Ada Mascio, Archivist – Catalogue Data Cataloguing, Taxonomy and Data Team, November 2023
In this recorded presentation, archivist Ada Mascio explains the skills, techniques and processes involved in cataloguing one of The National Archives’ previously unsorted and uncatalogued series.
Ada is an Archivist focusing on improving catalogue data quality in Discovery, The National Archives’ online catalogue, and improving access and understanding of its records.
Transcript
Hello! I am Ada Mascio, one of the archivists in the Cataloguing, Taxonomy and Data Department at The National Archives, and I am here to talk to you about a catalogue project carried out between 2020 and 2023.
Firstly – a little disclaimer, many people were involved in this project, both within our department and throughout the organisation, some have even left TNA now, therefore I can’t take the full credit on the project, and I am extremely grateful to the professionality and the tremendous skills of everyone involved.
But I will try my best to lead you through this journey with the hope that I am able to shed some light on the process of sorting and cataloguing records held at The National Archives.
Here we are!
The series chosen for this project is called LR 16.
As many of you know, within Discovery, the National Archives’ online catalogue, the records are organised in a hierarchy with departments at the top.
Usually Departments are organisations, or government offices or departments, such as Chancery, Colonial Office, Home Office and so on. In Discovery, these are indicated by letters, for example LR stands for Land Revenue, and include records either created or inherited by or somehow belonging to those bodies.
All the series belonging to the same department are indicated by the department letters followed by a number, for example LR 16.
Series include records that are related and together for various reasons, for example because they were part of the same filing system.
Pieces are the files that are produced when an order is placed by a reader through Discovery.
For more info on how Discovery works and is organised please have a look at our website.
Back to LR 16 now:
On the right-hand side of the screen I have an image of the description that we were displaying in Discovery before the project started. It’s the series description only. Series descriptions give an overview of the records included in that series.
LR 16 did not have anything else below that very general description.
The title tells us a little about the content: Office of the Auditors of land revenue, modern deeds series E.
This is a deeds series, then, including a variety of records that were found or collected in the office of the auditors of land revenue.
Back in 2020 we did not know much more than that, apart from the fact that this was an artificially created series, meaning that the records were not produced by the Land revenue office but were deposited there for various reasons, we also knew that other similar deeds were in series LR 14 and LR 15, and that we had 14 boxes of unsorted material to go through!
First stop: Listing the content of the boxes. This is the starting point of any cataloguing project.
In order to list the records effectively and consistently we used a spreadsheet template to gather the relevant data that would then be used to create the final descriptions in Discovery. On the screen there is a screenshot of our spreadsheet and one of the records.
The data gathered in the spreadsheet were the following:
- Box and deed number (meaning temporary numbers assigned to the records to identify them easily in the box at a later stage)
- Type of record (deed is quite generic and it can include a variety of records, for example, leases, grants, bonds etc, we realized quite early on that the content of the series included many record types )
- Parties involved (personal names, titles, occupations, social status if available)
- Place or subject (what the document is about)
- Dates (we were capturing the dates as given on the records, usually using regnal years, based on the English or British monarchs)
- Language (only if not English)
- physical conditions
- Endorsements (including any relevant note on the back of the records, but also witnesses to the deeds, as we know this is particularly important especially for medieval and early modern deeds)
- other numbers on records (as these could be a residue or a clue from a former arrangement or sorting exercise)
- and any other relevant comment or note for us to look back to, for example the presence or not of seals and signatures.
At this stage some important skills are required: basic knowledge of Excel is vital to help in organizing the data gathered, good paleography level, to be able to read the documents, understanding of regnal years and various calendars, archivists, researchers and historians are very well aware that dates are often problematic, we will talk about this later; and language skills, these records are mostly in English, but we have quite a few in Latin and also a French one. Moreover, an understanding of different records types, in order to identify the documents correctly, and finally, attention to details, identifying the relevant information in the records and capturing the right data and into the right fields. I would say that this is the most time consuming and specialized part of the cataloguing process.
