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Country Manager manual

Managing a country's representation

Archives Portal Europe publishes information on the archival material offered by its content providers via the back-end of the portal, called: the dashboard. Each content provider, i.e. content providing institution, gets an account for the dashboard to upload, process and publish its content itself. Per country, a so-called Country Manager is responsible for registering and administering these individual content provider - or Institution Manager - accounts (see more in this overview of the current Country Managers). This manual describes and explains the different tasks to be performed by the Country Manager (CM) and how the specific functionalities of the dashboard support her/him/them in this.

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Country Manager tasks

Each country represented within the Archives Portal Europe's network is to nominate a Country Manager. It is important to know that the Country Manager is a role, not a person, i.e. the tasks of a Country Manager can also be shared between two or more people if suitable. This is to be considered carefully especially as the tasks of a Country Manager are wide-ranging and encompass technical aspects as well as research or Public Relations tasks. In general, though, the Country Manager is preferably someone already involved in (inter)national activities of her/his/their institution, as she/he/they will be (a) key person(s) for Archives Portal Europe activities in each country and the main contact point for the APEF staff, the APEF Governing Board and the APEF Assembly of Associates. Often, the Country Manager would be from the national archives or archives administration of her/his/their country respectively designated by these institutions, possibly involved in a national archives portal if existing and possibly engaged in branch organisations in her/his/their country. She/he/they is/are responsible for:

providing information on the archival landscape of the country (creating and maintaining),
assisting in gathering information on the archival institutions,
providing a first level of information for the content providers,
gathering demands and needs of the institutions, and maybe, through these, the ones of end-users,
assisting in the implementation of the international archival standards the portal runs on, by either providing the Archives Portal Europe's technical team more information on an already existing implementation in her/his/their country or by learning from the Archives Portal Europe implementations and trying to spread the word about it in her/his/their own institution/country,
possibly acting as a mediator between the Archives Portal Europe technical team and existing national archival portals or national Europeana aggregators facilitating a specific archives’ branch,
possibly acting as a mediator between companies that develop/maintain software used by archival institutions, helping both (supplier and customer) in standardising their formats towards the Archives Portal Europe standards, and in coming up with exports or conversions compliant with the Archives Portal Europe standards,
acting as contact person for any PR activities in her/his/their country (e.g. regarding translating general PR texts or by organising national Archives Portal Europe related workshops and events),
acting as contact person for monitoring the translations for the front-end and back-end texts of the Archives Portal Europe,
acting as first "casual" tester of (new) Archives Portal Europe functionality and reporting problems in order to include an "outsider's view" on the portal's developments,
facilitating general surveys within her/his/their country to monitor the progress of the involvement in the Archives Portal Europe of the national archival community.

Defining the role of the Country Manager from a technical point of view, she/he/they will maintain the Country Manager account in the dashboard of Archives Portal Europe. This allows her/him/them to configure and maintain the archival landscape of her/his/their country and to provide Institutions Manager accounts to other content providers from her/his/their country. The Country Manager can also be the Institution Manager of her/his/their own institution, therefore being responsible for uploading, processing and publishing its content. To be able to live up to this role, the Country Manager will be kept informed on all developments by Archives Portal Europe's technical team, trained if/when necessary by giving specific actions or workshops and provided with "information packages", that they can use within the archival community of their country. The Country Managers will be granted their own community platform within the Archives Portal Europe Foundation's communication activities and events especially dedicated to the Country Managers’ needs will be organised on a regular basis (e.g. workshops, meetings, etc.).

Administrative organisation of the dashboard

A system administrator, a member of the Archives Portal Europe's technical team, creates the Country Manager account within the dashboard when asked to do so by a country and manages the Country Manager accounts alongside other general tasks.

One Country Manager per country, often - but not necessarily - allocated by the national archives, the national archives administration, or a national archives portal, has specific access and rights in the dashboard, allowing her/him/them to:

define the archival landscape of his country
create new institutions in the archival landscape
give accounts to the Institution Managers
monitor his country (statistics etc.)
take the lead on an institution in case of problem

The Institution Manager (one per institution) has specific access to the dashboard, allowing her/him/them to upload and manage the data of her/his/their institution. An Institution Manager can be in charge of several institutions.

