Alan Stewart’s UK and Ireland family history news

The National Archives launching new Discovery catalogue

The UK’s National Archives is to replace its current Catalogue and Documents Online website with its new Discovery catalogue.

The National Archives (TNA) has announced: “Discovery is TNA’s new catalogue, providing a new way to explore our collections. Discovery is much more than a replacement for the current Catalogue, as it has been designed to host, search and display the many different databases and datasets held at TNA. By doing so it provides a more robust and integrated system to manage current and future data and storage needs, along with a consistent and seamless user experience.

Replacement of Documents Online

“Discovery will replace our Documents Online service by the end of April 2012, ensuring that our users can search our collection and download digitised documents (where available), all in one place.

Replacement of the Catalogue

“The Catalogue will be replaced by the end of June 2012. Discovery offers additional features to the current Catalogue, including displaying search results in order of relevance, allowing users to filter their search results by subject, date range and collection, and enabling users to tag records with keywords to expand on catalogue descriptions.

Read our Discovery Frequently Asked Questions

“For questions about Discovery, please see our Discovery FAQs, which provide detailed answers to common queries. If you have a question that we haven’t answered, please use our online contact form. We will continue to update the FAQs page as more questions are asked.”