Reviews

Article in Past and Present (August 2004): “...massive documentation and an excellent bibliography...”

“...a genuine database...superior, in most ways, to Alecto’s Digital Domesday Book when it comes to searching and retrieving data.”

“generates table after table of useful and interesting information sorted according to the needs and aims of the user.”

“[a] series of queries [that] would take weeks to answer...can be done, start to finish, in about half an hour with Phillimore’s Domesday Explorer.”

“...a tremendous boon to both scholars and their students, and it will be used by all historians who find themselves as ‘shamefully’ interested as William the Conqueror was in finding ‘every last ox, cow, and pig’ in the England of 1086.”

Comments from AHRC evaluation reports:"This project will provide the definitive electronic edition of Domesday Book"

"It will make the Domesday text accessible to the best modern standards"

It "will be the definitive foundation for future research"

It "will benefit not just professional historical research but also teaching in Higher Education and outreach to the thousands of amateur historians"

"The team is exceptionally well-qualified for the project"

The English Historical Review (2003): "a valuable research tool ..." "a useful teaching aid ..." "efficient and reliable ... a tremendous boon ..." "the most radical and potentially the most useful rearrangement of the

substance" of Domesday Book since Maitland called for this work to be

done (1897). Finally, the reviewer found that the software could complete complex

tasks "which would take an experienced scholar hours if not days to

complete ... in seconds".

Visit: http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/content/118/475/130.full.pdf+html (subscription or pay per view)

Review in History Today (August 2003 ):

“...at a remarkably reasonable price Phillimores...who in 1992 produced the first comprehensive indexes of places, persons and subjects, have now provided Domesday Explorer, a CD-Rom which brings to fruition the pioneering computer work of John Palmer at Hull University...”

“...a fascinating and exciting experience and makes this great historical record amazingly attractive and potentially of great value in the classroom as well as at home.”

Visit: http://www.historytoday.com/robert-dunning/domesday-book (requires subscription to History Today)

British Computer Society Medals (2002):

The Domesday Explorer software has recently been awarded a medal by the

British Computer Society. These medals are awarded annually for

excellence and technical innovation in IT.

Previous winners have included several of the giants of British industry (BA, BBC, BT, IBM, OUP, etc), several of whom were again among the medallists of 2002.

Visit: http://www.bcs.org/content/conWebDoc/1935

Times Educational Supplement:Domesday Explorer plays to the strengths of the medium, making the most of its vast storage capacity and almost instant searching potential ... CD-Rom is the ideal format for Domesday Book.”

Visit: https://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=327338

Review by David Roffe:Domesday Explorer "claims to be able to produce any type of Domesday you please. From what I have seen, this is no idle boast".

In Domesday Explorer, the "coding is undoubtedly comprehensive" and "the unforeseen is catered for".

Domesday Explorer "not only provides rapid access thanks to its coding, but excellent reporting capabilities:

its graphical interface facility alone promises radical new insights into the Domesday data".

Visit http://www.roffe.co.uk/dbdatabases.htm