BBC Domesday Project

The BBC Domesday Project was a partnership between Acorn Computers, Philips, Logica, and the BBC (with some funding from the European Commission's ESPRIT programme) to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th-century census of England. It has been cited as an example of digital obsolescence on account of the physical medium used for data storage.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]

This new multimedia edition of Domesday was compiled between 1984 and 1986 and published in 1986. It included a new "survey" of the United Kingdom, in which people, mostly school children, wrote about geography, history or social issues in their local area or just about their daily lives. This was linked with maps, and many colour photos, statistical data, video and "virtual walks". The project also incorporated professionally prepared video footage, virtual reality tours of major landmarks and other prepared datasets such as the 1981 census. Over a million people participated in the project, including children from more than 9,000 schools.^[5]^[6]

^ Lord, Timothy (3 March 2002). "1086 Domesday Book Outlives 1986 Electronic Rival". science.slashdot.org. Mountain View, California: Geeknet. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
^ Cohen, Daniel J; Rosenzweig, Roy (30 August 2005). "Preserving Digital History". Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-1923-4. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
^ Brown, Douglas (June 2003). "Lost in Cyberspace: The BBC Domesday Project and the Challenge of Digital Preservation". Discovery Guides. Ann Arbor, Michigan. Archived from the original on 7 September 2011. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
^ Keene, Suzanne (2006). "Practical challenges: Technical obsolescence". Now you see it, now you won't: Preserving digital cultural material. London: Suzanne Keene. Archived from the original on 31 August 2006. Retrieved 23 March 2011.
^ Lamb, John (28 March 1985). "Programming the first generation". New Scientist. IPC Magazines. p. 36. The BBC's Domesday project, which involves 9000 schools, is one example of how information retrieval programs are used. The project is an attempt to produce an up-to-date version of the original Domesday book. Schools will collect and store information about their local communities on their own micros and then forward their findings to a central team. Eventually the data will be transferred to a videodisc, to mark the 900th anniversary of the original census in 1086.
^ Nairn, Geoff (September 1985). "Countdown to Domesday" (PDF). Acorn User. pp. 16–17. Retrieved 29 November 2020.

[1] Lord, Timothy (3 March 2002). "1086 Domesday Book Outlives 1986 Electronic Rival". science.slashdot.org. Mountain View, California: Geeknet. Retrieved 23 March 2011.

[2] Cohen, Daniel J; Rosenzweig, Roy (30 August 2005). "Preserving Digital History". Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-1923-4. Retrieved 23 March 2011.

[3] Brown, Douglas (June 2003). "Lost in Cyberspace: The BBC Domesday Project and the Challenge of Digital Preservation". Discovery Guides. Ann Arbor, Michigan. Archived from the original on 7 September 2011. Retrieved 23 March 2011.

[4] Keene, Suzanne (2006). "Practical challenges: Technical obsolescence". Now you see it, now you won't: Preserving digital cultural material. London: Suzanne Keene. Archived from the original on 31 August 2006. Retrieved 23 March 2011.

[newscientist_lamb_1985-5] Lamb, John (28 March 1985). "Programming the first generation". New Scientist. IPC Magazines. p. 36. The BBC's Domesday project, which involves 9000 schools, is one example of how information retrieval programs are used. The project is an attempt to produce an up-to-date version of the original Domesday book. Schools will collect and store information about their local communities on their own micros and then forward their findings to a central team. Eventually the data will be transferred to a videodisc, to mark the 900th anniversary of the original census in 1086.

[acornuser198509-6] Nairn, Geoff (September 1985). "Countdown to Domesday" (PDF). Acorn User. pp. 16–17. Retrieved 29 November 2020.

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