Technical organisation of the dashboard

The Archives Portal Europe offers two environments to the content providers: the Production and the Content Checker. Each environment consists of a front-end (the portal) and a back-end (the dashboard). They are strictly independent from each other.

The Production server dashboard

The Production server dashboard https://www.archivesportaleurope.net/Dashboard is the web environment where you upload your data for the online public production version, available for the public and the search engines. All data that is uploaded and processed here is available via the official Production portal.

The Content Checker server dashboard

The Content Checker server dashboard https://contentchecker.archivesportaleurope.net/Dashboard is an almost exact duplicate of the production one, meant as a simulation environment for testing purposes only. All data that is uploaded and processed here is available via its front-end https://contentchecker.archivesportaleurope.net. This simulation or demo environment is emptied regularly. The date of this so called "maintenance day" is published on the homepage of the front-end in advance.

This Content Checker or demo environment allows you to experiment with the portal, to test the workflow of data upload and processing, so to check how your data will look like on the portal before publishing them "for real" in the Production environment. Needless to say that it is highly recommended to use the Content Checker dashboard before using the Production dashboard.

Please note that, as Country Manager, you can grant an access to any partner you wish to. The Content Checker is not "reserved" for the institutions that have signed the Metadata Exchange Agreement.

Your account

The general Archives Portal Europe's system administrator is responsible for assigning Country Manager accounts.

Registration and log in

Providing dashboard accounts is done via email registration. Once appointed for the role of Country Manager and for being responsible for the dashboard-related tasks of a Country Manager, you will receive an email containing your username (which is your email address), a password, a secret question and answer and a link to directly access the dashboard. Please note, that you will get access to the Content Checker and to the Production environments through two different messages. The type of environment, i.e. Content Checker or Production, is always mentioned in the top right of the screen.

User account customisation

Once logged in, you can change your details via the option "Edit user information" in the top right of the screen. This includes changes to your name, secret question and answer and password (strongly recommended) and to your email address. If you forget your password, you can get a new one by clicking on the link mentioned in the login page and from then follow the instructions that you will receive via email. You can also change the language of the interface by using the dropdown list on the top right of the screen.

Managing the archival landscape

The archival landscape comprises, for each country, the different archival institutions. It is the entry point to the 3-layer structure - country, institution, archival content - of the portal. It is the first level of this hierarchical structure and provides the basis e.g. for the layout and structure of the "Find an institution" page.

Each Country Manager is responsible for the archival landscape of her/his/their country (creating the countries is done by the general system administrator). A Country Manager can organise her/his/their national part of the archival landscape as she/he/they see(s) fit, since geographical, thematic, administrative and other classifications of archival institutions are different in each country.

Decisions around the archival landscape will hence include the aspect whether grouping will be used and which categories of groups will make the most sense within the context of your country. It may be necessary or useful to discuss it with the institutions of your country to agree on the definitive structure. It is recommended to have your structure in mind before beginning the actual creation of it in the dashboard, as it should not be changed too often afterwards because this has consequences on the data indexing.

Editing the archival landscape

The section "Edit archival landscape" within the dashboard includes a specific web form that allows Country Managers to create and manage a structure within their (national) part of the overall archival landscape used in the portal. The archival landscape can be hierarchically organised, e.g. by grouping certain types of archival institutions together or by grouping institutions by their geographic location, and it can contain as many levels as necessary.

Creating a group

If you have decided to use grouping for your part of the archival landscape (which is not a requirement, but can be useful depending on the complexity of archival administration in your country), you can create a new group as follows:

select the group or sub-group it belongs to (when creating the first group, select the country itself)
name: give the group a name (e.g. "Regional archives")
select an element type: choose "group" in the drop-down list
select a language in the drop-down list (i.e. the language in which you have provided the group's name)
use the button "Show alternative names" to add the name of the group in (an) additional language(s) if wanted
click on the Add to the list button
click on the Save button

Check the group's place in the tree and modify it if needed (see more on modifying the structure of your archival landscape below).

If you have decided to provide the name of a group in more than one language, this will be picked up by the portal depending on the language chosen by the user for the general user interface (GUI). E.g. if you have provided the name in Spanish and English, the Spanish name will show, when the language for the GUI is Spanish, while the English name will show when the language for the GUI is English or any of the other languages supported in the portal.

