This readme file was generated on 2026-03-10 by Mark Towsey

GENERAL INFORMATION

Title of Dataset: Eighteenth-Century Libraries Online

Author/Principal Investigator Information
Name: Mark Towsey
ORCID: 0000-0003-3966-9812
Institution: University of Liverpool
Address: 9 Abercromby Square, Liverpool, L69 7WZ
Email: towsey@liverpool.ac.uk

Co-Author Information
Name: Sophie Jones
ORCID: 0000-0001-6655-0417
Institution: University of Liverpool
Address: 9 Abercromby Square, Liverpool, L69 7WZ
Email: Sophie.Jones@liverpool.ac.uk


- Date of data collection: 2019-2025
- Geographic location of data collection: United Kingdom; Ireland; United States of America
- Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: 
The project was funded by a grant of £842,708 from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (Project ref: AH/S007083/1), held originally between 2019 and 2022, with a non-cost extension through to 2024. A Research Associateship awarded by the Modern Humanities Research Association supported an additional postdoctoral researcher on the project at 0.5FTE in 2022-23. Two collaborative doctoral studentships (one funded by the AHRC’s North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership and one funded by the ESRC’s North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership), both in partnership with the Liverpool Athenaeum, were associated with the project between 2022 and 2025. Further funding for data enrichment and collaborative work with partners (including events, exhibitions and other impact activities) has been awarded by the University of Liverpool’s AHRC-funded Impact Acceleration Account, the Higher Education Innovation Fund, Western Sydney University’s Summer Scholarship Program, and the University of Liverpool’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Research Internship programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate level.


ABSTRACT

Eighteenth-Century Libraries Online is the result of a five-year Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project investigating the contribution of books to social, cultural and political change in North America and the British Isles during the eighteenth century. Our database features fully searchable membership lists, catalogues and borrowing records from libraries across the Anglophone Atlantic - featuring well over 220,000 individual records. The project uses digital techniques to capture, interpret and make freely available surviving documentary evidence relating to the books acquired and circulated by more than 80 membership subscription libraries on either side of the Atlantic. These were founded by a huge range of communities, from tiny rural settlements like Wigtown in the south-west corner of Scotland and Fredericktown on the Pennsylvanian frontier, to rapidly growing industrial centres like Belfast and Leeds, and bustling transatlantic ports like New York, Dublin, Bristol and Liverpool. 

Previous scholarship on book use at eighteenth-century subscription libraries has been severely curtailed by the location, nature and scope of extant source materials, with Paul Kaufman's study of borrowings at a single library for a single decade (Paul Kaufman, Borrowings from the Bristol Library, 1773-1784: A Unique Record of Reading Vogues (Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1960)) providing the primary reference point for more than 60 years. Library records usually remain physically associated with the community that produced them even when the institutions they documented have ceased to exist, leading to their wide geographic dispersal in often obscure local studies collections across the British Isles and North America. The difficulty of bringing together these disparate collections has meant that subscription libraries have only rarely been studied collectively in any depth, with most previous scholarship remaining largely institutional, somewhat antiquarian and often valedictory in scope.  Where detailed records of library holdings or borrowings have survived, these have proven to be extremely time-consuming to research using traditional archival practices and have therefore resisted detailed comparative analysis. By providing unprecedented access to this data, our primary aim was to help scholars and the wider public to think in new ways about the circulation, dissemination, reception and impact of new books – and the ideas they carried – in a crucial period marked by Enlightenment, Revolutions, global encounters and technological change.


SHARING/ACCESS INFORMATION

- Licenses/restrictions placed on the data: 
Our datasets are made available through a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA), which allows users to share and adapt material freely with the appropriate attribution but not for commercial purposes.

- Links to publications that cite or use the data: 
See our project website for the latest information on publications that cite or use the data: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/history/research/research-projects/eighteenth-century-libraries-online/further-reading/. 

- Links to other publicly accessible locations of the data:
(1) The user interface is accessed through our project website (https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/history/research/research-projects/eighteenth-century-libraries-online/further-reading/), or direct at https://heurist.huma-num.fr/heurist/?db=Libraries_Readers_Culture_18C_Atlantic&website=39. The simple search page allows users to browse three main types of records (libraries, agents, books) and the connections between them; the advanced search page allows users to query several different criteria simultaneously; the rankings page collates information from across the data to provide users with aggregate counts of authors, borrowers, books and libraries. Data can be downloaded from the public interface as CSV, Excel or PDF files using the download buttons wherever they appear on relevant pages of the website. 
(2) The backend is hosted by open source database platform Heurist at https://heurist.huma-num.fr/heurist/?db=Libraries_Readers_Culture_18C_Atlantic&w=all&q=sortby%3A-m. This allows registered users access to the raw data together with a series of more powerful faceted search functions. Data can be downloaded in a wide range of formats using the export function available for each result set.
The current deposit provides access to the raw data through a series of CSV files described below, each of which contain sufficient information to allow users to reassemble the connections between records of different types.

- Links/relationships to ancillary data sets: 
Where relevant, bibliographical records link to the Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) at https://datb.cerl.org/estc/. Links to further ancillary data sets are included, where relevant, for specific record types within the database (see below, data specific information for further details). 

- Was data derived from another source? Yes.
	- If yes, list source(s): 
(1) The location of physical materials (both manuscript and printed) consulted for the project is given in each ‘Library’ record within the database. 
(2) The project team used metadata from the ESTC which had previously been cleaned, enriched and sorted into works by researchers at the Computational History Group at the University of Helsinki to populate bibliographical and author records within our database. When our team members wanted to add a new holding record to the database, an automated system would look for that record within Helsinki’s enriched ESTC metadata and copy across bibliographical and author information for the edition we identified as the closest match, as well as the Helsinki team's linkages between holdings, editions and works.
(3) Before linking to the ECLO data, Helsinki's enriched ESTC metadata was processed by co-I Burrows and technical consultants Intersect, where specific entities (primarily place records, record type t12) were crossed checked and tagged against spatial ontologies developed by Burrows for his FBTEE: The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe project (https://fbtee.westernsydney.edu.au/main/)
(4) For authors, editions and works for which no match was found in Helsinki's enriched ESTC metadata, the team derived/verified relevant bibliographical data primarily from worldcat.org and authorial data from https://data.cerl.org/thesaurus/.
(5) Between 2008 and 2013, ECLO project partner the New York Society Library undertook a transcription and digitisation project on its borrowing registers dating to 1789-1805 published online as City Readers: Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library (https://cityreaders.nysoclib.org/About/Index). We were provided with access to the metadata underlying this database, which was then mapped onto ECLO data structures before being cleaned, harmonised with ECLO taxonomies and imported into our datasets. ECLO records pertaining to New York Society Library holdings and members contain unique fields used to import this data and link our database to the City Readers website.

