Why doesn the Hub take in descriptions from all UK archives?
The remit of the Archives Hub is to make available descriptions of archives that are deemed to be of value to the UK education and research communities. and it is funded specifically for this purpose. Whilst it may include some additional material, from institutions or bodies affiliated to universities and colleges, it does not include, for example, the archives of local record offices and businesses. The archive community is committed to enabling users to cross-search gateways such as the Archives Hub, A2A and the Scottish and Welsh archive networks, but there are considerable technical and organisational barriers that need to be addressed for this to become a reality. You can find out more about the way technology is being used to expand access to archive resources in the article ‘Serving the invisible researcher: meeting the needs of online users’ (A. Hill, 2004) [PDF file, requires Adobe Acrobat].
