This short work is intended to complement and extend two earlier publications. The first of these is a manual on Reconstructing Historical Communities (1977). In that work we surveyed community studies in history and social sciences. We described, with transcripts, twelve major types of document, and then gave a preliminary inventory of the major sources available to an English local historian. We set out a method of hand-indexing such material, with suggestions on how to locate, transcribe and index it. We assessed in a preliminary way the quality of the data in relation to a specific source, place, family and individual. We discussed the use of such material in relation to physical background, economic life, population studies, social structure, law, politics, education and religion. Finally we assessed some of the difficulties and defects of local records: the problems of record loss* of ambiguities and fictions in the records, the difficulties of linking together different pieces of information, of inferring motivation from behaviour, of studying a particular place given the high degree of mobility and of the invisibility of certain sections of the population. We concluded by providing some estimates of the amount of time and energy required to collect and index the records.

Subsequently we decided to publish full transcripts of all the records for one English parish up to 1750. With the indexes, this would have meant a nine-thousand-page publication, prohibitively costly to produce in ordinary book form. We therefore collaborated with Chadwyck-Healey Ltd in producing a computer-output microfiche edition of the records for a tenth of the price.