Cataloguing is rarely seen as a particularly glamorous or exciting part of working in an archive service, but it underpins a lot of what we do as a whole. Creating a good catalogue is one of the most enduring ways to make a collection usable to a wide range of audiences … if you can’t find something then you can’t use it!

A catalogue should be useful and usable to someone who is using an archive for the first time, and to a seasoned user who is an expert in their subject.

Making catalogues that work for experts and beginners alike is a challenge, but that is what we are working to achieve – so we are building catalogue structures that will be accessible electronically, that link to online sources of information like Wikipedia, and that are intuitive and easy to use.

It is very exciting to know that the cataloguing work that is going on now will enable many different people to use the archives here at the University of Huddersfield – if you’re reading this then hopefully you’ll be one of them!