The second stop after listing the records was to make sense of the data gathered so far and to sort the documents.
We started to see patterns and were able to identify the 8 groups on the screen:
- Documents with no obvious grouping arranged chronologically, including also material that can be linked to LR 14.
- Deeds concerning Sir Francis Barrington of Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex;
- Deeds concerning the jointure of Queen Henrietta Maria, Queen Consort to Charles I;
- Deeds relating to the jointure of Queen Catherine de Braganza, Queen Consort to Charles II for lands in various counties.
- Deeds for lands in Cheshire.
- Deeds for lands in Lincolnshire.
- Letters patents and other deeds from various monarchs
- Finally, Copies of various records.
We decided to organise the records chronologically within each of these groups.
As I said at the beginning, LR 16 is an artificial series, these records were collected rather than produced by the land revenue office and they were deposited there for various reasons, for example for enrolment purposes, basically to be registered officially. But what about the rest of them? as it often happens the records themselves come to rescue us. Halfway our preliminary listing we found a schedule (meaning a list) of deeds. On my slide there is the first page of it.
The schedule was produced in 1711 following an order of the Exchequer court and it concerned lands given in jointure to Catherine of Braganza.
On the death of the Queen Consort any documents relating to lands held in jointure were to be delivered into the Exchequer and thereafter into the records of the auditors of land revenue. That would explain the bulk of this series, being, in fact, deeds such as leases, grants or surrenders of leases, relating to lands held in jointure by the aforementioned queens.
It is also interesting to note that many of these original leases, especially the counterparts, meaning the lessee’s copies, are at TNA now because the lands/properties were given back through surrenders, which are usually on the back of the main leases or grants.
The schedule also shed some light on some of the numbers found on the back of the deeds, that in fact corresponded to the numbers assigned to the deeds when the schedule was compiled.
Skills required for this phase of the projects are: attention to details, Excel again, in helping organising the data with various functions, but also records’ knowledge, and collaboration, as we were working with Dan Gosling, the relevant records specialist and finally, problem solving, looking for clues on the right arrangement to give to the records!
Third stop: Referencing system.
We were now starting to get an intellectual control on the records, having identified those 8 groups.
Our problem was to keep the groups of related documents together, because at the time they were all scattered around those 14 boxes.
Firstly, we moved them physically and we rearranged the records in a new order following the patterns highlighted in our spreadsheet, at this stage we were still keeping the temporary numbers given to the records in the listing process, that were made up of the box number and a second number depending on the order the documents from that box were listed (mostly in random order).
Referencing records means to associate each record to a unique reference that will enable the archives to store the records properly, but also to retrieve them and this will ultimately allow the archives users to order them. A reference also provides a link to the description that represents it and can help users identify what level in the hierarchy they are viewing.
Choosing the right referencing system is also important for browsing purposes, as in Discovery we display records in referencing order and so we had to make sure that related documents were kept or grouped together.
In Discovery different series have different referencing system, and for LR 16 we opted for simple consecutive numbers starting from 1 up to 330.
The level of description chosen was piece level without subseries or subsubseries, which are further sub-divisions of group of records within a series, upon ordering a record one single deed should be produced.
We did not want to over-complicate references for quite a small series, but our aim was to show the links between the records, which could be explained also in the series level description, and we did that, but at the same time to keep the references simple and easy to browse and to understand. For example LR 16/7 in this image showing a deed is part of the first group but it was found in box no 4.
Attention to details, Excel again and knowledge of archival practice, descriptive standards, and awareness of users needs are the skills required to identify the best referencing system. I should mention collaboration too, with our colleagues in the Document Services Department, as their help has been crucial for us to move the boxes, and making them available to the public!
Fourth stop: Presenting the data.
Now our records had unique numbers, and the next challenge, or stop was to present the data in Discovery. I will try to explain some of our editorial decisions.