Creating an institution

Create an institution follows the same steps as described above for creating a group with the only difference being that you will need to make sure to select the element type “archival institution” in this case. You can either add an institution within a group or sub-group that you created in a previous step or directly within the country, e.g. when you have decided not to use groupings in your archival landscape.

Modifying the structure

You can modify the structure of your archival landscape by moving the groups and institutions around. In order to do so, you will first have to select the group or institution you would like to apply changes to. Once selected:

the buttons Move the selected element up the list and Move the selected element down the list allow you to move a group or an institution from one place to another within its current context (i.e. within the group it belongs to); this is convenient as the last created group or institution is always placed at the end of the list within its group, so possibly not in the right place, e.g. in case you have ordered the list of archival institutions alphabetically by institution name; please note that moving an element up or down the list is done step by step, i.e. depending on the length of the list, you will have to repeat this move several times; please also note that, in case you selected the last element in the list, the button Move the selected element down the list is not available, and when you have selected the first element in the list, the button Move the selected element up the list is neither

with the button Delete the selected element(s) you can delete a group or institution; note: you can only delete an institution in case it does not have content available in the portal anymore; if you need to delete an institution that has content available in the portal, the button Delete the selected element(s) will not be available for it and you will have to delete all its content first; similarly, you won't be able to delete a group, if at least one of the institutions within this group still has content available in the portal
the button Change group allows you to move a group or an institution from one group to another, e.g. from the country to a newly created group, if you only start introducing groups at a later point; you can choose from all available groups via the drop-down list at the bottom; note: you can only move an institution in case it does not have content published in the portal; if you need to move an institution that has content published in the portal, the button Change group will not be available for it and you will have to unpublish all its content first; after having moved the institution, you will then have to republish its content again; similarly, you won't be able to move a group, if at least one of the institutions within this group has content published in the portal
always click the Save button to approve the changes, otherwise data will be lost

Preview, download and upload

Previewing the archival landscape

The function Preview archival landscape displays the archival landscape as it will appear in the portal, so including the EAG descriptions of the constituent institutions once these exist.

Downloading and uploading the archival landscape

Country Managers can download their (national) part of the overall archival landscape as an EAD XML file, edit it locally and upload it again (via HTTP upload). This download and upload functionality saves you time for instance when transferring an archival landscape structure from the Content Checker environment to the Production environment and can also be useful when working with bigger archival landscapes (several hundreds or 1,000+ institutions) if you want to modify the structure.

Change identifiers

This option allows Country Managers to change the identifiers of groups and/or institutions of their parts of the archival landscape.

When an archival landscape is created online, the dashboard automatically assigns local identifiers to all groups, subgroups and institutions. In case the archival landscape EAD XML file has been downloaded, edited any further locally and uploaded again to the dashboard, it is recommended to pay special attention to these identifiers. In general, it is possible to change the automatically-created identifiers, but if some content of the corresponding country is already indexed, such a change will require a re-indexation of that content, since the local identifiers are included in the indexed information per descriptive unit. The dashboard will always notify the Country Manager about this before the change of identifiers is processed.

Manage topic mappings

The option Manage topic mappings offers a Country Manager the same functionality to administer topics as an Institution Manager (see the Institution Manager manual for more details). The only difference between this functionality for a Country Manager and the one for an Institution Manager is the fact that, when creating a topic mapping, a Country Manager can choose from connecting any source guide from any institution within her/his/their part of the archival landscape, whereas an Institution Manager can only select a source guide made available within the institution she/he/they is/are creating the topic mapping for. Furthermore will a topic mapping towards existing keywords in the metadata as created by a Country Manager apply to any archival descriptions that include those keywords, independent of the institution that provides these archival descriptions.

Manage content

The option Manage content offers a Country Manager the same functionality to administer the content for one or more institutions as an Institution Manager. This might be used especially at the start, i.e. when no Institution Manager has been assigned yet, or in the case that the Country Manager represents a national archival portal via which all institutions of her/his/their country provide their content to Archives Portal Europe. There also might be cases where there is a mix of institutions being managed by their own Institution Manager and institutions managed by the Country Manager.

You can choose the institutions you manage as a Country Manager via the drop-down list showing when you click "Manage content". Any institution that has an Institution Manager assigned will disappear from this drop-down list and show instead under "Manage institution managers" (see below).

