Yesterday TannerRitchie published the first volumes in a major new project to digitise the publications and reports of the The Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts.
The Commission (more usually referred to as "The Historical Manuscripts Commission" or just "HMC") was founded in 1869 with the intention of making enquiry into all collections and repositories of historical manuscripts and papers in the United Kingdom. Its many reports and "appendices" (in fact complete volumes of primary sources in their own right), published over the period of over a century, contain a treasure-house of material for medieval, early modern and modern historians and genealogists, taken from the family archives, charter chests and private collections of the nobility and citizenry of Britain and Ireland, as well as university colleges, diocesesan and cathedrals archives, and the archives of towns, boroughs and other corporate bodies.
Until now these volumes have been both inaccessible and daunting to use, even for the skilled historian. TannerRitchie is undertaking a major programme not only to digitise, but also to catalogue (through metadata and bookmarks) this series more fully, to enable users to exploit this incredible resource to an extent never possible before.
Details of the contents of each volume will appear here in due course. In the mean time, a detailed catalogue of the volumes can be viewed at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/academic/pdf/bibliography.pdf
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