- Recommended citation for this dataset: 
Eighteenth-Century Libraries Online <https://heurist.huma-num.fr/heurist/?db=Libraries_Readers_Culture_18C_Atlantic&website=39 >, with data of access.


DATA & FILE OVERVIEW

File List: 
- ECLOv.1-t1-record-relationship.csv
The data in this file record relationships of varying kinds (e.g. kinship, marriage, business association, place-based) between records within the database. Records in this file use Relationship Markers to connect a specified source record (an agent, record type t10) to a specified target record (either another agent record (t10) or a place record (t12)).

- ECLOv.1-t10-agent.csv
The data in this file contain biographical information on agents (i.e. individuals) within the database, including authors, library members and their family members and associates. Records in this file can be connected to other agent records (t10) or place records (t12) by  Relationship Markers (t1). Records in this file can be connected to place records (t12) by Record Pointers. Records in this file can act as Parent records for the following record types: education event (t82), religious affiliation (t81), profession (t54), membership (t84), participation in association (t90) and life event (t48).

- ECLOv.1-t12-place.csv
The data in this file contain information on geographical locations, including library locations, places of publication and agent birthplaces.

- ECLOv.1-t48-life-event.csv
The data in this file provide information on life events (e.g. marriages, births, deaths) associated with specific agents. Records in this file are Child records linked to specific agent records (record type t10).

- ECLOv.1-t54-profession.csv
The data in this file provide information on agents' professional activities and occupations. Records in this file are Child records linked to specific agent records (record type t10). See separate file for the hierarchical relationships between standardised occupations and occupational areas.

- ECLOv.1-taxonomy1-occupations.csv
The data in this file provide details of the taxonomy adopted by the ECLO team to describe agents' occupations, as described in below in data specific information provided for ECLOv.1-t54-profession.csv.

- ECLOv.1-t55-edition.csv
The data in this file provide bibliographical information on editions. Records in this file can be connected to agent records (t10), place records (t12) and work records (t56) by Record Pointers.

- ECLOv.1-t56-work.csv
The data in this file provide bibliographical information on works. See separate file for the book categorisation scheme adopted by the project and developed by researchers at the University of Stirling.

- ECLOv.1-taxonomy2-subject classifications.csv
The data in this file provide details of the taxonomy adopted by the ECLO team to categorise books, as described in below in data specific information provided for ECLOv.1-t56-work.csv.

- ECLOv.1-t60-key-source.csv
The data in this file provide information on documentary sources produced by eighteenth-century subscription libraries and consulted by ECLO researchers in compiling data on library books and agents. 

- ECLOv.1-t81-religious-affiliation.csv
The data in this file provide information on agents' religious affiliations. Records in this file are Child records linked to specific agent records (record type t10).

- ECLOv.1-t82-education-event.csv
The data in this file provide information on agents' educational attainments. Records in this file are Child records linked to specific agent records (record type t10).

- ECLOv.1-t83-educational-institution.csv
The data in this file provide information on educational institutions attended by agents within the database. Records in this file can be connected to place records (t12) by Record Pointers.

- ECLOv.1-t84-membership.csv
The data in this file provide information on agents' membership of libraries. Records in this file can be connected to library records (t85) by Record Pointers. Records in this file are Child records linked to specific agent records (record type t10). Records in this file are Parent records linked to specific attestation records (t93).

- ECLOv.1-t85-library.csv
The data in this file provide information on libraries within the database. Records in this file can be connected to place records (t12) and key sources records (t60) by Record Pointers.

ECLOv.1-t86-borrowing.csv
- The data in this file provide information on borrowing events. Records in this file can be connected to agent records (t10) and holding records (t94) by Record Pointers.

- ECLOv.1-t90-participation-in-association.csv
The data in this file provide information on agents' participation in cultural, social or political associations other than libraries. Records in this file can be connected to association records (t92) by Record Pointers. Records in this file are Child records linked to specific agent records (record type t10). Records in this file are Parent records linked to specific attestation records (t93).

- ECLOv.1-t92-association.csv
The data in this file provide information on cultural, social or political associations joined by agents within the database.

- ECLOv.1-t93-attestation.csv
The data in this file provides information on the key source that attests to a specific agent's participation in an association or library membership. Records in this file are Child records linked to specific membership records (t84) or specific participation-in-association records (t90).

- ECLOv.1-t94-holding.csv
The data in this file provides information on books held by libraries, as listed in their institutional records. Records in this file can be connected to edition records (t55), library records (t85) and key source records (t60) by Record Pointers.

- ECLOv.1-t97-ruleset.csv
The data in this file provides information on rulesets adopted by specified libraries. Records in this file can be connected to library records (t85) by Record Pointers.

- ECLOv.1-t98-rule-(article).csv
The data in this file provides rules transcribed from institutional library records. Records in this file can be connected to ruleset records (t97) and rule-category records (t99) by Record Pointers.

- ECLOv.1-t99-rule-category.csv
The data in this file provides thematic categories to describe and group together individual rules.

- Relationship between files, if important: 
Every record within the database is assigned a unique identified (H-ID). This is used to link records to records of other types. The submitted data organises relationships between files in three different ways:
- Record Pointers link records of one type to records of another type;
- Relationship Markers constrain the types of record that can be linked, the number of records that can be linked and the types of relationships that can be described in each link;
- Child Records can only be created within a Parent record and should not exist independently of their Parent record.

- Additional related data collected that was not included in the current data package: 
All raw data is included in the current data package. We have excluded blogs, exhibitions and other aspects of the backend/public interface which involved our own analysis or interpretation.

- Are there multiple versions of the dataset? 
No, though the project remains live and further updates will be collated and deposited on an annual basis on or around 1 February.


