Search engine collects historical resources

[Tabbitha]

I hope its ok to post this info here

"a search engine is being created to help historians find useful sources."

and

"Once completed the search engine will index digitised books, newspapers, manuscripts, genealogical records, maps and images that date from 1500-1900."

full story here

[LizzieW]

Sounds interesting, but aren't they duplicating work that has already been done by FindMyPast, Ancestry etc?

Lizzie

[teaurn]

Looks like it will all be free both Ancestry and FindMyPast are subscription sites
this would be useful as at the moment when you do a search on a topic related to family history you can get thousands of 'related' searches that are not what you are looking for at all

Mind you it's still a year away

[newburychap]

The search may be free but I suspect it will find results in pay per view or subscription sites like Gale, JSTOR and the like and it will cost to see them.  It will be interesting to see what transpires.

[NEILKE]

going to have a look now.
neil

[Tabbitha]

From what I can gather this is a collation of resources from such as Universities,free record collections AND PPV sites .

"There are a number of electronic resources that have been created by universities and by commercial providers," said Professor Robert Shoemaker from the University of Sheffield which is heading the project. "They are all available, and all separate and some require subscriptions."

I have seen some of the resources Universities have 'acquired' as I am sure a lot of others have,and the very thought that these might be available for public viewing is very exciting.

I subscribe or ppv to get my info now,but still have to do a lot of time 'trawling' through records or paying to see something that then turns out void.

Library collections prove the hardest to view as they are not online,if the libraries were to join this scheme it would be very useful for those who live abroad or out of the area they are researching.

This idea of [most ] everything being in one place is some thing I will welcome.

[Archivos]

I'm a bit dubious about how this is going to work - is it going to include online catalogues of local archives, libraries, and other organisations, for example?  What are they meaning by 'historical sources'?  

Sites like the Archives Hub, SCAN (for Scottish archives), both the National Register of Archives (NRA) and the National Register of Archives for Scotland (NRAS) offer something similar, though of course different things are found on each and none are completely comprehensive.  I don't think there will ever be a fully comprehensive 'search engine' (and by that, they mean just that - I agree that many results may still be pay per view or subscription sites) because the nature of history and historical sources means that there is so much out there and not enough time, money or people to fully document them.

[Tabbitha]

I'm a bit dubious about how this is going to work - is it going to include online catalogues of local archives, libraries, and other organisations, for example?  

I guess it depends who opts in 

[newburychap]

The way I read it there will be:
Newspapers (perhaps indexing source like the BL's C19th collection currently available ppv or via Gale)
Academic articles (eg JSTOR)
Books (like google books?)
I guess they will include academic sites like british-history, historicaldirectories and the Archaeology Data Service.

I doubt that they will try to repeat TNAs work to get archive cataloques online (A2A)

There are a great many other sources, often in very small chunks - for example local parish history websites, history society websites etc that are, in general, already searchable using google.

I love the idea of a history search that will filter out the modern dross (try searching for historical references to a pub and see just how many sites have been set up to list modern pubs), but I'm not yet sure what else this proposed engine will do that google doesn't.

I don't suppose there will be a lot of overlap with Ancestry, FindMyPast, TheGenealogist except in the books area.

I look forward to finding out more and what could just be an outstanding new resource for local history.