Coverage
Types of Repository
- Higher Education archives and special collections
- Specialist archives such as theatre, dance, design, industry and medicine
- Business archives such as banking and financial archives
- Museum archives such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, Science Museum and National Railway Museum
- Gallery archives such as the Tate Gallery, Birmingham Art Gallery and Kettle's Yard Gallery
- Institutes such as the Henry Moore Institute, Courtauld Institute and Scott Polar Research Institute
- Colleges such as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and Royal College of Surgeons
- Some local authority archives such as West Yorkshire and West Sussex Archives
Geographical coverage
- England
- Scotland
- Wales
- Northern Ireland
- The Isle of Man
Who can be on the Archives Hub?
Any UK archive that holds archive collections, describes them to archival and Hub standards, and makes them available to researchers can be part of the Archives Hub.
Types of Materials Described
The Archives Hub does not hold any archives, but descriptions may link to digital surrogates or born-digital materials.
The descriptions may be for paper-based or digital archives. Typically one collection may be partly digitised, so the Hub may provide links to digital content for selected items within any one archive.
Find out more about the materials described on the Hub.
Nature of the Descriptions
Contributors may choose to provide summary descriptions, descriptions of series within a collection, or descriptions that cover every item within a collection. Therefore, the level of detail provided is not dependent on the size or type of archive, though typically the more highly used collections are described in more detail.
The descriptions that we have are those that institutions choose to submit to the Archives Hub. Institutions may choose to submit descriptions with links to digital content, with embedded images, or with links to their own more detailed catalogues.
Descriptions may become out of date if Archives Hub contributors do not provide us with updates. However, we do get large numbers of revisions as well as new descriptions, so currency overall is good.