METHODOLOGICAL INFORMATION

Description of methods used for collection/generation of data:
The project used institutional records (both manuscript and printed) to collect evidence for membership, collecting habits and book borrowing at membership subscription libraries across North America and the British Isles between 1731 and 1800, aiming to cover as much surviving material as possible. This includes details of specific books borrowed by named individuals at the handful of libraries for which borrowing records survive, together with catalogue and membership records for around 80 further libraries, as well as additional information about books, authors, library members and their wider social and family networks. It is important to remember that not all of this information survives for every library. Where a library has 0 members associated with it and/or 0 borrowing events in the deposited datasets, this does not mean that it had no members and/or never lent any books; rather, it indicates that we lack this information, usually because surviving documents relating to this library do not provide lists of members or book borrowings. Every library record in the database links to original sources used in compiling data on that specific library, including manuscript material and where that is held. These original sources are described in ECLOv.1-t60-key-source.csv.

The project adopted the following methodological principles for specific kinds of evidence/entity:
- LIBRARIES: The database deals specifically with subscription libraries, variously called proprietary libraries, library companies, union libraries, public libraries or, particularly in North America, social libraries. The defining feature of these libraries was that they were membership libraries, each of which charged an entrance fee and an annual membership fee (or subscription) for a shared stake in the library’s management, access to its collections, and (often) joint ownership of the library’s books and material collections. 

Public libraries as we would recognise them today – taxpayer-funded, and providing books without charge to the whole community – did not exist until the mid-nineteenth century. Before then, books could be borrowed from many different sources including cathedrals, churches, chapels and other religious communities; schools and universities; specialist professional libraries operated by lawyers, medics and others; commercial circulating libraries, which rented out books by the day, week or month without requiring membership; and charitably endowed libraries, such as Marsh’s Library in Dublin, Chetham’s Library in Manchester, and The Library of Innerpeffray near Crieff. Permanent membership libraries of the kind showcased in our database often grew out of more informal book clubs or reading societies, in which books typically circulated through the membership by rotation and were auctioned off (or shared out amongst members) at the end of each year. It was also quite common at this time for book owners to lend out their books to relations, friends, neighbours and the wider community (including, in some documented cases, domestic servants and estate workers). 

The database does not currently contain data relating to book use at any of these other types of library, with the exception of a small sample of commercial circulating libraries (clearly marked within the data) which were used to gauge whether ECLO's approach for subscription libraries could be adapted to ingest surviving evidence relating to the holdings of these libraries.

- BOOKS: The project used a hierarchical structure to describe and organise books. This consists of four levels – works (defined by professional bibliographers as a “distinct intellectual or artistic creation”, such as Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire);  editions (defined as “the specific intellectual or artistic form that a work takes each time it is ‘realised’”, such as the 2nd edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall); holdings (or the precise copy of an edition held by one of our libraries); and volumes (which form part of a multi-volume holding). Borrowing records are linked to specific volumes, to show which volumes of that library’s holding were borrowed; for that reason, we created separate holding records for each volume of a multi-volume set held by a library for which borrowing records survive, but where borrowing evidence is lacking we simply created a single holding record to describe a multi-volume set in its entirety (with the number of volumes specified in the relevant fields of the holding record). For example, at a library with borrowing records (such as Burlington or Hatborough), the library's copy of a 6-volume edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall is recorded as six separate holdings associated with specific numbered volumes; at a library without borrowing records, the same 6-volume edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall is recorded as a single holding. An additional holding was added if it was not possible for ECLO researchers to identify precisely which volume out of a multi-volume set had been borrowed. This means that, when aggregating data, future users need to be very careful not to assume that the total account for 'holdings' represents the total number of books in the database; for libraries with borrowing records, the total number of holdings generally represents the total number of individual volumes held by the library (across single and multi-volume works); for libraries without borrowing records, the total number of holdings generally represents the total number of separate titles held by the library (whether single or multi-volume titles). Note that a holding can also link to more than one edition, to allow for contemporary library records that showed that two or more editions were bound together in a single volume; the team ticked the 'composite volume' field for holdings record where there was the case.

Subscription library catalogues do not follow modern, professional cataloguing standards – they often left out crucial details (e.g. publication place and date) or presented incorrect (and sometimes erroneous) information which has made the task of linking a specific holding to a specific, verifiable edition of a work challenging and occasionally impossible. Holding records contain a field indicating how confident the team are in identifying a holding with a specific edition. 

We used metadata from the ESTC which had previously been cleaned, enriched and sorted into works by researchers at the Computational History Group at the University of Helsinki to populate most of the bibliographical and author records within our database and to link holdings to authors, editions and works. When our team members added a new holding record to the ECLO database, an automated system built within Heurist would look for that record within Helsinki’s enriched ESTC metadata and copy across bibliographical information (including biographical information on authors) for the edition we identified as the closest match. This allowed to us populate bibliographical and author information and formal linkages between holdings, editions and works, dramatically increasing the speed of data entry and allowing us to cover much more ground than would otherwise have been possible.

For holdings that did not match with any edition within ESTC (generally foreign language imprints or 'lost' English-language editions for which no surviving copies survive, the latter of which are missing from ESTC), the team first searched for English-language editions of the same work already in ECLO and ESTC; where these existed, the team built edition records from scratch and linked these to existing ESTC author and work records. Where ESTC lacked any English-language edition of the corresponding work, the team built edition/work/author records and holding/edition/work hierarchies from scratch, wherever possible linking edition records to worldcat.org and author records to the CERL thesaurus. Peter Garside, James Raven and Rainer Schowerling (eds.), The English Novel 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles Volume 1: 1770-1799 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) proved invaluable for 'lost' English novels of this period, cited as Garside, Raven and Schowerling; where necessary, the notes field provides further information on the decisions taken by the team. Holdings/editions/works are ascribed 'unidentified' when the source records were illegible.  

- BOOK CLASSIFICATION: Categorising eighteenth-century books is a complicated process, not least because many of the modern disciplines – such as History, Literature and the Social Sciences – that underpin modern library classification systems (such as Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress) did not coalesce until at least the mid-nineteenth century. Before then, there was considerable fluidity in form and genre, with some works pointing in several different ways at the same time. Yet we recognised at an early stage that users would want to be able to compare and contrast circulation patterns between different types of books – between Fiction and Non-Fiction, for example, or to trace long-term trends within specific genres (Sermons, for example, or Drama). We therefore adopted the taxonomy developed by our friends and colleagues at Books and Borrowing 1750-1830: An Analysis of Scottish Borrowers’ Registers (https://borrowing.stir.ac.uk), which suited our needs well and had the additional benefit of facilitating interoperability between our two datasets from the outset. For further discussion, see “Some Notes on Book Hierarchies and Genre Classification” by our Co-Investigator Professor Matthew Sangster (linked from the main project website), who held a similar role on Books and Borrowing and provided a formal hinge between the two projects. This taxonomy is provided in ECLOv.1-taxonomy2-subject classifications.csv, and was applied to all work level records within the database.

