ABSTRACT
Discovery has also absorbed Access to Archives (A2A), which consisted of a large number of small cataloguing projects mostly from local authority record offices; this is more problematic as it means that search results from the National Archives and local authorities are all mixed in together and it is not easy to refine these results in any meaningful way. An archive is fundamentally different to a library in that the latter is essentially a collection of discrete items. Although in most cases these will be classified so that books on similar subjects are placed together, they remain separate items with no real link from one to another; a shelf of books is, at its most basic level, a number of discrete containers of data. Editing, the editing of scholarly critical editions- is an activity that prioritises and occasionally rewards rigour, order, repetition, discipline, systematisation.
