When conducting research in an archive it is often necessary to have a specific field of enquiry prepared. This might be a particular person, a specific period in history, or a combination of information that will allow the archivist to hone in on materials that might potentially be useful to the user. This is because archives are accumulations of materials around a point, person, place or organisation rather than self contained publications like those that you would find in a library. In many ways archives could be considered the ‘raw’ ingredients for a publication, in that they need to be sorted, interpreted and curated into a narrative. This is why traditionally a researcher requires a specific subject of enquiry, because it is simply not possible to ‘browse’ through several archives.
However, in creating our online catalogue we have looked to provide ways of browsing our materials that were previously not possible! This tutorial addresses the first of those, and shows you how to browse by category.
