Impact

Contributor Comments

"Big shout to @archiveshub - last week we had onsite researchers in #Cardiff from Paris and Hong Kong as a direct result of sharing our content descriptions on the Hub. All content exposed to Google. Big shout to the global reach of @archiveshub" [HE archive, via Twitter]

"We use the Archives Hub as our only online searchable catalogue for our collections. Without it we could only offer PDF listings on our website, which would drastically diminish resource discovery" [HE archive]

"The Archives Hub has enabled the Library to put descriptions of its archive collections online for the first time ever. This is a hugely important step." [Specialist archive]

"Putting our collection descriptions on the Hub has definitely increased use of the archives we hold." [HE archive]

"Before using the Hub our enquiries were mostly associated with [those] that knew about the archive...[Now] we have been contacted by a different audience, undergraduates and researchers unaware of our holdings." [Research institute]

Taken from theArchives Hub Impact Survey 2014 (Word doc)

We reach a wide national and international audience

The total page views per month are consistently above 500,000*

*with identified bots removed. With bots included the figure is over 5 million - this is often genuine machine access, as opposed to human access, but it increases the overall statistics hugely, so we try to remove bots from the stats as we identify them.

We work to open up descriptions to different channels through our standardisation and normalisation processes, allowing the richness of UK collections to be signposted as widely as possible.

We are exposed to Google and other search engines, and much of the use of the Hub comes via these routes.

We run features to showcase content

We have been running monthly features for many years now, on a diverse range of subjects. Features provide a means to showcase archives, and they rank well in Google searches.

Our Features receive well over 100,000 views annually.

We disseminate our knowledge and experience through our Blog

We aim to make our blog a useful source of professional information and it is where we publish our monthly features. We receive over 100,000 views of the blog per year.

We promote the service through Twitter

We have over 17,000 followers (Nov 2017) on Twitter. We aim to tweet at least once every day, and often respond to tweets from our followers, as we believe it is important to engage in dialogue.

We often provide stories for daily digest newsletters and believe that our Twitter presence helps to make us a part of the education, archives and cultural heritage communities.

We have a Facebook Page

Follow us on Facebook where we provide news and details of events. We would be very grateful if you would 'like' our page.

We are on the European scene!

We contribute our descriptions to the Archives Portal Europe.

We increase the profile of the Hub through innovative projects

We are proud of our innovative work, and we believe that this is an essential part of keeping the Hub as a vibrant, current service that meets the needs of users.

We were joint partners in an AHRC funded project, Exploring British Design.

We have been involved in a Linked Data project, to explore the potential of this relatively new and exciting way to model and present data.