Reviewing our online resources
The National Archives maintains a number of online tools and resources giving information about the location and nature of collections relating to British history. We have been working with users and contributors to improve our resources so that you get the tools you need.
To improve online access to archives, we have been reviewing these resources and gathering feedback on how they should look and work in the future. In November 2011, we embarked on a research project to better understand stakeholder needs for our online resources.
These resources are:
- National Register of Archives
- ARCHON Directory
- Accessions to Repositories
- Access to Archives
- Manorial Documents Register
- Hospital Records Database
Our stakeholders include users, contributors, UK archive networks and interest groups.
Our objectives were to:
- document and understand the stakeholder needs for our online resources that detail material held by other repositories
- consolidate requirements gathered externally and at internal workshops
- analyse the functionality required by stakeholders against what can technically be achieved
Consultation
The customer focused research included focus groups, one to one sessions and an online survey.
The survey was designed to capture feedback from users and contributors about the look and feel of these resources, as well as the process of contributing data to the systems that many archive holding institutions go through.
Conclusions
The findings showed that the following are key priorities:
- effective search functions are crucially important to successful online resources
- improving the processes of contributing information to the online resources
Other priorities in the context of this research are that:
- users will expect good service or functionality from the most important factors
- most of the added value attributes included in this research (for example, links to Google Earth™, news alerts, links to other sites, user profiles etc.) can be considered long term goals or enhancing factors; added extras which can positively influence the user experience
We are currently analysing the results to identify the key actions.
You can find out more by downloading the summary of the findings below or by contacting the collections knowledge manager (systems).
Finding Archives summary (PDF, 0.66Mb)
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