ALTERNATIVE TERMBrick buildings  Source: West Sussex PTP

About UKAT

UKAT is a subject thesaurus and controlled vocabulary that UK archives can use when indexing their collections and catalogues. Our key aims are:

• To improve access to archives by subject
• To ensure that archives' users see relevant and consistent subject searches
• To promote involvement in archives by under-represented archive user groups 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, projects and users, as part of a project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), with additional funding, management and support from the The National Archives and University of London Computer Centre (ULCC).

The initial creation of UKAT was overseen by an advisory panel of archivists together with a group including representatives of family history societies and archive users organisations. 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. Ongoing curation and maintenance of the thesaurus is now carried out on a voluntary basis by the AIM25 team and by IMAGIZ.

UKAT is supported by the AIM25 charity