Discovery is an eyeopener!

[Phoenix]

Luddite that I am, I am hating getting to grips with TNA's latest version of the Catalogue. All the fancy fonts do my eyes in. But I foolishly volunteered to do a talk before I realised the implications. So now I am trying to work out how to do searches.

As an example, I tried "Smith" under TNA ref J77, which I know is divorces.

Sure enough, I succeeded in getting 2452 hits.

It invited me to refine my search.

"Weapons" took my eye. You don't usually get the violence in the index.

When I looked, it was Mr William CANNON Smith:D

[ElizabethHerts]

Phoenix, I don't like the Discovery search. I have sent them an e-mail to that effect, but have yet to receive a reply.

You used to be able to search for wills by location - so could get all the wills for a village. That helped me a lot. Also, I used to use the surname field a lot - it helps with a surname like Lamb. If you put in "Lamb" to a general search you get all sorts of stupid results!

[kiterunner]

Elizabeth, I think the search on this page (scroll down a bit) will still work for searching for all the wills in a village:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/wills.htm

[Phoenix]

I gather that you wouldn't be the only person to dislike the new system, Elizabeth, and not just as an outside user.

I agree that losing a tag that showed whether something was a name or a place is a definite retrograde step.
And with abbreviations such as Camb. you cannot search for Cambridge and hope to get a hit.

[Phoenix]

Elizabeth, I think the search on this page (scroll down a bit) will still work for searching for all the wills in a village:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/wills.htm


That is taking me straight back to Discovery, Kite. Documents Online may still be around (just) but they are planning to switch it off very soon.

I shall be attending Catalogue Day in November. The programme isn't finalised, but I notice that PR on Discovery is billed top of the list.

[ElizabethHerts]

I thought Documents Online was already off?

Thanks, Kate, that worked for me. I hope I just remember where it is!

I also have confusion between place names and surnames - I have quite a few surnames that are also place names and it is most infuriating to get hits for places when you are searching for people.

I hope they listen to the comments and act on them.

[kiterunner]

Oh, I just realised that the will search I linked to does also bring back people with the same name as the village. :(

[ElizabethHerts]

Oh, I just realised that the will search I linked to does also bring back people with the same name as the village. :(

So it does - I searched for Scotton, a village in Lincs. where I have ancestors and the first hit was for a man with the name of Scotton.

[Mary from Italy]

Discovery doesn't seem to be working properly - maybe it doesn't include all records yet?

I tried searching for an unusual name, Adrian Gregory (in inverted commas). Discovery gave me one hit, but the TNA quick search, which I've always found excellent, gave me two entirely different hits, one of which related to the person I was looking for.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/search/quick_search.aspx?&queryText=

Actually, the Discovery results page suggests that ther results are limited to 1900-1924, and to labour, seamen and shipping records, although I clicked on All Collections.

[Mary from Italy]

The Discovery FAQs are here, and the more I read them, the worse the new system looks.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/discovery-faqs.htm

For example, it says:

What doesn't Discovery do that the old Catalogue did?

It doesn't have a 'go to reference' feature. To go to a reference in Discovery, enter it in the search box and it will run a search. If the reference contains items these will be returned in the list of results.

Well, I tried that with the reference that came up on the old search for Adrian Gregory, but it told me it was an invalid reference.
As it happens, it relates to a record held by Leics. record office.
Surely Discovery isn't excluding everything not physically held at Kew (ie. the stuff that used to be on the old A2A site)?

Why am I seeing different results when searching digitised documents to when I used DocumentsOnline?

We've changed the quick search function that was available in DocumentsOnline, allowing users to search a particular collection (such as wills and medal cards). Some users have reported that it's not giving the same results as the DocumentsOnline search. Broadly speaking, this is because Discovery searches keywords rather than names. We are currently exploring ways to make the quick search function more useful; in the meantime, our advanced search function allows users to search for specific words by record series.

That sounds not only confusing, but also far less useful than the old searches.

I certainly hope I've missed something, and it's not as bad as it sounds.

