevant policies and practices
- Advocating for best practice in cataloguing and data curation
- Reviewing user feedback on cataloguing initiatives
Suggestions for catalogue improvements
You can report an error or suggest an improvements directly from each description in Discovery, our catalogue.