Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCEd)
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Grant Holder:
Professor Kenneth Fincham
The Clergy of the Church of England Database aimed to construct a relational database containing the careers of all clergymen of the Church of England between 1540 and 1835. The Database brings together evidence about clerical careers from all 27 dioceses of England and Wales, which are held at 28 diocesan repositories and 23 other archives and libraries. The Database fills a major gap in our knowledge of one of the most important professions in early modern England and Wales, and takes advantage of new technology to provide an invaluable research tool for both national and local historians who often need to discover biographical information about individual clergymen. As the Database is designed in such a way as to enable a wide variety of data retrieval and analyses. Historians and others can establish the succession of clergy in particular localities, trace individual career paths as they cross diocesan boundaries, and investigate such issues as patterns of clerical migration and patronage across geographical and chronological blocs of their choice. Thus, rather than containing a series of prose biographies, the database records information about clerical careers in interlinked tables, and consequently is well-suited to facilitate not only biographical research, but also more structural investigations of the Church, its clergy, its livings and patrons.
FileMaker databases were created during visits to archives, and were loaded into the master MySQL database where record linking was done and other preparation of the data was completed.
| Project start date: 2000-09 | Project end date: 2009-10 |
Subject domains:
Era(s):
Country/region(s):
| Methods used | Category |
|---|---|
| Accessibility analysis | Strategy and project management |
| Resource sharing | Communication and collaboration |
| Cataloguing and indexing | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Collating | Data analysis |
| Collocating | Data analysis |
| Content analysis | Data analysis |
| Data modelling | Data structuring and enhancement |
| Documentation | Strategy and project management |
| Record linkages | Data analysis |
| Searching and querying | Data analysis |
| Server scripting | Data publishing and dissemination |
| Textual interaction (asynchronous) | Communication and collaboration |
| Usability analysis | Strategy and project management |
| Web browser scripting | Data publishing and dissemination |
| preservation | Strategy and project management |
| General website development | Data publishing and dissemination |
| General project management | Strategy and project management |
| Use of existing digital data | Data capture |
| Manual input and transcription | Data capture |
Funding sources:
Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Content types created:
Dataset/structured data, Text
Software tools used:
MySQL, Filemaker, Oxygen XML Editor
Source material used:
Data arose from documents (manuscripts) held at a significant number of record offices and archives around England. (see list at http://www.theclergydatabase.org.uk/reference/sources.html)
Digital resource created:
The Clergy of the Church of England Database aimed to construct a relational database containing the careers of all clergymen of the Church of England between 1540 and 1835. The Database brings together evidence about clerical careers from all 27 dioceses of England and Wales, which are held at 28 diocesan repositories and 23 other archives and libraries.
Access to digital resource:
Open Access
Data Formats created:
MySQL Database; Filemaker, XML for auxilary documentation
Metadata standards employed:
Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)
Publications:
Arthur Burns, Kenneth Fincham and Stephen Taylor, ‘Counting the clergy: the CCEd and the limitations of a prosopographical tool’, in Prosopography approaches and applications. A handbook, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan (Prosopographica et Genealogica, 13, Oxford: P&G, 2007), pp. 275–89.
Arthur Burns, Kenneth Fincham and Stephen Taylor, ‘Reconstructing clerical careers: the experience of the Clergy of the Church of England Database’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 55 (2004), 726–37.
Arthur Burns, Kenneth Fincham and Stephen Taylor, ‘The historical public and academic archival research: the experience of the Clergy of the Church of England Database’, Archives, 27 (2002), 110–19.
A. Burns, ‘Collecting the Clergy’, The King’s College London Report, 10 (2002), 40–3.
Burns, ‘Collecting the Clergy’, In Touch, Autumn 2002, pp. 26–7 (King’s College London alumnus magazine).
Arthur Burns, ‘In and out of the archives: some reflections on the diocesan records of the Church of England since the Reformation’, October 2004.
Bradley, John and Harold Short (2005). “Texts into databases: the Evolving Field of New-style Prosopography” in Literary and Linguistic Computing Vol. 20 Suppl. 1:3-24.
Arthur Burns, Kenneth Fincham and Stephen Taylor, ‘Reconstructing clerical careers: the experience of the Clergy of the Church of England Database’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 55 (2004), 726–37.
Arthur Burns, Kenneth Fincham and Stephen Taylor, ‘The historical public and academic archival research: the experience of the Clergy of the Church of England Database’, Archives, 27 (2002), 110–19.
A. Burns, ‘Collecting the Clergy’, The King’s College London Report, 10 (2002), 40–3.
Burns, ‘Collecting the Clergy’, In Touch, Autumn 2002, pp. 26–7 (King’s College London alumnus magazine).
Arthur Burns, ‘In and out of the archives: some reflections on the diocesan records of the Church of England since the Reformation’, October 2004.
Bradley, John and Harold Short (2005). “Texts into databases: the Evolving Field of New-style Prosopography” in Literary and Linguistic Computing Vol. 20 Suppl. 1:3-24.
Institutions affiliated with this project:
| UK HE institutions involved: |
|---|
| King's College London |
| University of Reading |
| University of Kent |
Project staff and expertise:
| Principal staff member: | Professor Kenneth Fincham, Prof Stephen Taylor, Prof Arthur Burns |
|---|---|
| Other staff: | Computing officer(s) / Technical supporter(s), Postdoctoral researcher(s) / Research assistant(s) |
| External expertise: |
| Metadata on this arts-humanities.net record | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) of record | John Bradley |
| Title | Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCEd) |
| Record created | 2010-11-04 |
| Record updated | 2010-11-04 11:51 |
| URL of record | http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2999 |
| Citation of record | John Bradley: Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCEd). <http://www.arts-humanities.net/node/2999> created: 2010-11-04, last updated 2010-11-04 11:51 |