Access to Records Project

This project is supported by Jersey Community Foundation with funds from the Channel Islands Lottery.

Online access to heritage and research resources is already a well-established tool for delivering on the Société’s aims of supporting study and disseminating knowledge. It is a vital component in ensuring access is available to all, reducing many social, economic and physical barriers to access. The Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive (SJPA) has embarked on an ambitious project to develop its online services. The project aligns the Government of Jersey Heritage Strategy, in improving access to records, and the Société is thankful to the Jersey Community Foundation for funding the first year of this project.

Threshing with Don Pallot’s Steam engine Merlin, Oaklands, September 1991. Maurice Richardson

Description and arrangement are the fundamental tools of archival representation. They outline the content, context and structure of collections. Historically the SJPA has focused on item-level descriptions. This provides direct access to a wealth of photographic content, though it has been at the expense of context and a broader understanding of the SJPA holdings.

This project seeks to readdress the imbalance in cataloguing strategy and unlock value for users. The project will improve users’ understanding of catalogued items and provide access points to uncatalogued items.

The Société employed Orlando Echeverri to lead the project. He will be producing detailed collection (top) level descriptions for 20 high-priority collections and more simple collection-level descriptions relating to all accessions received by the SJPA between 1996-2020. Alongside these Orlando will be producing a blog outlining recent work, user guides and videos to help users navigate the online catalogue, and catalogue summaries that will help users to understand the types of collections the SJPA holds.

To stay up to date with the project sign up to the Société Newsletter info@societe.je or check back to this page which will have monthly updates.