Note: even when the Country Manager manages the content of one or more institutions, it might be useful to set a feedback email address within each of the institutions' accounts (see the Institution Manager manual for details). This way, feedback that relates to the content of a specific institution, e.g. user questions about the materials, about obtaining copies, or about visiting the institution, will end up with the institution directly rather than with the Country Manager.

Manage institution managers

The Manage institution managers section enables the Country Manager to create, delete, disable and change to the Institution Managers' accounts. By default, a newly created institution is managed by the Country Manager, until the Institution Manager's account is created. All these actions are performed from a table listing the institutions previously created within the archival landscape. Please note that the institutions are ordered alphabetically by their name, which might not always be the order in which they have been set in the archival landscape.

The institutions table

In this table, you will see all institutions listed that the Country Manager has set up in the archival landscape. For those institutions that do not have an Institution Manager assigned yet, the only actions available will be to Create institution manager and Enable METS.

For institutions that already have an Institution Manager assigned, the actions available to the Country Manager are: Disable, Delete, and Change to this account next to the "Enable METS" option.

The option to Enable METS can be used if an institution wants to make use of the Archives Portal Europe's EAD+METS functionality, i.e. wants to give access to its digital objects via (external) links to METS XML files in its EAD XML files rather than via (internal) links using the EAD XML element <dao/>. If this is enabled, the conversion to apeEAD will pick up on the METS XML files linked in the metadata provided and will extract the links to the digital objects from there in order to then include those links into the apeEAD XML file use within the portal.

Create institution manager

The button Create institution manager leads you to a form where you have to provide the name and email address of the future Institution Manager. An email will then be sent to the holder of this email address automatically, with you as the Country Manager in copy. The Institution Manager can access her/his/their account in the dashboard by following the instructions given in the email message.

Note that one person can manage several institutions. In such a case, you have to choose her/his/their name in the drop-down list next to "Associate to existing partner". An Institution Manager managing content on behalf of more than one institution is asked to select the institution she/he/they want(s) to work for from the drop-down list in the "Manage content" section, after having logged into the dashboard.

Delete and disable an account

A Country Manager can delete an Institution Manager account by clicking on the Delete button. The Institution Manager will be notified via an email that her/his/their account has been deleted. A Country Manager can also disable an Institution Manager account by clicking on the Disable button. This functionality is useful when an Institution Manager forgets to disconnect and the Country Manager needs to either access her/his/their account, or activate some maintenance process. A disabled account can easily be re-activated again later on by clicking on the Enable button.

Change to accounts

A Country Manager can temporarily switch to any of the Institution Manager accounts if needed. This can be handy to help a new partner by having a look at something where she/he/they got stuck, or to proceed to some specific tasks.

Monitor your country

As Country Manager, you have specific access to certain data and information, enabling you to monitor what happens for your country within the portal. The published data has to be maintained and properly managed to enable the users of Archives Portal Europe to find the most up-to-date information at any time. The following principles should be noted:

keep the institutions' contact information (i.e. the EAG document) up-to-date (or make sure this is done by the Institution Managers accordingly). This allows the Archives Portal Europe technical team to manage the portal and get in contact with the institutions directly if necessary; the same applies to any specific feedback email addresses that might have been set in the institutions' accounts, which should be up-to-date, so that users of Archives Portal Europe can contact content providers for more information,
if any change happens in source data and files such as EAD XML or EAC-CPF XML files, it is important to upload the latest version of those files as soon as possible; especially if there is a change of identifiers (URL, reference number etc); new data should be updated as soon as possible, this will prevent any missing information and broken links,
if data is delivered to Europeana and has been updated in Archives Portal Europe afterwards, it is necessary to also update the Europeana delivery; the dashboard has to be used to once again to convert updated data into EDM and re-deliver it, because the data in Europeana will not be updated automatically (see our Standards section for more details on the EDM conversion),
if it is needed to delete data from Archives Portal Europe and/or Europeana, it has to be done using the dashboard; deactivation of data in Archives Portal Europe and in Europeana needs to be executed separately,
if the content provider knows the object type of digital objects (<dao>), please try to assign them for all the uploaded files (or make sure this is done by the Institution Managers accordingly); this gives the user of the portal - and of Europeana, if the data is shared there too - useful information about the content of the archives; it may take time to do it, because this is usually new information not originally included in the archival descriptions, but batch processing in the dashboard will help the content providers to do the job,
if the content provider would like to include the links to extra information such as the presentation of a complete (or part of a) finding aid on their own website (the link to "View in original presentation"), the hyperlinks can be included in the attribute @url accompanying the element <eadid> (for the link to the complete finding aid) respectively in the attribute @xlink:href of the element <unitid type="call number"><extptr> (for the link to one specific component of the finding aid).

