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I reply to Caroline Sampson's query publicly, because others may be interested in this. At Gloucestershire RO we started a similar project back in 1992 with a group of volunteers, largely from our local archaeological society. The project was prompted by a local cartographer, Geoff Gwatkin, who wanted to make reproduction copies of the tithe maps, partly for commercial purposes, but also to share with the Archaeology Dept to assist the Sites and Monuments Record team, and to supply surrogate copies for the Record Office to use. He needed the plot numbers and field names transcribed and this was seen as mutually beneficial. We transcribed all the information in the tithe schedule except the financial detail of rentcharge, which nobody could ever remember anyone making use of (please don't all write and tell me how useful it is ! ). The transcripts were made in manuscript on a pro-forma sheet in the Searchroom and it took nearly ten years for the full set of 180 apportionments covering the diocese of Gloucester to be completed. All the transcripts were checked by an experienced volunteer. The next stage is to convert those manuscripts into a digital form, for which we are using MSExcel. This work can be done at home by volunteers, but then has to be checked again. In an ideal world you would cut out the manuscript transcript stage, but it will depend upon your circumstances. Things were different when we started all those years ago. Even now there are some volunteers who prefer to work with pencil and paper. There is also a practical problem in trying to work on a computer side by side with a tithe apportionment, which is usually still attached to its map. The final stage is to load up the data into a database which has been designed specifically for us by our in-house IT people. It is a very powerful piece of software which enables a variety of searches across one or all parishes. You can search for names of owner and occupier, cultivation code, plot number and field names. The search box has an a choice of "begins" or "contains" which is very useful for tracking down field names which have slight variations. There are pop-up screens for the plot detail to overcome the limitations of what you can display in table view. (Joint owners and occupiers especially take up a lot of space in a table). There is even a calculator which adds up the total acreage of the selected plots, so that you can assess the extent of one person's holdings. If you identify a landowner through one plot, one click will find what other property he held within the parish ( this mechanism deliberately does not work across the whole database in order to avoid any suggestion on our part that a landowner is the same as one of the same name in another parish. You can, of course, use a fresh search to search for one name across all parishes.) Only about a dozen parish apportionments have been loaded up so far and these are available on our Searchroom Intranet. More will be added soon. In due course it will be possible to web-enable the database for the Internet. In the meantime, the manuscript transcripts are in use in the Searchroom , together with the Gwatkin surrogate maps, and users are referred to these in the first instance instead of to the originals, saving a great deal of wear and tear on the latter. We do, of course, have the NA microfilm copies of both maps and apportionments, but these are much less user-friendly. One of the joys of a project like this is that, as the years go by, you wonder whether you will ever see completion, but here we are, nearing the end, and we have created the most amazingly powerful tool, as well as given protection to some long-suffering documents in our care. Kate Haslem for Gloucestershire Record Office [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- From: Archivists, conservators and records managers. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Caroline Sampson Sent: 15 January 2004 15:12 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Tithe apportionment project Dear all Warwickshire County Record Office is hoping to launch a project over the next month or so to improve access to the data held in tithe apportionments. A team of volunteers will be capturing details of landowners, occupiers and plot numbers, with the intention of reducing wear and tear on the originals (and the staff that produce them in the searchroom!), and making it easier and quicker for visitors to locate information of interest. My colleague, Robert Eyre, Archivist, would be interested to hear from any other record office that has carried out a similar project with a view to sharing ideas and suggestions. If you would like to send any comments, please email him at [log in to unmask] Thanks Caroline Sampson Head of Archive Service Warwickshire County Record Office