Monastic Archives: enhancement of typology and database

Project start date: 2007-04

Project end date: 2010-01

The overriding aim of this project is to equip users of the existing web-based English Monastic Archives database with the expertise required to make the best use of the data that it structures. These records are of a volume and range that are unmatched in Britain save by the records of the Crown. In a previous project, an estimated 88% of the records were located and described, and the catalogue descriptions were made available on the internet. The present proposal seeks to build on that in three ways. 1. We will create on-line interpretative guides to the different categories of material structured by the 'genre' searches which are the most exciting features of the existing database. The guides will make clear to the researcher both the historical and archival framework within which the database was constructed and also how the various types of document can most fruitfully be used. 2. Concurrently, the researcher will write a guide of 70+ pages on English Monastic Archives for the British Records Association's Archives and the User series. 3. Finally the project will complete work on the remaining fraction of the material: this is for the Benedictine and Cluniac monasteries of Norfolk, Suffolk, Northamptonshire, and Worcestershire. The value of the existing resource would be hugely enhanced if this small but important gap could be filled. Conversion of data to MySQL for web-delivery.