PRONI went global on 2 February 2009 with the launch of the eCatalogue on the Internet. This completes a remarkable journey started five years earlier and represents a significant milestone for PRONI. It also chronicles a path littered with hurdles and obstacles and one that has impacted on all aspects of organisational delivery, not just the catalogue but also data security, user expectation, records management and service delivery.

The eCatalogue supersedes the existing paper catalogue that was created over the previous eighty years, and makes them available electronically for searching and browsing both onsite and online. It comprises of the contents of approximately 170,000 A4 pages and contains descriptions for more than 1.5m individual items. At the time of launch, 60% of PRONI’s catalogue descriptions have been made available. The remainder are to be published in due course.

There were many drivers for implementing the project particularly Government initiatives aimed at widening access to archives and making archival institutions more relevant to citizens. PRONI also needed to develop new tools to manage its existing catalogue data in order to meet statutory legislative requirements such as Freedom of Information and Data Protection. 

There was also an appetite by public users for electronic catalogues and online records and this expectation had further been fuelled by the availability of electronic catalogues elsewhere, eg The National Archives of England and Wales, the National Archives of Scotland and by organisations in the United States.

The eCATNI project took just over five years to complete and comprised a number of different strands. The first major strand was the actual data conversion of existing paper catalogues into database entries. This was done by photocopying the existing catalogues which were then hierarchically colour coded and delineated by fields in accordance with ISAD (G) standards. Once ready, the marked up text was forwarded to an external keying contractor in batches of 2,000 pages per week. The returned data was quality assured to a standard of 99.95% accuracy. Initially, every entry was data validated, however, once it was established that the benchmark was being met, the amount of data being checked was incrementally reduced to ten percent.

The second major strand of the project comprised the development and procurement of archival management software. Because of particular business needs and the prerequisite to ensure data security, a number of different pieces of software were either developed or procured.  In-house software was developed to manage the catalogue and the location of physical items in the stores. Off the shelf software was procured from an external contractor and additional modules were developed to allow on-site users to search the catalogue and order records. Finally software was developed to allow the public to search the eCatalogue on the Internet.

The third strand of the project was the change management programme to ensure that the right environment was established prior to the release of the eCatalogue. This was crucial in that the eCatalogue was intended to be the sole archival management tool for PRONI and would impact directly on most sections within the organisation, in particular cataloguing, managing locations, responding to queries, reception, document ordering and repository. To ensure organisational buy-in, representative staff from all functional areas were involved, trained and encouraged to participate in the roll-out.  New documentation was produced, new standards, for example the General International Standard Archival Description ISAD (G), were incorporated, new processes were devised and training packages were produced.

The transition from a paper based catalogue to a joined up archival management infrastructure has realised a number of core benefits aside from the principle objectives; data security being the most significant. Perversely, at the same time that PRONI was looking at the whole area of data security, Alastair Darling was announcing that HM Revenue and Customs had lost two password protected discs relating to child benefit payments. The new management system enables the system manager to assign permissions to individuals per function. Depending on the level of permissions granted, different users are able to edit catalogue entries, quality assure entries, access restricted descriptions or amend the location index. The eCatalogue is also PRONI’s sole archive management tool, and this also resolves a historic problem with versioning control. Previously, there had been issues with multiple versions being created and edited on word processed documents, but not necessarily saved as a master copy.

PRONI visitors have already been making use of the new on-site system since it went live in the PRONI Search Room on 10 November 2008. Post evaluation feedback has been encouraging to date, and favourable comments have been received from users, journalists and family historians. However, ascertaining customer satisfaction levels of online applications is not as straightforward as with onsite applications. This is further complicated because identifying who comprises an online audience is difficult to gauge. One indicator not previously considered was online forum communities such as the genealogical blogs and, message boards. Within hours of the project going online, this community was already discussing the catalogue. These comments reflect less sanitised answers than would be recorded in a traditional questionnaire, and contained observations with respect to the content, navigation, performance and pros and cons of the application.

The eCatalogue complements PRONI’s existing on-line databases and records- Ulster Covenant, Freeholders Records, and Wills Index. PRONI plans to build on the launch of the eCatalogue by adding new material to its web site in 2009/10, including more catalogue entries, the pre-1900 Street Directories and an index to pre-1858 wills. The PRONI web site received 1.2m visits in 2007/08. PRONI expects this number to grow as more material is provided on-line. Every step forward however comes with a cost and the price is greater user expectation. As more and more resources become available online, the pressure will continue to mount for PRONI and its sister institutions to continue to enhance web service delivery.

Stephen Scarth
eCATNI Project System Manager