Metadata

Metadata descriptions presented within the database for each archival collection appear to be based on Dublin Core. There are no metadata entries for individual documents. MARC records are available for each archival collection, at least for the collections in microfilm format.

Technical platform & interface

The interface follows conventions familiar to those accustomed to browsing archival collections, but even for specialized researchers it may present some logistical challenges. The BRAW collections are not grouped together in the alphabetical collections title browse list of the parent database British Online Archives, and are therefore difficult to pick out at a glance. While the publisher cites full cross-collection searching and browsing as an advantage of the interface, it is potentially confusing to those researchers who will not be able to view retrieved documents from any of the collections their institution has not licensed.

When searching an individual collection, the “go” button next to the search window is not intuitively labeled, and display of search results is not particularly convenient. While the overall number of results is displayed, one must open each selected document, where all pages remain listed, requiring scrolling to find the relevant page numbers highlighted in red. The advanced search function allows searching across all collections or just within one, but the researcher cannot limit searching to a series or selected groups of documents within a collection. One important limitation to effective text searching is the lack of transcriptions for manuscript documents. So a word search will retrieve a heterogeneous mixture of full text and title level results.

Contextual metadata is provided in the page contents window. Page images are presented using the Adobe Reader plug-in. Navigation from document to document and page to page is easiest by using the breadcrumb list at the top of the page. Clicking through within the document window would be preferable. The response time for display of search results as well as page images was not tremendously rapid when accessed for this review.

The interface supports saving just up to five “favorites” at a time, giving only metadata and the ability to email the URL. The URL is not clickable within the metadata window.