We would like your ideas for improving Your Archives. Please leave your suggestions and comments on the Next steps page

From Your Archives

On this News page we will promote:

• changes to the use and functionality of 'Your Archives',
• significant new content
• interesting facts and figures
• 'Your Archives' in the physical world - such as published articles and talks
• external resources which could enhance 'Your Archives'

Contents 1 20 November 2009 2 5 November 2009 3 2 September 2009 4 27 July 2009 5 17 July 2009 6 1 May 2009 7 20 March 2009

20 November 2009

The last of the paper street indexes to the 1871 census uploaded today. 1164 pages have been uploaded for 138 registration districts. The street indexes were previously only available on paper in The National Archives' reading rooms - there are not indexes for all registration districts as they had only been created to help researchers find addresses in districts with over 40,000 people. See the project page for more information and how you can contribute.

5 November 2009

The Your Archives' Twitter feed has gone live today. You can follow us @YourArchives. We'll be tweeting featured articles and articles relevant to specific dates (such as Guy Fawkes and the Armistice), projects we are involved in, and new updates and functionality. Please feel free to follow us!

2 September 2009

Your Archives went live in April 2007 and has over 10,500 pages and we are now looking at the next two years for taking Your Archives forward. We would like to hear your views on how to develop Your Archives to meet your ongoing needs as users and contributors. Please add any comments to the project page at Your Archives:Next steps.

We are analysing the results of the recent survey and will post the findings and add any comments for developing the service on the Next steps page.

27 July 2009

We would very much like to hear your opinions on the Your Archives survey in order to make improvements to the service. Whether you are new to the service or a regular user, we would like to hear your thoughts. Please take five minutes to get your views across by filling in our online survey (now closed 16 August 2009).

17 July 2009

New articles on Your Archives are included in The National Archives Twitterfeed.

1 May 2009

Announcing the Historical Streets Project.

Over 1200 new pages of Street indexes to 1841 and 1851 census returns have been loaded onto Your Archives. This is the first phase of a project to upload about 300 binders of paper finding aids to streets in the censuses of England and Wales, between 1841 and 1891. Although all of the censuses to England and Wales have been digitised and indexed not all of them can be searched by address. These street indexes also contain information on school, public houses, cottages and othe properties. These indexes give users full document references to enable them to go to the online censuses to see who was living on the street or in the property at the time of the census.

By loading these indexes onto Your Archives it is hoped that users will share their knowledge of the history of places and properties. See Your Archives:Historical Streets Project for more information about the project and how you can contribute.

20 March 2009

Two new namespaces have been added to Your Archives: Place: and Place talk:.

These namespaces have been added to help better structure Your Archives to improve searching (see Help:Searching for advice), and future reuse of data.

These namespaces are used for articles which relate to the history of properties and locations. For example, houses, parishes, villages, streets, manors, counties, countries, and businesses and institutions etc (where they contain place information). See Help:How to title articles on places for guidance.

The standard search only searches in the (main) namespace and users will need to check the Place check box on the search page. Registered users can change their user preferences to search this namespace, and other namespaces. See Help:Preferences for advice.