Introduction

Cheshire for Archives provides a highly functional database EAD encoded archival finding aids. It includes a number of sophisticated searching options, customizable display of records, as well as tools to manage the database via a web-interface.

New Features:

• Refine your search by a number of attributes or facets that occur within the results
• Create and edit catalogue entries.
• AJAX added for enhanced search and display.

Plus:

• Improved display of digital surrogates
• Improved CSS for more consistent display between web-browsers
• Many minor display improvements

Discover

Search: The Search page is simple to use, yet allows advanced users to build complex queries with multiple terms in multiple indexes. Boolean search logic, phrase searching, and wildcards are all supported, as is highlighting of your search term in record displays wherever possible.
Browse: Indexes of titles, subject, names, reference numbers etc. can be browsed alphabetically from the Browse Indexes page.
Find subjects: The system also provides a way to discover relevant subjects within controlled vocabularies based on free text that you enter (known as an ELV). This is available on the Find Subjects page.
For full details on the search features and how to use them, please see the Help page.

Manage

The database of EAD finding aids can be administered via a web-browser in the authenticated administration interface. This provides a multi-user environment for previewing, adding and removing files. The database can be rebuilt to allow for bacth addition or deletion of files. You can also view a page summarizing a number of statistics relating to how your catalogue is being used, and which entries are most popular. The database of users authorized to access the administration section can also be managed within it.

Create and Edit

For version 3.4 we've added a data creation and editing interface. Based loosely on the Archives Hub data creation template, this new interface allows you to create new catalogue entries from scratch without worrying about schemas or DTDs. The biggest change from the old template is the ability to build up multiple levels of description without needing to copy and paste into a text editor. The system will even save your work allowing you to create entries over a number of days or even weeks. You can preview your EAD file as it will appear when displayed to users, or look at the raw XML, at any time. Once you're finished editing you can export your record to a file, and (optionally) submit them for immediate inclusion in the database.

It's also possible to load one of your existing files into the interface for editing. This makes minor corrections, for things such as spelling mistakes, missing, or incorrect controlled access terms a quick and simple task. Again, once your edits are complete you can export them to a file and (optionally) immediately replace the existing entry in the database.

Expose

As well as a human useable web-interface for searching, it also exposes the database via web services.

Cheshire for Archives currently provides the following International Standards:

Webservices / Protocol	Link to Standard's Homepage	Location of service on this server
SRU	Search/Retrieve via URL	http:///services/ead
OAI-PMH	The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting	http:///OAI/2.0/ead
Z39.50	Z39.50 International Standard Maintenance Agency	z3950://:210/ead

Cheshire for Archives is an application of the open source Cheshire3 Information Framework, both developed at the University of Liverpool as part of the Archives Hub project. The support of the JISC is gratefully acknowledged.