From the Top - Explore Archives

This week the annual Explore Your Archives campaign launched here in the UK. Remember only a tiny fraction of historical materials have been digitised and made available online, so archives still hold many treasures genealogists need.  Learning to use an archive is really important.

I am prepared to bet that most of us were taught how to use a library sometime in childhood, but we learn to use archives as adults by trial and error. Libraries organise their books and other materials and have catalogues to help you find what you want. Archives also organise and catalogue their holdings, but do so differently.

Archives are organised using a hierarchy with several levels. Cataloguing archives, in four very easy steps illustrates the four main levels with rather natty photos. The levels are:

• Fonds or Collection
• Series
• File
• Item

Genealogists often focus on the single item, and forget the context in which it was created, used and preserved. Much valuable information about an item is in the higher catalogue levels, so explore them all.

Archivists start at the top level and don't always have the resources to fully describe lower levels.  The best way of discovering what an archive holds is to look at the fonds level. The National Archives (TNA, the UK one) has over 400 fonds, which is somewhat overwhelming. According to the published guide 'Tracing your Ancestors in the National Archives' these are the fonds most commonly used by family historians:

I would like to see a summary like this one posted on every archive's website and displayed prominently in every search room.  I am sure UK researchers are familiar with some of the contents of the fonds HO, RG and WO. Have you looked at other fonds, and other series within fonds?  Take a close look at RG 101.

Sadly, online archive catalogues do not make examining fonds level entries as easy as it should be. To display all fonds in Discovery, TNA's catalogue, use the Advanced Search. A search term must be entered so I used the wildcard *, meaning everything.  Then I scrolled down the page and selected 'The National Archives' under Held by, which brought up further options. I scrolled a long way further and selected 'Department' under Catalogue Levels.  TNA confusingly uses the terms Department for Fonds and Piece for File. Once you have identified a Fond of interest, you can search using the reference.

Now it is your turn. Have fun exploring an archive!

Reference
Bevan, Amanda. 2006. Tracing your Ancestors in the National Archives. The National Archives: Richmond. pp 4-7.