- BORROWINGS: The database allows comparison across two fundamentally different kinds of book event – library catalogues (which record when a library held a specific book, but say nothing about how frequently – or otherwise – that book might have been borrowed) and borrowing records. In recording borrowing events, each volume is treated as a separate item; this follows contemporary institutional practices, whereby borrowers were usually allowed to borrow one or two volumes at a time, rather than borrowing entire multi-volume sets in one go. Thus if a single reader borrowed every volume of a 6-volume set of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, this was entered as six separate borrowing records. To mitigate the potential skew in the data towards multi-volume sets, when conducting aggregated analyses, users are strongly recommended to count 'unique borrowers' for each work as well as overall number of 'borrowing events' in which which that work appeared.

- AGENTS: Although some library members were significant historical personalities about whom very detailed biographical information is readily available (such as Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, both members of the New York Society Library in the 1790s), library subscribers tended to be fairly ordinary people – merchants, manufacturers, artisans, farmers, clergymen, lawyers, doctors, middle ranking military officers and their families – who did not necessarily leave very many traces in the documentary record. With historical information on the vast majority of library members being difficult and often exceptionally challenging to track down, relying on meticulous and time-consuming research in archival repositories and genealogical resources, there were limits to how much we could find out during the original three years of funding. The project team therefore made the difficult decision from the outset to prioritise biographical research for those libraries with whom we were partnering and for those libraries for which borrowing records survive; our approach to this detailed biographical research (including reference materials used to identify individuals) is detailed in our project website and accompanying publications. For other libraries, we sought as a minimum to collate the names of library members (where given in institutional records) and to present biographical information provided in library documentation (which usually includes prefixes and suffixes, and sometimes provides occupations), while also undertaking systematic searches for named individuals within contemporary commercial directories where these are available.

- OCCUPATIONS: Historical occupations are notoriously difficult to pin down, and we wanted to describe our library members’ occupations in a way that was as useful as possible to future scholars. We therefore developed a taxonomy (ECLOv.1-taxonomy1-occupations.csv) to describe occupations in three related ways. “Attested Occupation” reflects how library members described themselves in library records, or how they were described (or “attested”) in contemporaneous documentation – whether that be in printed subscriber lists attached to published library catalogues or in contemporary city directories. To account for the considerable variety (and creativity) with which members’ occupations were described by contemporaries, we have sorted all of these into a set of “Standardised Occupations”, which allow users to analyse membership and borrowing patterns across individuals who shared broadly similar occupations – however they chose to describe those occupations. Finally, we have organised these “Standardised Occupations” into one of 14 “Occupational Areas”, which are pots designed to bring together individuals who were operating within the same economic sectors (broadly defined) allowing comparison between individuals who worked in “Law” with those who worked in “Health and Medicine”, and those who worked in “Commerce, Trade and Finance” with those work worked in “Education” or in the “Agricultural” sector. To facilitate interoperability once again, we collaborated closely with our friends and colleagues at Books and Borrowing 1750-1830: An Analysis of Scottish Borrowers’ Registers (at the University of Stirling) to ensure that our approach was as robust and useful as possible.


Methods for processing the data:
The data was collated and processed within Heurist (http://HeuristNetwork.org), an Open Source online database builder and CMS publisher designed for Humanities research data. Heurist is written in PHP and JavaScript, on top of a fixed MySQL/MariaDB data structure. All Heurist databases have the same underlying MySQL structure, as the schema of the domain is encoded directly in the database as editable data. Entities (record types), fields, vocabularies and terms are defined through data within the database rather than being hardcoded in the software or database structure. Heurist uses a key-value pair approach linked to a primary data table instantiating typed entities, allowing variant data structures and repeating value fields (0 or 1 ..1..m cardinality) with maintained order. Relationships between entities are implemented as record pointer fields (equivalent to a Foreign Key) and Relationship Marker fields (constraining the creation of relationship records linking any two records/entities). The database was populated through form-based data entry and through CSV import via Heurist's inbuilt wizard which matches existing records and normalises data by extracting and linking entities based on selected columns. For developers, Heurist source code is available under GNU GPL from the GitHub repository at https://github.com/HeuristNetwork/heurist and can be installed on any LAMP server, including virtual servers in the NeCTAR Research cloud, Amazon AWS and virtual servers from most ISPs. It has also been successfully installed on Windows servers.

The submitted data were generated from Heurist's export function, based on filtered subsets of the database. Each of the primary data files within the submission represents a separate filtered subset containing complete records for each of the 21 entities (or record types). Two additional taxonomy files (listed above) show how the team defined book classifications and agent occupations. While this submission contains only raw datasets (sufficient to reconstruct the data and the relationships between them), a complete HML package (including analytical tools and interpretative materials) can be exported directly from Heurist.

