Estate archives form an important part of the archival landscape, providing a significant focus for collection development and research initiatives. This special edition of Archives and Records focuses on the current and potential impacts of these collections; including estate archives deposited in public repositories and ‘private’ archives held in the historic house sector or utilized as active business assets in property and land management. The edition brings together six papers, from archivists and academics, exploring the theme of access, discovery and use of estate archives to demonstrate impact through a UK and Irish lens. Archives Unlocked: Delivering the Vision, the new action plan from The UK’s National Archives, introduces an agenda to ensure that archives are accessible and discoverable to new and wider audiences, facilitating the expansion of learning and knowledge, and promoting economic innovation and growth. This can demonstrate impact by enriching society intellectually, culturally and economically, ultimately enhancing lives. Simultaneously, developments in the research environment have seen the emergence of the impact agenda in Higher Education and a greater emphasis on collaborative and public history approaches. These have opened new routes for mutually beneficial partnerships between professionals working in archive repositories, academia and other cultural heritage bodies to unlock the potential of archives in innovative ways that benefit society, culture and the economy. Events such as the annual DCDC Conference (Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities) highlight how the convergence of these agenda create opportunities for public engagement with a broader range of user and audience groups. Until the early-twentieth century, landed estates encompassed most of the land and property in the UK and Ireland, allowing their owners to exert significant influence across all spheres of society. Estate archives have been defined as ‘accumulations of records relating to the acquisition and management of a landed estate.’ They can feature an array of record types, often relating to a variety of locations, dating across centuries, in multiple languages and pertaining to an extraordinarily diverse range of subjects. Over the last century estate archives have been an important focus for cataloguing and collection care in public and private archives. They also, however, provide a range of challenges for their care, discoverability, accessibility and usability. Ownership and consequently the copyright and funding for the care of estate archives are often complex with many held on deposit; collections can be split across multiple repositories and archives of several estates can be combined hiding their existence. With many estate archives held privately by solicitors or estate offices, public access cannot be assumed, nor can accruals to collections held in publicly accessible repositories. The complexity of estate archives can make them difficult to catalogue and use; they feature a range of record types and are often multilingual and multi-period in composition, occasionally extending to multiple geographical locations. Many records such as maps and title-deeds can be unwieldy, difficult to present and difficult to understand. ARCHIVES AND RECORDS 2019, VOL. 40, NO. 1, 1–4 https://doi.org/10.1080/23257962.2019.1573725

中文翻译：

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社论：遗产档案

遗产档案馆是档案景观的重要组成部分，是馆藏发展和研究计划的重要焦点。这一特别版的档案和记录重点关注这些收藏的当前和潜在影响；包括存放在公共资料库中的遗产档案和保存在历史房屋部门或用作财产和土地管理中的活跃商业资产的“私人”档案。该版本汇集了来自档案工作者和学者的六篇论文，探讨了访问、发现和使用遗产档案的主题，以通过英国和爱尔兰的视角展示影响。档案解锁：交付愿景，英国国家档案馆的新行动计划，引入了一项议程，以确保档案可供新的和更广泛的受众访问和发现，促进学习和知识的扩展，促进经济创新和增长。这可以通过在智力、文化和经济上丰富社会并最终改善生活来展示影响。与此同时，研究环境的发展见证了高等教育影响议程的出现，以及更加强调合作和公共历史方法。这些为档案馆、学术界和其他文化遗产机构的专业人员之间建立互利伙伴关系开辟了新途径，以有利于社会、文化和经济的创新方式释放档案的潜力。诸如年度 DCDC 会议（发现收藏、发现社区）强调这些议程的融合如何为更广泛的用户和受众群体的公众参与创造机会。直到 20 世纪初，有地庄园涵盖了英国和爱尔兰的大部分土地和财产，使其所有者能够在社会各个领域施加重大影响。遗产档案被定义为“与土地的收购和管理有关的记录的积累”。它们可以包含一系列记录类型，通常与不同地点有关，可以追溯到几个世纪，以多种语言编写，并且涉及极其多样化的主题。在上个世纪，遗产档案馆一直是公共和私人档案馆编目和收藏的重要焦点。然而，他们也 为他们的护理、可发现性、可访问性和可用性提供一系列挑战。财产档案的所有权以及由此产生的版权和资金往往很复杂，其中许多都被保留了下来；集合可以拆分到多个存储库中，并且可以合并多个资产的档案以隐藏它们的存在。由于许多遗产档案由律师或遗产办公室私人持有，因此无法假设公众可以访问，也不能对公共访问存储库中的收藏进行累积。遗产档案的复杂性使其难以编目和使用；它们具有多种记录类型，通常是多语言和多时期的组成，有时会扩展到多个地理位置。许多记录（例如地图和地契）可能很笨拙，难以呈现且难以理解。档案和记录 2019，卷。40，没有。1, 1–4 https://doi.org/10.1080/23257962.2019.1573725