Country statistics

Finally: a Country Manager always has all relevant statistics about the institutions and the content of her/his/their country at her/his/their disposal via the dashboard option Download institution statistics: when clicking on that dashboard link, all relevant information will be gathered in 'real time' and offered for download in an Open Office file. This will include all institutions registered in the dashboard for this specific country at the time of asking for the institution statistics and it will detail for each institution:

whether the institution has an EAG file published with its contact details and information about its services
whether the institution has any EAD files (finding aids, holdings guides, or source guides) published and how many
- how many descriptive units are included in these published EAD files
- how many digital object links are included in these published EAD files
whether the institution has any EAC-CPF files published and how many
whether the institution has any data shared with Europeana
- how many cultural heritage objects have been shared

Note: while this is not a functionality of the dashboard, the APEF team can also provide you with statistics regarding the use of content from your country or the amount of users from your country and how and from where they access Archives Portal Europe. These statistics will only be created upon request, so if this is of interest for you, please feel free to contact us via email.

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Archives Portal Europe help guide

Please select amongst the relevant tips we can help with. If you still have questions, please do not hesitate to contact us, and we will be in touch as soon as possible.

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Introduction

What is Archives Portal Europe? How can I help?

Starting your search here will include all content available in Archives Portal Europe. Simply enter your keyword(s) and hit the search button. Wrap fixed expressions in quotation marks, e.g. “French Revolution”. Check the box to “Search each term separately” in case you are looking for documents containing at least one word, but not necessarily all keywords; this will also allow you to search for the same term in multiple languages at the same time (e.g. “French Revolution” “Révolution Française”). You can also use wildcards - find more about Research Tools here. If you would like to use more specific settings, try our Advanced search

The additional advanced search options give you the possibility to focus your search in:

archival documents (Search in archives),
names of person and organisations that created, worked with and maintained these documents (Search in names),
Institutions currently holding the documents (Search in institutions).

When searching with multiple terms at the same time, wrap fixed expressions in quotation marks (e.g. "French Revolution"), or check the box "Search each term separately" in case you are looking for either one term of the other. This will also allow you to search for the same term in multiple languages (e.g. "French Revolution" "Révolution française"). You can also choose one of the suggestions matching your search term once you start typing.

This will only show results that include documents that have been digitised and are available online

Use this option to search only one or more keywords, rather than all of them

Select where your search terms should appear specifically inside the archival description:

Title: search terms will appear in the title, or name, of the description
Content Summary: search terms will appear in the main description of the document or of the collection
Reference code: it is the identifier of the archival material as provided by the institution. Use this option if you know the exact reference code of the material you are looking for

You can filter results by selecting where your search terms appears specifically inside the archival description:

The name can be the full name of a person, family or organisation as well as only parts of it, e.g. only the last name.
The identifier is used internally by the institution or refers to (inter)national vocabularies such as the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF).
The place can be the place of birth (or foundation), the place of death (or closing), the place of work or any other place of importance.
The occupation is the profession or job of a person.
The mandate is a law, directive or charter that establishes and defines an organisation's powers, functions, responsibilities or sphere of activities.
The function is an activity, role, or purpose performed or manifested by a person, family or organisation.

You can filter results by selecting where your search terms appears specifically inside the description of the archive:

Name: search term appears in the name of the institution. It can be the full name of an archival institution or only parts of it.
Place: search term appears in the address or area of the institution. It can be the city or town, where the archival institution is located or any other place of importance (e.g. previous locations)

A finding aid is a structured description of archival materials per collection or fonds, up to item level.
A holdings guide is an overview of the collections and fonds of one archival institution.
A source guide is a topic-oriented overview of collections and fonds of one or several institutions.

