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University rescues Domesday project
Dec 2 2002
By Staff Reporter, Birmingham Post
A former Midland schoolboy has helped solve the puzzle of how to access the BBC's Domesday project after it was stored on an outdated technology medium inaccessible on today's computers.
David Greenwell, originally from Shrewsbury, was part of a team from Leeds University charged with the task of accessing the project developed by the BBC to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the 1086 Domesday book.
It formed a social snapshot of life in the UK during the mid-Eighties and featured about a million people around the UK.
These included photographers, journalists, academics and researchers, Ordnance Survey map-makers and statisticians at the UK Census bureau.
It also contains video clips from the BBC and ITV companies, schoolchildren at 10,000 schools and other members of the public.
All the information was recorded on two virtually indestructible interactive videodiscs that could be accessed using a special BBC microcomputer system.
But the videodiscs far outlived the computer system, without which they proved useless.
Now researchers working as part of the CAMiLEON project - based at Leeds University and the University of Michigan, in the United States - say they have cracked the problem.
They have developed software which emulates the obsolete BBC computer and videodisc player on which the original system worked. Student Mr Greenwell, yesterday recalled devoting hours to the BBC Domesday project when he was an infant school pupil in the 1980s.
The 24-year-old, who is currently writing up a Chemistry PhD at Leeds University, said he has always wondered what happened to the work he put in with fellow pupils at the Woodfield County Infants School, in Shrewsbury.
"When I was in year three we did lots of work towards the project - social history about the time and things like that," said Mr Greenwell. "We put it all on the database.
"It was quite a big thing at the time but we never got to see what happened to everything we did. It would be very interesting to see it all now."
The CAMiLEON project has spent three years developing strategies for digital preservation and testing them with practical preservation work with materials like BBC Domesday.
Project manager Paul Wheatley said: "BBC Domesday has become a classic example of the dangers facing our digital heritage.
"Our work has demonstrated that techniques like emulation can provide successful routes to preservation, even with incredibly complex resources like BBC Domesday."
Estimates have varied on how much the database cost to put together but some people have put it at more than £3 million.
