1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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/
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
