The Portal
The Portal
The Beta-Version of the Prize Papers Portal is now online. The first collection presented are 55 fully digitized “Case Books” of the HCA 45 collection: volumes of printed court papers documenting appeals brought before the Appeal Court from the High Court of Admiralty in London and the Vice-Admiralty Courts in the British colonies between 1793 and 1815.
All digital records and the metadata available on the portal are created in the context of close collaboration between Oldenburg, London and Göttingen. The documents are recorded, sorted, catalogued and preserved by the team at The National Archives, UK, and then digitized by the project photographers there. The images and information are sent on a daily basis to the Oldenburg team, which collects basic information and more in-depth metadata and continually identifies new document types. The underlying data model was developed together with IT experts at the VZG, who are also responsible for the technical implementation of the portal.
Search Options for HCA 45
HCA 45 can be accessed in different ways. In general, it is possible to read through each case book online or to download it. Altogether, you will find 57.000 pages from 55 Case Books to browse through. It is also possible to search by subject and keyword and, additionally, you can refine your search by using various techniques to narrow or broaden your search results. In this beta version of the portal you will be able to:
· search for ships which were captured
· search for ships which were captors
· search for a specific capture
· search for a specific court case
· search by date, time and place
· search for documents related to a specific court case
· search for ships and court cases by the captains/masters of the involved ships
Furthermore, it is already possible to limit the range of your search results within ships or court cases even more by adding further criteria, such as ladings or nationalities, to your search. The information will be gradually completed.
Christina Beckers explains some of the options for HCA 45 in the portal (beta-version):