Digital Library Stats

Records: 3,293
Total Words: 1,194,463
Unique Words: 36,424

Digital Library Design

The metadata, coding, and other downloads and resources for HRDL is available on our GitHub page: https: //github.com/HumanRemainsDL/HRDL.

Most of our extracts are taken from longer sources because we are focused on passages referring to archaeological exhumation, the investigation of human remains, or reburial since the 7th century AD in Britain, in whatever capacity it may be mentioned. Some of our extracts are only short ‘passing references’ while others are more substantial ‘anecdotal’ pieces or lengthy ‘detailed accounts’. While the majority of our extracts are about people, places, and events in England, Scotland, and Wales, we also have a small number of examples from beyond Britain which were either used as source material for writers in Britain or were events mentioned in British accounts.

This means The Human Remains Digital Library is the first historical collection of material relating to the management of human remains in Britain from the early medieval period through to the end of the Victorian era. It has extracts from a wide variety of genres, forms of writing, and media, spanning thirteen centuries of history. It reveals for the first time the complex attitudes towards different types of burials over time and around Britain; from saints and royals to military members, ordinary people, criminals and more.

We have made no attempt to comment on whether these accounts are real, imagined, or embellished, and in many cases, this is simply not possible to determine conclusively. We are more interested in how people in the past expressed their hopes, ideals, or fears about the treatment of buried human remains. Accounts that might be deemed (semi-)fictional are thus just as useful as those supposed to report real events.

The extracts in our library have been sourced from a number of archives, libraries, and repositories. Most of these are digital collections and the extracts are from documents that are out of copyright or under Creative Commons Licence. We have also included extracts taken from physical documents as well, providing the first digital version. We do not provide the original full text as it usually contains significant amounts of irrelevant information for this project. However, the bibliographic entry for each extract allows users to find the original sources themselves.

Where an extract was not available in modern English, we have translated the extract ourselves and the translator is credited in the library. Wherever possible, we have avoided altering or editing extracts sourced from Modern English editions, preserving the spelling of proper nouns, punctuation, etc. as appears in the original edition. Extracts sourced from Early Modern English editions and those that the project has translated have been modernised in accordance with current British English spelling and grammatical conventions. When necessary, we have inserted within square brackets ‘[ ]’ the proper name(s) of locations or individuals directly referenced in wider context of a source but missing from the extract.

All place names reflect officially recognised modern day settlements or areas. Users interested in spelled variations or specific sites (e.g. ‘St Martin’ or ‘St Mary’ in Beverley) will be able to use the Site Name filter option and keyword search to find relevant extracts. Personal names have also been standardised to match recognised forms (as would be found through a standard Wikipedia or Google search) to make searching easier and consistent.

To make the texts easier to find, search, and filter, we have included metadata for every extract in the library. The metadata are based on Dublin Core, which is a recognised international standard for creating digital material, but we have also included additional metadata fields of our own to link texts together and make searching the contents of the extracts more intuitive and meaningful for our users.

Our core design philosophy is to encourage users to explore extracts that they might not otherwise have considered. We are particularly proud of the Random sorting option on our main library search page serving as the default setting, and hope this will whet users’ curiosity for unanticipated explorations of the corpus. Our exploratory ‘rabbithole research’ approach is intended to emulate the experience of browsing through shelves in a physical library, where intriguing snippets can open up new ideas for potential investigation.

Findable

You can look up places, dates, people, or topics using simple search boxes and filters. These were standardised to minimise ambiguity and help users find unrelated records in a single search. The team cleaned and indexed texts so that even old or foreign-language accounts can be found quickly. HRDL records are indexed with globally recognised Dublin Core metadata, mapped to CIDOC CRM (an industry-standard cultural heritage ontology), making HRDL records both easy for people to understand and easy for machines to discover and link. These metadata fields are published on an independent GitHub repository to help them be discovered by people and machines. Each sub corpus is downloadable for free and has a DOI so it can be reliably cited and discovered. When you type in the search boxes, HRDL suggests matching names drawn from the library so you can pick exact entries without guessing spellings. A single free text search box works alongside a side menu of filters (site, date range, language, sub corpus, evidence type) so users can combine broad searches with precise filtering. Cleaned, regularised full text records are indexed for free text search and the standardized metadata is available on GitHub to support harvesting and long term discovery.

Accessible

Many medieval and foreign-language passages are translated into modern British English and the website is built for everyday users, so anyone can read and use the information without specialist training. HRDL content is published under an open Creative Commons licence (per UKRI requirements). Full text records are provided as plain text (.txt) files to maximise compatibility and long term readability. Sub corpora are available for free download from GitHub and each package carries a DOI to support long term access and citation. Every record includes the original bibliographic entry and notes the original language so users can locate and consult the original version. HRDL’s search and indexing facility accounts for historic spelling variants and multilingual sources so searches return relevant results across different periods and languages. The side menu filters also helps users find records relating to key themes or data even if that information was only implied or not clearly stated in the full text.

Interoperable

HRDL’s records are organised with common metadata (Dublin Core) and an established heritage ontology (CIDOC CRM) so other museums, archives, or conservation systems can understand and reuse the data easily but also make it user-friendliness for non-specialists as well. The metadata uses established vocabularies from the Library of Congress, FISH, and the Portable Antiquities Scheme, meaning the search language is familiar to specialist users and enabling straightforward integration with other heritage and research systems. The metadata structure and mappings are fully documented and available on GitHub so other systems and developers can interpret and reuse HRDL data without ambiguity.

Reusable

Each HRDL entry includes cleaned text, translations, dates, and source details so people can rely on the information for planning repairs, reburials, exhibitions, or research. Sources have been re OCRed, cleaned with bespoke pipelines, spelling normalised to Modern English where appropriate, and translated when necessary. Our processes and editorial decisions are available in a free publication (Nugent, R, Butler, J, Cahilly-Bretzin, G, Daubney, A, Farrow, TJ, Foster, K, Gribomont, I and Hopwood, L (2026) ‘Building The Human Remains Digital Library (HRDL)’ Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3813803"). All material is released under a Creative Commons licence and every bespoke metadata value is documented to enable confident reuse. DOIs for the project, the HRDL itself, and each sub corpus, together with published metadata on GitHub and full-text records including original bibliographic citations, ensure records can be cited and traced back to their sources.

Digital Library Status

Planned updates and work-in-progress

• Image bank incorporated

Images

The images that feature in the library are hosted elsewhere or on the website of their original copyright holder. Rights information provided were accurate when added to the digital library, but users should always confirm the latest copyright status before seeking to use images elsewhere. Image records and titles begin: ‘[IMG]:’.

Copyright

Whilst all effort has been made to comply with UK Copyright law with regards to the records held in this digital library, if you believe any extract is in violation of such, please contact remains@liverpool.ac.uk