You can filter by one or more entity types:

A person (e.g. John Locke, or Jean Jaques Rousseau);
A family (e.g. Bonaparte, or Helgason);
A corporate body, i.e. the name of an institution, organisation, or company (e.g. Ministerie van Justitie, or Electro Mecánica Antonio Armentano)

Please note that this filter will only include institutions, for which a type has been provided as part of their descriptions:

A business archive holds the records of (often) commercial organisations.
A church or religious archive holds the records of church parishes or religious organisations, e.g. birth or death registers.
A county or local authority archive holds the records of the county's administrative bodies.
A media archive holds audiovisual or sound records, e.g. a film archive or the archive of a broadcasting company.
A municipal archive holds the records of a town or city administration.
A national archive holds the records of a country's administrative bodies, i.e. from ministries and other public bodies, sometimes also private papers of former ministers, chancellors, or presidents.
A private person or family archive holds the records forming the legacy of a prominent person or family.
A regional archive holds the records of a region's administrative bodies.
A specialised governmental archive holds records of public bodies, often operating on a national level, that are not part of the national archives' holdings.
A specialised non-governmental archive or archive of another cultural heritage institution hold collections from various cultural heritage institutions, eg. museum archives, libraries archives, etc
A university archive or archive of another research organisation holds the records pertaining to the administration of the according educational or research body.
Political parties, popular/labour movements and other non-governmental organisations, associations, agencies and foundations hold the archival collections of these institutions, outside of governmental records and outside of business archives (e.g., NGOs)

Enter a start and/or end date in the format DD-MM-YYYY, i.e. 01-01-1900 for 1 January 1900. This will allow you to focus your search on a specific period of time. You can use the calendar function or type directly in the text field. The checkbox "Exact date search" concentrates the search on one specific date.

Check "View in context" to view the results in the hierarchical structure of archives.

Choose "List view" to view the results in a simple list, ordered according to relevance or date
Choose "Context view" to view the results in the hierarchical structure of the holding archives.

For more details see Research Tools

Please sign in to save your searches.

A holdings guide is an overview of the collections and fonds of one archival institution.

A finding aid is a structured description of archival materials per collection or fonds up to item level.

You can filter results by selecting one or more countries of interest. You can also combine this filter with other filters. Your filter selection will appear above. Click "Clear filters" to see all results matching your initial search request again.

You can filter results by one or more holding archival institutions. You can also combine this filter with other filters. Your filter selection will appear above. Click "Clear filters" to see all results matching your initial search request again.

You can select to view results from a specific Finding Aid, i.e., a structured description of archival materials per collection or fonds up to item level. You can also combine this filter with other filters. Your filter selection will appear above. Click "Clear filters" to see all results matching your initial search request again.

You can filter by type of descriptive document:

"Holdings Guide": an overview of the collections and fonds of one archival institution.
"Source guide": a topic-oriented overview of collections and fonds of one or several institutions. a description of the archival collections available. Similar to Holdings guides
"Finding aid" provides more detailed descriptions of the archival materials of specific collections or fonds

You can also combine this filter with other filters. Your filter selection will appear above. Click "Clear filters" to see all results matching your initial search request again.

You can filter results by selecting "Fonds description" for a general overview or "Other descriptions" for item level. You can also combine this filter with other filters. Your filter selection will appear above. Click "Clear filters" to see all results matching your initial search request again.

You can filter results by selecting only those containing digital objects, i.e. the link to the digitised version of the archival material you are looking for. You can also combine this filter with other filters. Your filter selection will appear above. Click "Clear filters" to see all results matching your initial search request again.

You can filter results by type of digital object you are interested in:

Text: most documental material, such as administrative records, letters, manuscripts etc.
Image: includes photographs, posters, maps.
Sound: sound recording with no images
Video: moving images with or without sound
Unspecified: indicates that the holding institution has not specified the type of digital object
3D: 3-d digital objects

You can also combine this filter with other filters. Your filter selection will appear above. Click "Clear filters" to see all results matching your initial search request again.

You can filter results based on the date of creation of the archival material (which may differ from the time period you are interested in - e.g., philosophers from the Enlightenment period reflecting on classic thinkers)

Full dates includes normalised date information available for date-based searches. It is recommended to combine this selection with the filters "Start timespan" and "End timespan" for more details.
Only descriptive dates provides the date information in human-readable format.
No date either includes documents where the creation date is unknown, or where date information is not in a machine-readable format

Please note that not all documents contain a machine-readable date. More information here

You can filter results based on the date of creation of the archival material (which may differ from the time period you are interested in - e.g., philosophers from the Enlightenment period reflecting on classic thinkers). This filter will only include materials with "Full dates", i.e. those that include date information available for date-based searches. You can either search for a specific date of interest or focus step by step on the time span of a century, decade, year or month. When searching for a specific date, enter the date in the format DD-MM-YYYY, i.e. 01/01/1900 for 1 January 1900, via the calendar function or by typing directly in the text field.
This filter concentrates on the earliest dates mentioned in the materials.

