Delivered via the latest version of Cheshire for Archives software, developed as part of the JISC funded Archives Hub project. This software allows searching and display of our finding aids via a web-browser, and via integrated Z39.50 and SRU interfaces. This software uses the Cheshire 3 (http://www.cheshire3.org), the latest generation of the Cheshire Information Retrieval System (http://cheshire.berkeley.edu).

The Cheshire for Archives software provides us with direct control over our EAD records and provide a user interface hosted on our website (http://sca.lib.liv.ac.uk/ead) to search our archival collection. This enables searching to component level, providing multiple search options (Keywords, Full text, Titles, Controlled Access Headings, Reference Number etc.) and displays finding aids in full, with a navigable table of contents.

As well as providing a tool to search our own archival collections, the software also lets us become part of something bigger, making our EAD files searchable through a distributed national archival database, The Archives Hub. This system allows us complete authority over our own EAD records, whilst still providing nationwide access to descriptions of our collections. Technical details on how this is achieved are available at http://www.archiveshub.ac.uk/arch/spokes.shtml

To preview and generate hard-copy finding aids, we have developed a web application to convert EAD files into HTML from any web-browser. This conversion is based on an in-house XSLT stylesheet.