Domesday Text Project Pilot

Project Description:

Domesday Book is a fundamental source for English history and one of the most famous documents in the world. It is ironic, then, that the standard edition of the text, and of the thirty or so MSS associated with it, date from the late 18th or early 19th century. The Domesday Texts Project proposes a new edition which will meet the demands of modern scholarship. Recent advances in Domesday studies have in large part been based on the study of the scribal history and forms of the texts, but progress has been hampered by the lack of a machine-readable Latin text and standardized translation. The emerging technologies of the semantic web now afford the possibility of producing an edition that represents the multifaceted characteristics of the texts and their contents with the potential of putting Domesday studies on a new footing. Funds have been obtained for work on a start-up pilot study for a major research project that will bring together all the specialist scholars in the field to make available an iconic source of fundamental importance to historians and of singular interest to the general public. The pilot study work is being done by two of the specialist scholars, David Roffe and Katharine Keats-Rohan. We are starting with three counties from three different Domesday circuits (Cambs, Derbs and Surrey), marking up the text with XML TEI encoding. The end result will be placed on ORA whilst we pursue major funding.