Grant will put two million church papers on internet

Grant will put two million church papers on internet

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/yorknews/display.var.1392954.0.grant_will_put_two_million_church_papers_on_internet.php


THE University of York has been awarded a $744,000 grant - £370,000 - by
the Andrew W Mellon Foundation to compile an online database of church
court papers, dating back to the Middle Ages.

The collection - made up of more than two million case papers from
courts in the York Diocese - is housed in the University's Borthwick
Institute for Archives. It is the one of most extensive collections of
ecclesiastical papers in Europe, and occupies more than 540 metres of
shelf space.

The papers contain information on more than 13,000 cases from Yorkshire
and beyond, dating from 1300 to 1858. They include marriage, slander and
defamation cases which came before the church courts and contain a
wealth of information valuable to social, economic and legal historians.

Currently the documents must be accessed manually and they have never
been fully catalogued, rendering vast amounts of information
inaccessible to researchers.

The former head of the Borthwick Institute, Canon John Purvis, created
basic indexes for the collection in the 1940s. Much of the work was done
while he was on fire watch duty in the Second World War.

The new database, which will be compiled jointly by the Borthwick
Institute and the university's department of history, will make
information more accessible, across the full chronological range of
papers. Work will begin in May, and will take more than three years to
complete.

The university's vice-chancellor, Professor Brian Cantor, said: "It is
both an honour and a privilege to receive this grant from the Andrew W
Mellon Foundation. Their generosity will enable us to unlock a hitherto
untapped resource of enormous value to the research community. It will
give an extraordinary insight into social history across more than six
centuries."

The head of the department of history, Professor Mark Ormrod, added:
"This major award from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation recognises the
extraordinary scholarly importance of the archival resources in the
Borthwick Institute For Archives, and attests to the university's
exceptional record of achievement in humanities research."

In 2005, with Mellon Foundation support, the Borthwick Institute carried
out a successful pilot study to develop a format for the database.

8:12pm Friday 11th May 2007


/By Tom Stirling/