Connected Histories

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• Connected Histories
• Sources for Building British History, 1500-1900
• Funded under the JISC eContent Capital Programme
  for 18 months
• Partners
• Prof. Tim Hitchcock (Univ. of Hertfordshire)
• Prof. Robert Shoemaker (Univ. of Sheffield)
• Institute for Historical Research, University of
  London (Jane Winters)
• HRI Digital, Humanities Research Institute (Univ.
  of Sheffield)

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British History Online, including the forthcoming
People in Place Database 250 million words Old
Bailey Proceedings Online, 1674-1913 120 million
words Plebeian Lives and the Making of Modern
London 40 million words 17th and 18th Century
Burney Collection from the British Library 3
million pages British Library 19th Century
Newspapers 2 million pages Origins Network 83
million names Eighteenth-Century Parliamentary
Papers 566,719 pages Clergy of the Church of
England Database 1540-1835 105,000
names Strypes Survey of London 2 million
words Charles Booth Online Archive 12 maps,
2,500 pages of text Nineteenth-Century
Parliamentary Papers 200,000 sessional
papers The John Johnson Collection of Printed
Ephemera 1 million items British Museum Image
Collection Database 141,415 items Early
English Books Online (EEBO) 26,000
texts Eighteenth Century Collections Online
(ECCO) 26 million pages
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1. Search indexes reside on the Sheffield
server 2. The user interface is hosted by the
London server When a user conducts a
search 1. The London server sends the query to
the Sheffield server 2. The Sheffield server
queries the indexes and returns the results to
the London server 3. The London server renders
the results When a user views a result 1. The
documents title and result snippet are rendered
by the London server 2. The documents URL takes
the user to the full document on the content
providers live website
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1. Acquire data from providers 2. Technical
audit 3. Apply the NLP 4. Evaluate the accuracy
of the NLP 5. Generate indexes, snippets and
metadata 6. Upload to Sheffield
server Meanwhile 1. Establish agreed search
exchange protocol between Sheffield and
London 2. Develop search querying 3. Develop
user search interface and other features 4.
System testing, load testing etc
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