In the last ten years researchers have become accustomed to being able to search the catalogues of university and research libraries remotely: first using the Telnet protocol, but increasingly via the World Wide Web. It has been many years since personal visits to such libraries were necessary in order to discover information about their printed book holdings. Users of academic libraries with these facilities are now used to exploring collections from a distance and arranging access to off-site items in advance of their visit. Union catalogues such as COP AC, which provides access to the holdings of 22 UK university libraries and the British Library, have made resource discovery easier still. For archives, however, the situation has been less straightforward.