The project aimed to provide access to the extensive collection of York cause papers – records of the individual cases of the church courts held at York – held at the Borthwick Institute for Archives, through a new, on-line catalogue.
The records of the church courts in the diocese of York, housed in the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York, are the most extensive records of their type in the United Kingdom, dating from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries and covering Yorkshire and beyond. They include cause papers for over 13,000 individual cases as well as a wealth of supporting material. Although their importance for social, economic, ecclesiastical and legal history has long been recognised, many of these papers are accessible only through manual indexes, compiled in the 1940s, which provide limited information about the records. As a result much of the information in the documents was locked away, inaccessible to the research community.
A project for the re-cataloguing of the archive began in June 2007. The project relied upon the technical expertise of The Digital Humanities Institute and employed a number of post-graduate research assistants.
Website
Duration: 1st June 2007 – 31st July 2010
Project Team
- Dr Philippa Hoskin (University of York)
- Ed MacKenzie (Developer – The Digital Humanities Institute)
- Katherine Rogers (Developer – The Digital Humanities Institute)