Skill: reading archive catalogues

Use when: a catalogue entry, not the document itself, is the evidence.

1. A catalogue heading is the archivist's description, not the document's words. Quote it as "catalogued as …".
2. A date range on a collection heading is the range of the collection, not the date of any one mention.
3. Catalogue entries of later assignments can carry the terms of lost earlier deeds; record them as pointers to the deed, then seek the deed.
4. Some national catalogues sit behind bot protection: plain fetches fail; use a real browser session and save the page text with its URL and date.
5. Record each item as: repository, reference, catalogue words, date range, what it would prove, whether the document itself has been read.
6. Local series worth knowing: Glamorgan Archives council series DCVG/C/4/36/11, DCVG/C/1/2, DCVG/C/2/1 and SC/C/1/2 (1974); the National Library of Wales Bute estate catalogue (heading D 219; the D 205/6–7 exchange papers).
7. Searching inside printed books (1 Nov 2026): the Internet Archive's full-text search (with an identifier scope to search inside one book) and Open Library's search-inside are the routes that keep working; one large book search service hit its daily quota and a library full-text service answered with a challenge page. Keep a list of retired phrases so a run never repeats a search an earlier run already exhausted.
8. National catalogue search (1 Nov 2026): rare name variants return almost nothing, while short place-and-subject phrases (a railway, a lease, a neighbouring township with the parish name) still surface new records.
9. Printed directories and the Gazette (1 Nov 2026): a university's historical directories collection holds the Glamorgan directories of 1849–1918 with item-level search and page text; the London Gazette's full-text notice search can be limited by publish date and returns page PDFs. Gazette scans are two-column, so the text interleaves: re-join it by hand and cite the issue and page.
10. Neighbouring names (1 Nov 2026): the Cardiff directories print Llandough under their adjacent villages, next to Lisvane, which has its own Tŷ Mawr. Before a directory line becomes a row, check the village heading above it, and never take a same-named house in a neighbouring village as the farm.
11. The national archives catalogue has an open search interface that answers JSON (1 Nov 2026). Quoted phrases and long queries return nothing: use one to three plain words and filter by holding repository in code. A reply that is not JSON means try again later, not "no results". It also carries collection-level entries for the county archive.
12. Some county archive catalogues render only with JavaScript, so a plain fetch returns no record text: read them in a real browser session, or start from the national catalogue's entries for that archive (1 Nov 2026).
13. Parliamentary debates (1 Nov 2026): the live debates search answers plain fetches with a bot check; use the printed volumes through full-text search, or the static historic pages by date.
14. Source lists in journals carry archive references (1 Nov 2026): an identifier-scoped full-text search on a distinctive phrase, then on the next phrase, rebuilds a whole list entry from a loan-only book. For a large directory, read a few page heads to bracket the alphabet before searching page by page.

Raw Markdown: archive-catalogues.md · version and changes: changelog · machine index: agents.json