Instrument- or software-specific information needed to interpret the data:
N/A

People involved with sample collection, processing, analysis and/or submission:
- Mark Towsey (Principle Investigator, 2019-2025)
- Sophie H. Jones (Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2019-2024)
- Max Skjönsberg (Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2019-2021)
- Rita Dashwood (MHRA-funded Postdoctoral Research Associate, 2022-2023)
- Joshua J. Smith (Predoctoral Research and Impact Associate, 2024)
- Lucy Moynihan (AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Student, 2022-2025)
- Lois Wignall (ESRC-funded CASE Doctoral Student, 2022-2025)
- Angie Sutton-Vane (Project Manager, 2019-2021)
- Coinvestigators: Simon Burrows (Western Sydney University, 2019-2025), Rachel Hendery (Western Sydney University, 2019-2021), Robert Mailhammer (Western Sydney University, 2023-25), Laura Miller (University of West Georgia, 2019-2025), Kyle B. Roberts (formerly of Loyola University Chicago and the American Philosophical Society; now of Congregational Library and Archives, 2019-2025), Matthew Sangster (University of Glasgow, 2019-25), Norbert Schürer (California State University (Long Beach), 2019-2025) and Lynda Yankaskas (Muhlenberg College, 2019-2025)
- Student interns: Ali Dodds, Elle Donnelly, Harriet Gray, Betty Giannini, Lucy Jones, Kay McGregor, Lucy Moynihan, Emily Parkes, Anna Probert, James Smart, Eloise Smith, Julian Walker and Lois Wignall.
- Software development and technical support: Ian Johnson, Michael Falk, Maël le Noc and all of the team at Heurist; Darshan Nagavara, Craig Hamilton and all of the team at Intersect Australia.
- External collaborators: Katie Halsey and all of the Books and Borrowing 1750-1830: An Analysis of Scottish Borrowers’ Registers team at the Universities of Stirling and Glasgow; Mikko Tolonen and the Computational History Group at the University of Helsinki.
- Project partners: Birmingham & Midland Institute, Bristol Central Library, Library Company of Burlington, Library Company of Philadelphia, Linen Hall, Belfast, Liverpool Athenaeum, Liverpool Central Library, New York Society Library, Union Library of Hatboro and State Library of New South Wales.


DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t1-record-relationship.csv]

- Number of variables: 10
- Number of cases/rows: 1087
- Variable List: 
Record relationship H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical
Record relationship Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 
Record relationship rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 1
Record relationship rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'Record-Relationship'
Record relationship rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY
Record relationship rec_Modified - last date record modified, DD/MM/YYYY
Record relationship rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical
Source record - pointer to source record, record pointer -> t10
Relationship type - Relationship type, term list
Target record - pointer to target record, record pointer -> t10 or t12
Start date/time - start of relationship, not used
End date/time - end of relationship, used once
Short description - further details used once

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t10-agent.csv]

- Number of variables: 65
- Number of cases/rows: 15636
- Variable List: 
Agent H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Agent Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately
Agent rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 10	
Agent rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'Agent'
Agent rec_Added	- date record added, DD/MM/YYYY
Agent rec_Modified - last date record modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Record relationship rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical
Standardised agent name	- name of agent taking the form [family name, given name]
Agent type (individual/group) - individual or group	
Family name - family name of agent, free text box	
Given name(s) - given name(s) of agent, free text box, repeatable
Prefix (Title or Honorific) - prefix, term list, repeatable
Suffix to name - suffix, term list, repeatable
Suffix 2 - suffix, term list, used infrequently	
Alternate name(s) - alternate name(s), free text (used primarily for aristocratic titles), repeatable	
ESTC name unified - author name imported from ESTC metadata enriched by Helsinki	
ESTC actor ID - unique author identifier used to import agents from ESTC metadata enriched by Helsinki
NYSL Reader ID - unique ID used to import agents from NYSL City Readers
NYSL Reader Identifier - unique ID used to import agents from NYSL City Readers	
Birth date (temporal) - date of birth where known, YYYY/MM/DD (often simply YYYY)		
Death date (temporal) - date of death where known, YYYY/MM/DD (often simply YYYY)	
Period of Activity - active years, where no birth/death dates are known	
Gender - male or female
Related Person(s) (Agent) H-ID - pointer to relationship to agent record linking agent to other agents by birth, marriage or other kinds of relationships, unique identifier for relationship marker, record pointer -> t1, repeatable
Related Person(s) (Agent) Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately
Education (Education event) H-ID - pointer to education event child record, unique identifier for child record, record pointer -> t82, repeatable	
Education event Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Education event rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 82	
Education event rec_RecTypeName	Education (Education event) Record Title - description of linked record type, 'education event'	
Religious affiliation H-ID - pointer to religious affiliation child record unique identifier for child record, record pointer -> t81, repeatable
Religious affiliation Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Religious affiliation rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 81	
Religious affiliation rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'religious affiliation'		
Occupation(s) exercised (Profession) H-ID - pointer to profession child record, unique identifier for child record, record pointer -> t54, repeatable
Profession Record Title	- constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately
Profession rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 54	
Profession rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'profession'				
Main places of operation H-ID - pointer to place or address out of which the agent operated, unique identified for linked record, record pointer -> t12, repeatable	
Place Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Place rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 12	
Place rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'place'	
Relationships to Place H-ID - pointer to relationships to place, unique identifier for relationship marker, record pointer -> t12, repeatable	
Place Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Place rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 12	
Place rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'place'		
Library membership(s) H-ID - pointer to library membership child record, unique identifier for child record, record pointer -> t84, repeatable	
Membership Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately
Membership rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 84	
Membership rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'membership'	
Association Membership (Participation in association) H-ID - pointer to association membership child record, unique identifier for child record, record pointer -> t90, repeatable
Participation in association Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Participation in association rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 90	
Participation in association rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'participation in association'		
Other life events H-ID - pointer to other life event child record, unique identifier for child record, record pointer -> t48, repeatable		
Life event Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Life event rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 48	
Life event rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'life event'				
CERL-ID - unique identifier for this agent used by CERL Thesaurus (https://data.cerl.org/thesaurus/)	
UCL Identifying Number - unique identifier for this agent used by UCL's Legacies of British Slavery database (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/search/)
Associated Slave Voyages - unique identifier for Slave Voyages database (https://www.slavevoyages.org) used where ECLO researchers have identified agent with one or more slave voyages, repeatable
Agent Class - identifies agent as library member or author, term list [author, libmember], repeatable	
Biographical information - further information collected by research team, free text box
Summary (for public lists) - further information collected by research team, free text box
Confidence indicator - indicates researchers' level of confidence in identification of agent, term list [1. Full confidence, 2. Highly likely, 3. Likely, 4. Possible, 5. Indeterminate]	
Confidence notes - further information on confidence rating for identification of agent, free text box

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t12-place.csv]

