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| The National Archives - Discovery Catalogue - HOMEPAGE |
The browse catalogue is organised by Government Department Reference, so for example, WO stands for records created or inherited by the War Office, Armed Forces, Judge Advocate General and related bodies; ADM stands for records from the Admirality, Naval Forces, Royal Marines, Coastguard and related bodies...etc
So, in this example we're going to look for a document in the War Office department, so I will click the W from the homepage...
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| The National Archives - Discovery Catalogue - Browsing the catalogue by Government Department |
...it then lists all the W government departments starting with W, you can scroll down the centre of the page to see more, or use the previous 30, next 30 buttons at the top of the page.
You also have the choice with the tabs at the top to browse by hierarchy or reference or click the details tab to see a more detailed description about what records are included in each collection.
I click on the WO collection tab and it opens up more information about the collection...
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| The National Archives - Discovery Catalogue - Browsing the War Office department |
...and it lists all the documents which the War Office collection comprises of on the right, where as on the left of the screen it shows all the divisions of documents within this collection.
If you click the Browse by reference tab at the top of the page, you can browse instead by the reference numbers given to each section of records within this department.
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| The National Archives - Discovery Catalogue - Browsing by Reference |
I would like to find out more about the Records of the Royal Chelsea Hospital, so as there are 2 references for the Royal Chelsea Hospital I am going to go back to browsing by hierarchy and click on Division 10.
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| The National Archives - Discovery Catalogue - Division 10 of the War Office |
This opens up and tells me more details about this Division of the War Office collection and all the references to the Royal Chelsea Hospitals on the left and where you might exactly find pensions records or admission or soldier's service documents, etc.
If at this stage you click the details tab it brings up a very detailed explanation of this Division of the collection.
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| The National Archives - Discovery Catalogue - Details of Division 10 of the War Office department records |
From either of the last 2 pages above you need to choose which WO xx reference you require and it brings you to a page very similar to the search results page, with a list of records included in that collection. For the purpose of this I have clicked WO 245...
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| The National Archives - Discovery Catalogue - Browsing Division 10 records |
...now you can use this page as you might when you were searching for a document, by refining by date and subject to eventually find something you're looking for.
Click on the record and you see more details about the document listed along with how to order the document, as explained on the previous blog posts.
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| The National Archives - Discovery Catalogue - A document |
REMEMBER:
To tag any documents so as to make them easier to find later for your benefit or someone else's.
Copyright © 2013 Ruth Hogan