You can filter results based on the language in which the material is written. Please note that this filter will only include materials where specific language information has been provided by the institution and is therefore in a machine-readable format. You can also combine this filter with other filters. Your selection will then be displayed above the search results (see "Search filters"). Clicking "Clear filters" will remove your selection and you will see all results matching your initial search request again.

You can filter results by selecting one or more topics of interest. Please note that this filter will only include materials where the topic has been assigned and is therefore in a machine-readable format. Read how to assign a topic to documents on the Topics page. You can also combine this filter with other filters. Your selection will then be displayed above the search results (see "Search filters"). Clicking "Clear filters" will remove your selection and you will see all results matching your initial search request again.

You can filter results by selecting where your search terms appears specifically inside the archival description:

The name can be the full name of a person, family or organisation as well as only parts of it, e.g. only the last name.
The identifier is used internally by the institution or refers to (inter)national vocabularies such as the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF).
The place can be the place of birth (or foundation), the place of death (or closing), the place of work or any other place of importance.
The occupation is the profession or job of a person
The mandate is a law, directive or charter that establishes and defines an organisation's powers, functions, responsibilities or sphere of activities.
The function is an activity, role, or purpose performed or manifested by a person, family or organisation

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You can filter results by type of entities:

Person (e.g., John Locke or Jean Jaques Rousseau)
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You can filter results based on the type of holding institution. Please note that this filter will only include institutions, for which a type has been provided as part of their descriptions.

A business archive holds the records of (often) commercial organisations.
A church or religious archive holds the records of church parishes or religious organisations, e.g. birth or death registers.
A county or local authority archive holds the records of the county's administrative bodies.
A media archive holds audiovisual or sound records, e.g. a film archive or the archive of a broadcasting company.
A municipal archive holds the records of a town or city administration.
A national archive holds the records of a country's administrative bodies, i.e. from ministries and other public bodies, sometimes also private papers of former ministers, chancellors, or presidents.
A private person or family archive holds the records forming the legacy of a prominent person or family.
A regional archive holds the records of a region's administrative bodies.
A specialised governmental archive holds records of public bodies, often operating on a national level, that are not part of the national archives' holdings.
A specialised non-governmental archive or archive of another cultural heritage institution hold collections from various cultural heritage institutions, eg. museum archives, libraries archives, etc
A university archive or archive of another research organisation holds the records pertaining to the administration of the according educational or research body.
Political parties, popular/labour movements and other non-governmental organisations, associations, agencies and foundations hold the archival collections of these institutions, outside of governmental records and outside of business archives (e.g., NGOs)

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This object is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons - Attribution, ShareAlike (BY-SA) licence. You can copy, redistribute, remix, tweak and build upon the licensed object, even for commercial purposes, as long as you attribute the rights holder as described in the licence, and you license your adaptations of the object under the same terms.

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This object is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons - Attribution, Non-Commercial (BY-NC) licence. You can copy, redistribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the licensed object for non-commercial use only and as long as you attribute the rights holder as described in the licence.

This object is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons - Attribution, Non-Commercial, ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) licence. You can copy, redistribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the licensed object for non-commercial use only, as long as you attribute the rights holder as described in the licence, and as long as you license your adaptations of the object under the same terms.

This object is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons - Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivates (BY-NC-ND) licence. You can copy and redistribute the object for non-commercial use only, as long as no alteration is made to the object and as long as you attribute the rights holder as described in the licence.

If you remix, transform or build upon the object, you may not distribute the modified material.

This object is in the public domain, but is subject to known legal restrictions other than copyright which prevent its free re-use. Please contact the providing institution for more information.

This object is currently in copyright. Please contact the providing institution for more information and in order to acquire additional permissions for re-use.

The copyright status of this object has not been evaluated yet. Please contact the providing institution for more information.

Please contact the providing institution for more information and in order to acquire additional permissions for any other uses.