- Number of variables: 24
- Number of cases/rows: 1564
- Variable List: 
Place H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Place Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Place rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 12	
Place rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'place'
Place rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY
Place rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Place rec_AddedByUGrpID	- unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Name (city, town, village) - Name of place as it appears in documents concerning library, as in the geographic community (City, Town, Village) where an agent or association or institution is based or an event takes place. Separate fields exist for recording street addresses.
Alternative names - free text, rarely used	
Place type - description of place type, term list	
Location (mappable) - Geospatial location(s) to which this record relates. Use for simple mapping where locations are identified by coordinates rather than names. For records imported from FBTEE, this replaces the FBTEE fields "Latitude" and "Longitude".	
Short description / notes - further information provided by ECLO researchers, free text box	
FBTEE place name - name for place in FBTEE data, free text box
ESTC place name - ESTC place name in field 'Source_752d ESTC place name' in Helsinki place data, free text box
ESTC place ID - This is the UID taken from the 'Place ID' field from the ESTC place data as supplied by Helsinki converted into alphanumeric uniform length references. Original Helsinki records were numbered 1-1223.
Region / Lower territory (18 C) - Region 18 century. FBTEE field "C18_Lower_Territory". Derived data linked to Place_Code and existing in fixed relationship to Sovereign territory, term list
Sovereign territory (18C) - Controlled set of options to describe units of sovereignty. Exist in standard relationship to place and C18 lower territories - each place having been linked to a single 'C18 lower territory' and 'C18 sovereign territory' 	
County - UK or N American county, standardised names of low level political administrative unit in Britain and British North America, term list
Country - term list
Place code (FBTEE UID) - A unique code for places derived from FBTEE field "Place_codes"
Building Name - free text box, used infrequently	
Street Number - numerical, used infrequently
Name of street - free text box, used infrequently
Suburb/District - free text box, used infrequently

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t48-life-event.csv]

- Number of variables: 21
- Number of cases/rows: 98
- Variable List: 
Life event H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical
Life event Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 
Life event rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 48	
Life event rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'life event'
Life event rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Life event rec_Modified - last date record modified, DD/MM/YYYY
Life event rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Parent entity (Agent) H-ID - unique identifier for parent record, record pointer -> t10	
Agent Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 	
Agent rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 10	
Agent rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'agent'	
Type of life event - the type of life event, term list	
Date of event - date of life event, YYYY-MM-DD
Place(s) H-ID - pointer to place where the event took place, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer -> t12, repeatable
Place Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 	
Place rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 12	
Place rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'place'
Other persons involved (Agent) H-ID - pointer to other agents involved in life event, unique identifier for target record, record pointer -> t10, repeatable
Agent Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 	
Agent rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 10
Agent rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'agent'

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t54-profession.csv]

- Number of variables: 15
- Number of cases/rows: 4921
- Variable List: 
Profession H-ID	- unique identifier for record, numerical
Profession Record Title	- constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately
Profession rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type,54	
Profession rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'profession'	
Profession rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY
Profession rec_Modified - last date record modified, DD/MM/YYYY
Profession rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Parent entity (Agent) H-ID - unique identifier for parent record, record pointer -> t10	
Agent Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Agent rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type,	10
Agent rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'agent'
Attested Occupation - The occupation of an individual as given in source materials and/or other contemporary documents (e.g. city directories), free text
Standardised Occupation - The standardised version of the attested occupation. Falls under the broader category of occupational area, term list [see separate file]
Occupational Area - The broader occupational sector that the standardised occupation falls under, term list [see separate file]
Notes - further information provided by research team, free text

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t55-edition.csv]

- Number of variables: 30
- Number of cases/rows: 16160
- Variable List: 
Edition H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Edition Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 
Edition rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 55	
Edition rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'edition'	
Edition rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY
Edition rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Edition rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical
Work code H-ID - pointer to the work (super book) of which this item is an edition, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer -> t56	
Work Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 
Work rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 55
Work rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'work'	
Standard book title - Standardised title of work as appears in ESTC or other bibliographic sources, free text box
Full edition title - Full title of edition. Only used for extended titles, free text box
Authorship (Agent) H-ID	- pointer to the author of the edition, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer -> t10, repeatable
Agent Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 	
Agent rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 10
Agent rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'agent'	
Summary publisher statement - Short publisher statement, imported from ESTC metadata enriched by Helsinki, free text box
Imprint Details - A memo field to contain the unstructured imprint data from a particular edition, regarding authorship, publishers, used infrequently, free text box	
Stated publication year - first vol - usually yyyy
Stated publication year (last vol) - usually yyyy	
Stated Publishers - This is the place as stated in the imprint, with spelling regularised where possible, used very infrequently, free text box	
Actual Publication Places H-ID - pointer to publication place, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer -> t12, repeatable
Place Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 
Place rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 12	
Place rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'place'		
ESTC ID - Edition record in the English Short Title Catalogue (https://datb.cerl.org/estc), if applicable
Book format - A dropdown field for standard codes pertaining to book formats, including some miscellaneous options, term list [2fo. folio, 4to. quarto, 8vo. octavo, 12mo. duodecimo et infra]	
Number of volumes - numerical	
Notes - free text box used to describe difficult cases or to reference non-ESTC bibliographical sources used in identifying edition and linked works/authors

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t56-work.csv]

- Number of variables: 12
- Number of cases/rows: 11651
- Variable List: 
Work H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Work Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Work rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 56	
Work rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'work'
Work rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY
Work rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Work rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical
Title - The full (or full operating) title of the work given in original language, often imported from ESTC metadata enriched by Helsinki, free text box
Full title - extended title, free text often imported from ESTC metadata enriched by Helsinki, free text box
Subject classification - subject classification added by ECLO research team, term list [see separate file]	
project record ID - unique identifier for linking to Helsinki data, generated by CoI Burrows and Intersect team
Helsinki work name - This field contains the unique name for each work identified by the Helsinki team where one has been assigned, comprising number and title

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t60-key-source.csv]

- Number of variables: 12
- Number of cases/rows: 140
- Variable List: 
Key source H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical
Key source Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 
Key source rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 60	
Key source rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'key source'	
Key source rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Key source rec_Modified	- date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY
Key source rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Key source title - title of source, free text box	
Date of key source - date of key source, YYYY-MM-DD
End date (for date range) - end date of key source (where a date range is given), YYYY-MM-DD
Source reference - archival reference for key source, free text	box
Source description - further information about the source, free text box

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t81-religious-affiliation.csv]

