Reference
CRS6
Title
Victorian Crime and Punishment E2b website and gaol database [see also digital files]
Admin/biog history
The project began with a bid by the Record Office to the New Opportunities Fund for digitisation of archive sources as learning material in 1999. This bid was unsuccessful but in preparing for the bid the service had spoken to the County Council's education office for ICT (at that time contracted to Hyder Business Services) and this led to an agreement to pursue funding for a Victorian Crime and Punishment project via the East of England Broadband Consortium (E2b). This project was then broadened to include Cambridgeshire Record Office and Cambridgeshire schools service. Funding was secured for the development of a website about Victorian Crime and Punishment based on the records held by Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire Record Offices and notably including a database of transcripts from the gaol registers. There were to be case studies from each county covering different crimes. The project was due to last from 2001-2002.
Once funding had been secured a small amount of material from each record office was digitised. An Access database was created for each county and in Bedfordshire a datainputter was recruited to transcribe the gaol registers into the database. Staff from the record offices supervised the project and gathered and wrote up material for the case studies and background information. Staff in the education services were responsible for liaising with E2b and for providing and developing the ICT required for the project.
As the project progressed it became apparent that it would not be completed to schedule. Staff changes and other commitments created difficulties in keeping momentum. Originally the case studies were to involve films of staged re-enactments by school students - these did not turn out well and were ultimately replaced by animated cartoon strips.
Once funding for the data inputter ended Bedfordshire Record Office continued to input into the database using volunteers.
The two record offices provided all the material they were supposed to do and it was left to the education services and E2b to provide the website. There was a long delay in achieving the website and during this time Bedordshire Archives made arrangements for their database of transcripted gaol registers to be made available online separately, hosted by Bedfordshire County Council.
Once the E2b website was completed it was well used and feedback was good however by 2020 it E2b reported that they would have to make changes and migrate it to another platform in order for it to continue to run. They decided that this was not to be done and the website was withdrawn in 2021. Meanwhile Bedfordshire Record Office made some of the material originally supplied for the project available on its own website and continued to expand the gaol database. As of 2023 the database is still available online and is still heavily used.
At various points in the project outreach exhibitions were produced by the record office to advertise the database and the website.
Level of description
series