Hello everyone! I am very pleased to announce that the new Mills Archive website and catalogue is now up and running!
The best thing about the new website and catalogue is that the two are integrated, in other words, when you search for something on the website, it includes every relevant item from both the website and the catalogue.
The new catalogue is a significant improvement from the old one because it has over 42,000 catalogued records which the staff at the archive have been transferring onto it since before I even arrived here! Another useful improvement is the fact that you don’t have to register and log in to the new catalogue to view certain records, it is open for everyone to use. You can order very high resolution images and Friends of the Mills Archive get a free allowance (Liz will be contacting all the Friends separately with information about making use of their privileges).
The website consists of a ‘Mills Index’ which contains over 10,000 mills. Featured mills that are Heritage Partners have their own profile with information about that particular mill including pictures, its history and related books in the new bookshop. This gives people a great opportunity to explore some of the organisations that have contributed and supported the Mills Archive to make it as successful as it is today. Here is a screenshot of one such mill at Upminster:
The website is aimed to be more user friendly and I think we can agree that aesthetically it looks much more attractive and professional. But don’t panic, it has not changed completely! It still contains the blog, features and articles.
As always, the Mills Archive welcomes any feedback, because it is extremely important to us that our Friends and fellow mill enthusiasts love the new website and catalogue as much as we do and if there is anything we can do to help improve it even more then we would love to hear your thoughts! You can contact us on the website in the ‘contact us’ section which contains other useful info too, such as the location of the archive for anyone planning to visit.
I decided to have a bit of an explore around the new website to check it out for you guys. My IT skills are probably worse that average so I decided to start with something easy. I typed in my village ‘Bramhall’, to see what came up and lo and behold there is one water mill in Bramhall. I was provided with a google earth view of the mill and I realised it is so close to my house that I have actually been walking past this mill for the last 13 years without even noticing it was there!
It is great fun and using google earth to give a real view perspective of where the mill is in the world gives an interesting insight into its surroundings as well as providing information on the mill itself.
The website is also designed to be compatible on different devices, so you can even access it and search for things on your phone:
Why not start exploring the new website for yourself? You can also get to the catalogue directly by going to catalogue.millsarchive.org. Happy hunting!