Jisc Archives Hub

The Archives Hub system we developed for Jisc provides researchers with access to collection descriptions from over 320 institutions across the UK and includes millions of records.

The Archives Hub website, built to Jisc branding guidelines, uses our own server side RESTful API to interrogate Elasticsearch, the data being aggregated by Knowledge Integration‘s CIIM middleware. As hierarchical data results in many levels, clarity and ease of use is critical for researchers to access what they need quickly, on any modern device.

We adopted a ‘mobile first’ design approach, enabling us to distil the feature-set down to the most crucial elements for mobile users. As screen-estate increases we present additional UI options, such as the ‘mini-map’ tree viewer element on desktop browsers. Filtering search results by holding repositories plots their location on a map. The advanced search builder facility allows researchers and the wider public to quickly find what they are looking for. The main search box allows for both phrase and boolean searching, for example, “ industrial revolution” (with quotes). 

The RESTFul API Gooii developed for this system can also be exposed to other websites and apps to consume. The system is developed using ClojureScript for the UI and Clojure for the serverside system which includes the API.