Cabinet Papers, 1915-1977
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Grant Holder:
The Cabinet Papers Project aimed to provide an online resource for learning and research that would make The National Archives’ holdings of the Cabinet Papers available to the public, and in particular to Higher Education and A-level students. The National Archives is now able to provide an entire collection of searchable digitised images of the Cabinet Papers to users of the site as well as providing relevant information and study guidance for both teachers and students of British 20th century history.
Production of sized PDF files from uncompressed TIFF files for web dissemination
| Project start date: 2007-03 | Project end date: 2009-02 |
| Methods used | Category |
|---|---|
| 2d Scanning and photography | Data capture |
| Record linkages | Data analysis |
| System quality assurance and code testing | Strategy and project management |
| Text recognition | Data capture |
| Usability analysis | Strategy and project management |
| Interface design | Data publishing and dissemination |
| preservation | Strategy and project management |
| moving image | Content types |
| text | Content types |
Funding sources:
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)
Content types created:
Moving Image, Still Image/Graphics, Text
Software tools used:
Adobe Acrobat, IDOL 7.0
Source material used:
Cabinet Office papers from 1915 to the late 1970s have been digitised by The National Archives. The series of Cabinet documents included in this project are: CAB 23, CAB 24, CAB 65, CAB 66, CAB 67, CAB 68, CAB 128, CAB 129, CAB 181 and CAB 195.
Digital resource created:
Over half a million pages of key documents from the Cabinet Office reveal how British governments of the past made some of the most momentous decisions of the 20th century.
This project broke new ground for The National Archives in the use of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. The ease of access that the OCR provides to the documents is of great value to research, however this project has also discovered the limitations of OCR in its inability to recognise images, foreign text etc. and the use of manually transcribed metadata is useful here in ensuring access to the document. The sheer quantity of digitised content used by the Cabinet Papers project has precipitated a move forwards in The National Archives’ processes for the handling and loading of documents for digital storage and presentation. New processes have been developed for Quality Assurance (QA) and correction of OCR and for managing document releases within the collection.
The Cabinet Papers site has been tailored to the needs of its target audiences in a drive to make the content not only available and accessible to the public, but useable and relevant for the academic community. Part of this user centred design process has been the creation of the study packages and educational information available on the site. The Cabinet Papers site now provides a structured set of informative pages that can be added to and expanded in the future.
Data Formats created:
JPG, TIFF, XML, pdf, flash
Metadata standards employed:
Dublin Core, simple (DC), NISO Metadata for Images in XML (MIX), Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS)
Project staff and expertise:
| Principal staff member: | Laura Withey, Jane Gray |
|---|---|
| Other staff: | |
| External expertise: |
| Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) of record | Julie Halls |
| Title | Cabinet Papers, 1915-1977 |
| Record created | 2010-03-18 |
| Record updated | 2010-03-18 12:18 |
| URL of record | http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2683 |
| Citation of record | Julie Halls: Cabinet Papers, 1915-1977. <http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2683> created: 2010-03-18, last updated 2010-03-18 12:18 |