Aberdeen Registers Online: 1398-1511
- Submitting institution
-
University of Aberdeen
- Unit of assessment
- 28 - History
- Output identifier
- 145166496
- Type
- S - Research data sets and databases
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- Aberdeen
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2019
- URL
-
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/projects/aberdeen-registers-online-213.php
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
-
9
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- The Aberdeen Registers Online (ARO) project encompassed 3 years of work for the PI (Armstrong), 3 co-investigators and 5 research assistants in order to produce a rich and extensive resource as described elsewhere in this submission. In addition the interdisciplinary interface between History, Law, Linguistics and Computing Science in producing the resource posed a challenge of more than usual conceptual complexity. The collective effort in terms of time and intellectual input involved in producing this material therefore greatly exceeded that involved in producing two standard outputs.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Medieval town registers offer rich insight into everyday life and how local societies governed themselves. The Aberdeen Registers Online: 1398-1511 (ARO) is a 1.5 million-word, open, reusable digital edition of the first eight volumes of the Aberdeen Council Registers, the earliest and most complete run of civic government books in Scotland. The registers are held by the Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives and are inscribed on the UNESCO UK Memory of the World Register.
The ARO is an outcome of the project “Law in the Aberdeen Council Registers, 1398-1511”, funded principally by the Leverhulme Trust. Armstrong directed the project as PI. For the study of the medieval urban experience the registers offered an exceptional opportunity to create an innovative source edition. Thus the research goal was to make the text accessible and to create a digital humanities resource enabling new avenues of enquiry. Armstrong and Mackillop, supported by the other editors, co-conceived the project, and planned a methodology to generate fresh insights through innovative text structuring. The added scholarly value was interdisciplinary, combining History, Computing, Law and Linguistics. The result is a dynamic resource, open for anyone to reuse, enrich and compare with other sources. This is possible because of the structure and format of the ARO.
In June 2019 the ARO (https://www.abdn.ac.uk/aro) was published as downloadable XML files. The output submitted for assessment can be accessed in full through folders mounted on the ARO Website: (https://www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/documents/XML%20files%20volumes%201-7.zip; https://www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/documents/XML%20files%20volume%208.zip). Panellists can more easily engage with the ARO through the SAR (https://sar.abdn.ac.uk/), a free and publicly available search tool. The SAR combines the ARO with corresponding register images thus highlighting the additional research value added by the output itself. The University of Aberdeen and Aberdeen City Council are committed to maintaining the ARO freely available.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
