The National Archive has overhauled its online search technology to make records more accessible to the general public.
The system allows people to search more than 30 million online public records dating back 1,000 years, by subject, for the first time.
David Thomas, the National Archive’s director of collections and technology, says in the past users of the Archive’s online resources have had to search through 11 separate databases to obtain all the information on a particular topic.
‘First you would have had to understand the structure of the databases we had on the web site, and even then you would have to know exactly what you were looking for,’ he said.
‘The new search system is much better configured to look by subject. Say you look for information on Admiral Nelson, it will give you access to everything about him.’
The technology, supplied to the National Archive by Autonomy, will search emails, videos, voice recordings and documents stored.
Dev Joshi, the National Archive’s project manager for the global search, says it has taken more than a year and a half to get the system up and running, including extensive public usability tests.
‘From those tests we found the system to be unified, accurate, fast and accessible in coming back with results for the user,’ he said.
When users search on the National Archive site they can now see two different views of the information available to them, says Joshi.
‘You can go through the hits one by one as normal, or you can look at categorised eBay-style lists where you can drill down,’ he said.
‘Let’s say you have 20,000 hits come back. You go into whichever area interests you, and in brackets you are given the number of hits in that area. Then you can get what you are after.’
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