Archaeovision were approached by East Anglian Archaeology to explore the provision of online access to their back catalogue of monographs. This would involve the construction of a repository where all past issues of EAA would be described, made searchable, and where stock is still available, provide links to buy copies. Older back issues would be scanned and made available as an open access PDF.
East Anglian Archaeology is an academically refereed series with an editorial board of senior archaeologists from the region. It is supported by the Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers (ALGAO) and Historic England. Reports cover material from the whole of the eastern region: Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.The first report was published in 1975 and there are now more than one hundred and eighty titles in the series.
We worked closely with East Anglian Archaeology to develop an easy-to-use system whereby they could manage the website themselves after it was operational. It now has a simple, clean design and is mobile-friendly, as well as providing technical metadata links to ensure compatibility with search facilities such as Google Scholar.
Archaeovision delivered the project using the WordPress content management system, tailoring it to the requirements of EAA through the use of custom content types. As well as adding a new page or a post, we were able to add a “monograph” item where it is now simple to add the bibliographical information for each book. This is then formatted automatically and each publication slots into the correct section on the website. We have used bright ‘tags’ in the design to facilitate discovery of other related items on the site, inviting the user to explore.
The project was supported by Historic England and Norfolk County Council, and the digital archive of East Anglian Archaeology has now been compiled. EAA 1–100 are now available as free downloads under a Creative Commons licence, with more recent reports being made available in the future as they go out of print. We must thank Jenny Glazebrook for her work in organising and editing each EAA report. We hope that this is the first of many such reports being made available under the Creative Commons license and we are available to assist in any future projects which encompass the same format
