London Lives is an interactive record of the crime, poverty and social policies in London during the years 1690 and 1800. It includes a fully digitized set of manuscripts and printed pages, both in script and photos, regarding specific aspects of the London society, as well as information for many of the important individuals named in the documents. In digitizing this collection, this DH project brings history to the fingertips of the public. The About Page states that the purpose of researching how individual Londoners engaged with the institutions of their society is to “assess the role of plebeians in the evolution of social practices in the modern metropolis.”
The sources consist of 240,000 manuscripts and printed pages from eight different archives in London. It also includes the datasets from fifteen other projects about London and its individuals. The data collected was chosen with the research initiative in mind. Digitization was a parameter in choosing their data as well, considering the team knew from the start this would be a digital project. An example of the data, taken from the site, is below:
While this project is the type typically undertaken by those in academia, the digitization of the data allows the public, especially those not in academia, to link together the records on Londoners at the time, thus allowing anyone to understand the implications of how these individuals shaped the institutions of their society. The project team needed to organize the documents by the document type (where it came from) and then the date within each specific type of document. While this organization falls into process, it can also be characterized as presentation because the team chose to represent their data in this way on their website as well. The project team also did outside research and analysis to provide context about the documents. The project team also tagged the documents for use with keywords to link documents and individuals for use in the search bar later
After the compilation of data and reorganization of data, the project team formatted the website as an interactive encyclopedia. They presented photos of the document itself (primary source) and the information from the page next to it, with linked names to jump from link to link. The project prides itself on the application of a search bar, which finds all related information. The sources are provided at the bottom of the webpages so curious users can continue their quest for information.
(The project can be found at www.londonlives.org.)