- Number of variables: 12
- Number of cases/rows: 272
- Variable List: 
Religious affiliation H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Religious affiliation Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Religious affiliation rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 81	
Religious affiliation rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'religious affiliation'	
Religious affiliation rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY
Religious affiliation rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Religious affiliation rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical
Parent entity (Agent) H-ID - unique identifier for parent record, record pointer -> t10	
Agent Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 
Agent rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 10	
Agent rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'agent'
Religion - an organised or identifiable religious group to which a person belongs, term list [anabaptist, Anglican-Church of England, Anglican-Church of Ireland, Baptist, buddhist, calvinist, catholic, deist, dissenter, dutch reformed church, episcopalian, episcopalian (Scotland), evangelical, hindu, huguenot, Jewish, lutheran, methodist, non-juror, presbyterian, presbyterian-Church of Scotland, protestant, quaker, roman catholic, unitarian], repeatable

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t82-education-event.csv]

- Number of variables: 20
- Number of cases/rows: 144
- Variable List: 
Education event H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Education event Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 	
Education event rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 82
Education event rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'education event'
Education event rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Education event rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Education event rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Parent entity (Agent) H-ID - unique identifier for parent record, record pointer -> t10
Agent Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 	
Agent rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 10	
Agent rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'agent'	
Institution (Educational institution) H-ID - pointer to the institution where the educational event took place, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer -> t83	
Educational institution Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Educational institution rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 83
Educational institution rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'educational institution'
Narrative / Notes - short summary, free text box	
Degree or qualification	- the degree or other qualification undertaken (not necessarily awarded), term list [BA, DD, MA, MD, PhD], repeatable
Awarded	- whether the degree or qualification was awarded, term list [no, partly, unknown, yes], repeatable
Start date - start date, YYYY, YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM-DD, repeatable	
End date - end date, YYYY, YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM-DD, repeatable

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t83-educational-institution.csv]

- Number of variables: 14
- Number of cases/rows: 32
- Variable List: 
Educational institution H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Educational institution Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Educational institution rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 83	
Educational institution rec_RecTypeName	- description of record type, 'educational institution'
Educational institution rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Educational institution rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Educational institution rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Name of institution - name of institution, free text box	
Place H-ID - pointer to the settlement in which the institution was located, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer -> t12		
Place Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Place rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type,	12
Place rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'place'
Date of foundation - date of foundation, YYYY-MM-DD	
Level of education offered - level of education offered, term list [other, pre-tertiary, primary, professional training, secondary, tertiary], repeatable

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t84-membership.csv]

- Number of variables: 24
- Number of cases/rows: 9849
- Variable List: 
Membership H-ID	- unique identifier for record, numerical
Membership Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately
Membership rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 84	
Membership rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'membership'	
Membership rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Membership rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY
Membership rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Parent entity (Agent) H-ID - unique identifier for parent record, record pointer -> t10	
Agent Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Agent rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type,	10
Agent rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'agent'
Type of membership/office held - The office held within the library, term list [auditor, chairman, chief librarian, committee member, director, founding member, honorary member, librarian, member by virtue of their office, member elect, member for life by virtue of their donations, president, secretary, sub-librarian, treasurer, trustee, vice president], repeatable
Source Type For Membership - the type of source from which membership information was derived, term list [borrowing record, City Readers dataset, committee minutes, library catalogue, library minute book, logical condition e.g. death termination, membership list, newspaper report, pamphlet, reputed to be, secondary or biographical source, shareholders register], repeatable	
Library H-ID - pointer to the library to which an agent belonged, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer -> t85	
Library Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Library rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 85	
Library rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'library'	
Attestation of membership (date) H-ID - unique identifier for child record, record pointer -> t93, repeatable
Attestation Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Attestation rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 93	
Attestation rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'attestation'
Continuous membership between attested - whether membership was continuous between two separate attestation points, where relevant, term list [no, partly, unknown, yes]	
Share Number - This is the assigned number(s) of the share(s) held by the individual, where known, numerical, repeatable	
General notes about membership - further information on membership, free text

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t85-library.csv]

- Number of variables: 35
- Number of cases/rows: 100
- Variable List: 
Library H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Library Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Library rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 85	
Library rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'library'	
Library rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Library rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Library rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Library name - main name by which the library is known, free text box	
Alternate Library Name - any other names by which the library is known, free text box, repeatable
Place H-ID - pointer to the settlement where the library is located, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer ->t12	
Place Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Place rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 12	
Place rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'place'	
Library type - category of library, term list [circulating library, subscription/social library, university library]
Date of foundation - start date, usually YYYY or YYYY-MM	
Women members? - Yes/no field to indicate whether or not library has women members	
Short summary - further information provided by ECLO researchers, free text box	
Library still in existence - whether or not library still exists, term list [1. still exists, 2. has successor, 3. no longer exists, 4. unknown]	
Closure/transition date (if applicable)	- date of closure, where known, YYYY or YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM-DD
Successor institution (if applicable) (Library) H-ID - a pointer to the institution/library which succeeded the current one, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer ->t85	
Catalogue(s) (Key source) H-ID - a pointer to a catalogue source record, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer ->t60, repeatable
Key source Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Key source rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 60
Key source rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'key source'	
Borrowing records (Key source) H-ID - a pointer to a borrowing source record, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer ->t60, repeatable
Key source Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately
Key source rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 60	
Key source rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'key source'	
C18 Collection survives? - whether the core of the collection survives intact somewhere, and in what form, term list [no, partly, unknown, yes]	
Where collection survives - term list [broken up, elsewhere, in library, in successor institution, partly, partly survived], repeatable	
Notes on surviving collections - further information provided by ECLO researchers, free text box	
Researcher Responsible - lists the team members(s) responsible for researching the data, term list, repeatable
Other sources - further information provided by ECLO researchers, free text box
Proportion of Female Members - the proportion of members who were female, calculated field

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t86-borrowing.csv]

- Number of variables: 26
- Number of cases/rows: 106170
- Variable List: 
Borrowing H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical
Borrowing Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Borrowing rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 86
Borrowing rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'borrowing'	
Borrowing rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Borrowing rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Borrowing rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Borrower (Agent) H-ID - pointer to the agent borrowing the holding, unique identifier for linked record, record-pointer ->t10	
Agent Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Agent rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 10	
Agent rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'agent'
Intermediary (Agent) H-ID - pointer used where someone borrowed the book on behalf of the borrower or the book had been borrowed for someone else, unique identifier for linked record, record-pointer ->t10
Agent Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Agent rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 10
Agent rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'agent'	
NYSL intermediary - City Readers transcription of intermediary, imported from City Readers database	
Holding borrowed H-ID - pointer to holding borrowed, unique identifier for linked record, record-pointer ->t94	
Holding Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Holding rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 94	
Holding rec_RecTypeName	- description of linked record type, 'holding'
Date of borrowing - the date when the book was borrowed, YYYY-MM-DD	
Date of renewal	- the date when the borrowing was renewed, YYYY-MM-DD, repeatable
Date or return - the date when the book was returned, YYYY-MM-DD
Item Returned? - used if item is returned but without return date being given, term list [known, unknown, yes]
Fines or charges - costs associated with rule infringements (e.g. late return of book), repeatable	
Loan notes - further information on borrowing, free text box

