Listening to the Past, Speaking to the Future

Archive Networking Achievements to Dateare published as local CD-ROMs and on the internet.Commanet is a charity that promotes and supportscommunity archives through advice and training, sellsthe comma software, promotes community archiveson its website and co-ordinates projects across the UKand worldwide.www.commanet.org.ukCulture OnlineCulture Online is an initiative to increase access to, andparticipation in, arts and culture. It brings together culturalorganisations with cutting-edge technical providers tocreate projects that will delight adults and children of allages and backgrounds. Examples of Culture Onlineprojects involving archival resource include Stagework,which brings together information about UK performingarts collections and institutions and Headline History,a series of virtual newspapers from specific periods inhistory, from the Roman Gazette to the Victorian Times,to match areas of the National Curriculum.www.cultureonline.gov.ukeCATNIThe Public Record Office of Northern Ireland ElectronicCatalogue for Northern Ireland Project, funded from theService Modernisation budget of the Northern IrelandExecutive Programme Fund. The project aims to create acomprehensive and accurate set of electronic informationavailable to the public, on-site and via the Internet.Enrich UKThe gateway to a lottery-funded collection of 150 sitessupported by the New Opportunities Fund. The collectionranges across culture, history, social and economicdevelopment, science and art as well as offering regionaland national ‘sense of place’ websites from England,Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.www.enrichuk.netHEIRNETThe Historic environment Information Resources networkwas formed by a group of organisations with an interest ininformation relating to archaeology and the historicenvironment. HEIRNET enables access to HistoricEnvironment Information Resources for conservation,research, learning and general interest.www.britarch.ac.uk/HEIRNET/index.htmlLearning CurveThe National Archives’ Learning Curve is an onlineteaching resource, structured to tie in with the HistoryNational Curriculum from Key Stages 2 to 5. The LearningCurve contains a varied range of original sources includingdocuments, photographs, and film and sound recordings.www.learningcurve.pro.gov.ukLinking ArmsThe pan-archives Linking Arms Initiative (co-ordinatedby The National Archives and the National Council onArchives) has three components: technical, to enableinteroperability between all strands of the UK on-linearchives and websites established by community groups;community based, developing links with communitygroups of all kinds, and content based as indicated by userand impact studies. Linking Arms will bring togetherofficial and unofficial archives, private and communityarchives, including for example videos, digital and soundrecording and film footage. It will also invite people tocontribute their own history – or that of their family orcommunity – to that ever-growing documentary heritageof our lives and to the ever-evolving national archive.Additionally, access to digitized documents will enablepeople to search, find and keep documents of theirown heritage.NDADThe National Digital archive of Datasets is part ofThe National Archives and is based at the University ofLondon Computing Centre. It preserves and providesonline access to archived digital data and documents fromUK central government departments.www.ndad.ulcc.ac.ukNRAThe National Register of Archives. These electronicindexes, maintained by The National Archives, givesummary descriptions of the major archives in the UK andelsewhere known to be of importance to British history(excluding records of government).www.hmc.gov.uk/nra77