Redesigning finding aids at the Public Record Office Available to Purchase

Until March 1998 the most “high‐tech” access to a significant Public Record Office (PRO) finding aid was via irregularly produced microfiches. By January 2001 the full catalogue of the PRO’s holdings (conservatively estimated at 7 million records) will be available via the World Wide Web. This article describes the steps taken to achieve this transformation. Use made of various standards such as the International Standard Archival Description (ISAD(G)), Encoded Archival Description (EAD) and the Standard Generalised Markup Language (SGML) is described.