The Official UKAT Linked Data Thesaurus Service has moved to this website - UKAT UK Archival Thesaurus

Welcome to the archived website of the UK Archival Thesaurus (UKAT). UKAT was a subject thesaurus that was created for the archive sector in the United Kingdom. It was a controlled vocabulary which archives could use when indexing their collections and catalogues.

The key aims of UKAT were to improve access to archives by subject; to ensure that users of archives can carry out effective subject searches of the national archives network; and to promote the involvement in archives by groups which are under-represented among archive users, by providing subject terms which reflect their histories and experiences.

UKAT was created between June 2003 and August 2004 from subject terms contributed by individual archives, archive projects and users of archives, as part of a project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund in association with RKMS Consultancy. This website allows you to Search UKAT, browse UKAT By A-Z and By hierarchy, and Download files of UKAT data.

Since 2004, AIM25 (Archives in London and the M25) has steadily added to the subject thesaurus with the addition of new terms and vocabularies, chosen and validated by archive professionals. Following investment from JISC in 2012 as part of the Step change project (http://openmetadatapathway.blogspot.co.uk/ ), an RDF Linked Data version of this enhanced UKAT, known as AIM25-UKAT, is now available as a service from: http://data.aim25.ac.uk. A browsable version of the subject thesaurus is available.

In 2012, the JISC-funded Trenches to Triples project, which sought to create Linked Data relating to the World War One has added a newly-compiled corpus of 1914-1918-related subject terms, battles and operations.

In addition to subject terms, the AIM25-UKAT service provided access to the personal name, corporate name and place name index compiled by AIM25 since its inception in 2000, which is one of the richest and most comprehensive controlled vocabularies available for archive professionals.

Welcome to the website of the UK Archival Thesaurus (UKAT). UKAT is a subject thesaurus which has been created for the archive sector in the United Kingdom. It is a controlled vocabulary which archives can use when indexing their collections and catalogues.

The key aims of UKAT are: to improve access to archives by subject; to ensure that users of archives can carry out effective subject searches of the national archives network; and to promote the involvement in archives by groups which are under-represented among archive users, by providing subject terms which reflect their histories and experiences.

UKAT was created between June 2003 and August 2004 from subject terms contributed by individual archives, archive projects, users of archives and audit management as part of a project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. This website allows you to Search UKAT, browse UKAT By A-Z and By hierarchy, and Download files of UKAT data. The main editing phase of the project has ended. Further information Please Contact us if you have questions or comments about the Thesaurus.