The key of presenting data is to find the right balance: descriptions need to be informative but not too long, and easily searchable in Discovery, therefore user friendly.
We opted for a structured description, based on the spreadsheet we used as template for the preliminary listing and following the example of other deeds series in Discovery. Our editorial decisions are compliant to TNA cataloguing standards which are largely based on the international archival standards: rules that outline what information should be captured in each field, as well as outlining rules on how to format that information.
The descriptions give the type of record: lease, grant, bond, letters patent etc;
parties involved: we used modern spelling for first names but contemporary spelling (meaning the spelling given in the records) for surnames, and the modern version in square brackets, if known. In this way both original and modern spellings are searchable in Discovery. Regarding the titles and social status I will just mention some abbreviations, for example kt for knight, as knight could both be a title and a surname; bart for baronet, esq for esquire and so on.
Place or subject: for placenames we followed a similar approach, with modern versions given in square brackets, where possible, we tried to identify the counties as well, so these can be searched in Discovery. We were avoiding abbreviations for counties to facilitate and improve user search results.
As mentioned before, in the field qualified as endorsement we included any useful information given on the back of the records, such as witnesses, sometimes another deed was on the back of the main one, this is the case of surrenders, in which one the lessees, or their heirs give up any right they could have on the properties.
In the note field we included information on the seals and signatures, noting also if a document was, for example, signed by the queen, as again this could be interesting for researchers.
Finally, the dates: the thorny question.
Dating styles changed over the centuries, so, we included in the scope content or description the dates given in the records, so the regnal years, but we converted that into the modern calendar dates that are given in the date text field in Discovery. In this way the records are searchable by the modern dates or modern calendar dates, but we retained the information on the contemporary dating style in the description.
Multiple skills again, knowledge of various calendars, awareness of users needs and archival standards. Which also entails communication skills, to present the data in a clear and understandable fashion to users. Excel again as we used a concatenation formula to help us to keep the descriptions as consistent as possible. And knowledge of descriptive standards, international, national and in-house.
This is it! This is how we reach the end of your cataloguing journey.
On the right hand side on your screen is the description in Discovery, with the fields I have explained earlier. The link can be found at the bottom of the slide and on the left-hand side is what you’ll get ordering that record!
So, we are back to the records now, finally accessible and available to the public. Not only that, now these records are better organised, described and finally orderable. A variety of researchers could be interested in them, as we said these refer to crown lands held in Lincolnshire, Cheshire and other counties including Yorkshire. Lands held in Jointure by Queen Catherine of Braganza and Henrietta Maria.
It’s not a big series, only 330 pieces, but it’s rich of people and places, and it offers a range of records, The earliest record is an undated grant c 1180-1250 of lands in Norfolk. It should be enough to say that the latest record is a sale of trust premises held by one of the chief clerks of the Treasury, dated 1812. More than 600 years of British history.
From an archivist’s point of view it was an interesting journey through various records type, handwriting styles, and the challenge of sorting these documents and presenting them. To tell the truth it always gives a sense of accomplishment to bring order and to sort the unsorted. That’s our greatest legacy.
I thought I would conclude this journey with some nice pictures. The lady on the left side of the screen in the handwritten and decorative capital T is queen Henrietta Maria, consort to Charles I, her signature is also present at the top of the record. She is wearing a widow’s cap and this tells us that she was already widowed at the time of this record so she was the Queen Mother rather than the Queen Consort. We can even appreciate her pearl necklace. Pearls also worn by her daughter in law, Catherine of Braganza, on the right side, and her signature there below.
LR 16 is full of such portraits. We found also two 18th century letters patent still in their original wooden boxes and round tins containing the great seals. In fact, this series includes quite a variety of seals some in very good conditions; and something I always find very fascinating is the signatures of people of various social status, including women.
Thanks everyone for listening, I hope you found this talk interesting and enjoyed the journey!
Please check our website and Discovery for more amazing records and in case you need it you will find guides to help with your search, and that is where another journey can begin!
Thank you!