Over the years we’ve found that our users, a significant proportion of whom are creative practitioners, like to browse our collections, rather than search for something specific. Many researchers come to archives with a research topic in mind, whether that be subject-based, event-based or around individuals or organisations. However they do not necessarily have a particular archive collection or artwork in mind, and they may not know whether there are any holdings relevant to their interest.
Indexing in terms of personal names, organisations, places and subjects provides access points to collections, guiding researchers to archives and artefacts that are relevant to them, archives that they may not otherwise discover. This is why indexing our descriptions and images with relevant names, organisations, places and subjects is so important, and why we’ve taken time to add these key index terms to our online catalogue.
As such, it’s now possible to browse our holdings by collection, by name (of creator, of organisation, of people who are the subject of the material), by place and even by date range (as we covered in yesterday’s post).
The vast majority of creator pages include biographies (check out or Charles Rennie Mackintosh page). Subject pages also often include further information: we’ll be adding more and more information as time goes on, but see our textiles subject page as an example. These pages include links to associated archives and artefacts we hold, as well as related images.
Happy browsing! Let the serendipity commence!
