The Domesday Project

by Richard Millwood — published Jul 13, 2009 03:55 PM, last modified Apr 05, 2011 11:02 PM

From 1984 to 1986 the Domesday Project, organised by the BBC, gathered film, photographs, descriptions and data to cover the United Kingdom, publishing it all on an innovative variant of laser disc technology, LV-ROM in November 1986 in celebration of the 900th anniversary of the Norman Domesday Book.

The BBC Domesday Project was carried out to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book. Over a million people took part, particularly school children, to gather descriptions and photographs for almost every part of the United Kingdom. The contributions from schools were organised through the local education authorities. There were two discs in the Domesday Project package: the Community Disc and the National Disc.

The Community disc showed Britain as seen by the people who live there, permitting navigation through maps to locate individual neighbourhoods. Key social data was also supplied on the discs - a new form of video disc called LV-ROM - to add to the geographical maps a layer of information about social issues.

The National disc provided an overview of Britain and included television and photographic material selected to represent key events and aspects of British life.

News: New premises needed to store the archive Jun 09, 2015; Computers in the Curriculum Project - 30 years on Sep 01, 2014; A Celebration of the UK's Computing Heritage Jul 01, 2013; The Legacy of the BBC Microcomputer: effecting change in the UK’s cultures of computing May 24, 2012; Cataloguing the videodiscs Jun 15, 2011; Domesday Reloaded May 16, 2011; CAL 2011 conference special feature Apr 12, 2011; A Short History Offline Sep 24, 2009; BBC's Tomorrow's World presents Nellie - a computer set to revolutionise the classroom Sep 20, 2009; The BBC Domesday Book Project and its Legacy May 14, 2009; Voices Project book published Mar 10, 2009; More news…

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The archive is directed and maintained by Richard Millwood of Core Education UK supported by Sandra Crapper, Maureen Gurr, Margaret Cox, Nick Rushby and Joy Hooper. The British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA) were archive sponsors in 2008 and Becta were sponsors in 2009. Much of the archive was gathered in the years 1990 - 2006 by Prof Stephen Heppell with Richard Millwood and stored at Ultralab at Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford. In its early days it was catalogued by Greta Mladenova and in 2006 Rex Wingate helped to organise the items in store. More recently, since 2011, Doreen Wright, Nick Rushby, Chris Monk and Joy Hooper have been helping catalogue the materials and develop policies.

http://www.naec.org.uk/organisations/the-domesday-project/the-domesday-project-page