Digitisation of the National Archives' Calendars of State Papers through British History Online

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This project seeks to complete the digitisation of The National Archives Calendars of State Papers, a key resource for historians of England in the early modern period. The IHR has been funded by The Andrew W Mellon Foundation to digitise and publish the Calendars of State Papers, Domestic (1547-1704, 1760-75) and those for Scotland and Ireland. The addition of the remaining 293 volumes (Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic of Henry VIII; the State Papers, Foreign; the State Papers, Colonial; Treasury books and papers; and papers held in foreign archives) will make the entire series accessible to researchers in higher education and beyond. The calendars will be made available through the British History Online digital library (www.british-history.ac.uk) alongside other core primary and secondary sources for the early modern period, including the Journals of the Houses of Commons and Lords and the substantial part of the Victoria County History. The calendar texts will be fully cross-searchable with this range of complementary material, using a controlled vocabulary of subject terms, and personal and place names. This represents an enormous gain in terms of accessibility and usability.The delivery of the calendars online will also present scholars with the opportunity to comment on and correct any errors or omissions in the texts, leading ultimately to what might be perceived as new 'editions'. This element of the project represents one way in which scholars in the humanities can adopt the e-science agenda via collaborative research/editing, in a mediated environment. With concerns about academic sustainability of large-scale digital resources increasingly to the fore, it will test the ability and willingness of the research community to take collective responsibility for enhancing and updating key historical material, and the ways in which Web 2.0 technologies can be applied in an academic research context.The project also aims to enhance the functionality of the calendars in a more structured way: first, by incorporating modern TNA document references, allowing users more easily to trace references in the original manuscripts; and, second, by exposing the calendars to TNA's Global Search, where they will be indexed alongside a variety of national and local archive catalogues and resources.