[Phoenix]

I think that that is because Discovery is TNA's own collections, while the quick search includes other archives.

It'll be interesting to see whether they keep that facility going.

[Mary from Italy]

More from the FAQs

What's happening with our online resources, like the National Register of Archives and Access to Archives, which describe material held elsewhere?

Our online resources, which include the National Register of Archives, the ARCHON directory, Accessions to Repositories, Access to Archives, the Manorial Documents Register and the Hospital Records Database, provide a window to many rich and vibrant collections relating to British history, including information about the location and nature of these records.

Last year we reviewed these resources to ensure that they meet the needs of the archives sector across the country and its stakeholders. We captured feedback about the current look and feel of these resources and the process of contributing data to the systems, which many archive-holding institutions go through, plus aspirations for their future development.

This year we are looking at how these resources can be incorporated into Discovery technically, so that we can improve the way users explore our collections and others relating to British history.

How does Discovery relate to website (global) search?

Discovery searches the catalogue and DocumentsOnline data. It also suggests useful research guides for particular search terms.

Global search searches data across our whole website, including Access to Archives, the National Register of Archives and all our web pages and catalogue. As with Discovery, you can limit your search to specific subject areas. You can also limit global search to particular sources, such as the research guides or ARCHON, for example.

The launch of Discovery will not affect how global search works, although work is being undertaken to match up the subject areas of Discovery and global search. We are carrying out a project over the next few months to look at how we can improve our search across the whole website.

That sounds reasonably reassuring.

[Mary from Italy]

It'll be interesting to see whether they keep that facility going.

It would seem ludicrous to abolish it, when it's the only central database of holdings in the various records offices, etc..

Personally I don't see the point in having two searches, one Discovery and one for everything else - I hardly ever used the Catalogue search previously, and didn't really feel the need of it, because everything I wanted turned up in the Quick Search.

[Phoenix]

I have heaps of bookmarks and saved searches - which I imagine will now be lost. I printed off past orders in case that too went walk-about.

I do understand the difficulty of E179 and the Exchequer court cases and all the other little databases which got overlooked because they were not part of the Catalogue (and I'm not sure that they came up on the quicksearch at all)

The IT guys have been moaning for years that the Catalogue was not fit for purpose but it was excellent for ferretting out all the obscure misspellings without the need of a fuzzy search.

[Mary from Italy]

When I find something useful on TNA I generally copy it into a Word file to be on the safe side.

[Phoenix]

Past orders are a really useful way of seeing how your mind was working, or which document actually held the goodies. My list runs to well over ten pages. You can, of course, download the catalogue into excel, so you can sort it which ever way you want.

[Mary from Italy]

You can, of course, download the catalogue into excel, so you can sort it which ever way you want.

I didn't know that - how do you do it? I can't see anything on the Catalogue search page.

[Phoenix]

Do a search in Discovery and there is an option on the extreme right to download - in whatever is the most appropriate format for you.

I have no idea whether it is still the case, but there used to be additional fields captured which were not visible in the Catalogue.

[Mary from Italy]

Oh, I see what you mean. I thought you meant you could download the whole catalogue, which seemed unlikely, because it must be huge, but it just downloads the search results.

[Phoenix]

Any search is limited - probably to a thousand results - but in theory you could download the entire Catalogue in chunks by using a combination of wildcards and date/department/piece number restrictions. Though I'm not sure why anyone would want to: the enhancement process is continuous and I keep on discovering items that I don't recall being described in the past.

[Phoenix]

Oh great. Discovery is cutting off full descriptions, so heaps of things that you can find in the Catalogue won't be accessible in Discovery.

[Mary from Italy]

What a pain. If they weren't going to improve the system, they might as well have left it as it was.

[Phoenix]

Given the sheer quantities of items that are not being returned in searches - for E179 it is horrific - I imagine that they will have to keep the Catalogue going as a finding aid even if ordering is done through Discovery. But anyone new to the website will miss so much that volunteers have worked hard to make accessible.