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t90-participation-in-association.csv]

- Number of variables: 22
- Number of cases/rows: 657
- Variable List: 
Participation in association H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Participation in association Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Participation in association rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 90	
Participation in association rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'participation in association'	
Participation in association rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Participation in association rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Participation in association rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Parent entity (Agent) H-ID - unique identifier for parent record, record-pointer ->t10	
Agent Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Agent rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 10	
Agent rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'agent'	
Type of Membership - category of membership, term list [associate, chairman, committee member, deputy chairman, deputy treasurer, director, father, founder, governor, honorary fellow, honorary member, incorporator, librarian, master, office bearer, officer, regular membership, shareholder, steward, stockholder, subscriber, vestryman, vice president, warden], repeatable	
Source Type For Membership - the type of source from which membership information was derived, term list [borrowing records, committee minutes, library catalogue, library minute book, logical condition eg. death termination, membership list, newspaper report, pamphlet, reputed to be, secondary or biographical sources, shareholders register], repeatable
Association H-ID - pointer to association or club to which the membership relates, unique identifier for linked record, record-pointer ->t92	
Association Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Association rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 92	
Association rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'association'	
Attested date of membership/office (Attestation) H-ID - unique identifier for child record, record-pointer ->t93	
Attestation Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Attestation rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 93	
Attestation rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'attestation'	
Notes about membership - further information provided by ECLO researchers, free text box

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t92-association.csv]

- Number of variables: 13
- Number of cases/rows: 139
- Variable List: 
Association H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Association Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Association rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 92	
Association rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'association'	
Association rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Association rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Association rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Name / Title - the main name by which the association is known, free text box
Association type - the general type of association, term list [agricultural society, bank, charitable association, civic club, commercial club, drinking club, educational institution, learned society, medical society, political club, religious association, scientific club, unknown], repeatable
Alternate name(s) / title(s) - alternate names or titles by which the association is known	
Short summary - further information provided by ECLO researchers, free text box
Start date - YYYY-MM-DD
End date - YYYY-MM-DD

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t93-attestation.csv]

- Number of variables: 19
- Number of cases/rows: 8706
- Variable List: 
Attestation H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Attestation Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Attestation rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 93	
Attestation rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'attestation'	
Attestation rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Attestation rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Attestation rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Parent entity (Membership) H-ID	- unique identifier for parent record, record pointer ->t84
Membership Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Membership rec_RecTypeID - ID number for parent record type, 84	
Membership rec_RecTypeName - description of parent record type, 'membership'
Parent entity (Participation in association) H-ID - unique identifier for parent record, record pointer ->t90	
Participation in association Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Participation in association rec_RecTypeID - ID number for parent record type, 90	
Participation in association rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'participation in association'	
Date - start date of association, YYYY-MM-DD, repeatable
End date (for date ranges), YYYY-MM-DD
General source type - the type of source from which attestation was derived, term list [borrowing records, committee minutes, library catalogue, library minute book, logical condition eg. death termination, membership list, newspaper report, pamphlet, reputed to be, secondary or biographical sources, shareholders register], repeatable	
Notes on this attestation including sources - further information provided by ECLO researchers, free text box

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t94-holding.csv]

- Number of variables: 36
- Number of cases/rows: 38645
- Variable List: 
Holding H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical
Holding Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Holding rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 94	
Holding rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'holding'	
Holding rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Holding rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Holding rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Recorded Title - the title of a library holding as given in the key source, free text box
Edition H-ID - pointer to an edition of a work, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer ->t55, repeatable
Edition Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Edition rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 55	
Edition rec_RecTypeName	- description of linked record type, 'edition'
Match with Edition - the confidence and exactitude of the match with the associated edition record(s), term list [01 - exact match, 02 - probable match, 03 - best available supposition, 04 - work identified, but unknown edition, 05 - possible work, 06 - unidentified in ESTC, 07 - work identified, but non-ESTC edition], repeatable
Total vols in library set - Records how many physical (bound) volumes were present in the library collection of the edition of which this Holding record is part, numerical	
Parts / Vols in holding (item) - This records the volumes in this holding (physical item). Usually there will only be one volume number entered here, but if vols 2 and 3 were bound together, enter '2' then make repeat entry for '3'. Free text allows named vol also.	
Proportion of work - This records the proportion of the work present in the individual holding. 1 is default value here, indicating that the whole work was present. Otherwise present as decimal to 3 dp. This is for calculating borrowings by the work.	
Composite Volume - yes/no field to indicate whether or not the holding contains more than one separate edition, often a collection of several pamphlets, sermons or plays bound together into a single composite volume	
Library H-ID - point to the library which held this book, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer ->t85	
Library Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Library rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 85
Library rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'library'	
Attestation (Key source) H-ID - pointer to the catalogue or source from which evidence of this holding is drawn, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer ->t60, repeatable
Key source Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Key source rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 60	
Key source rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'key source'	
Shelfmark - a location assigned in an attested source, alhpanumeric, repeatable	
Donated - yes/no field to indicate whether or not holding was donated to library, term list
Dontated By (Agent) H-ID - pointer to agent known to have donated this holding, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer ->t10, repeatable	
Agent Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Agent rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 10	
Agent rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'agent'	
NYSL Book Identifier - identifier used to identify books in City Readers dataset	
NYSL Book_ID - identifier used to identify books in City Readers dataset	
NYSL OPAC Link - link to record in City Readers website, URL	
C18 Subject designation - classification as given in key source, NB this field is distinct from  the 'subject classification' field used in work records (t56), which are modern designations made by the ECLO research team)	
Notes - further information provided by ECLO researchers on this holding, often relating to 'Match with Edition' field

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t97-ruleset.csv]

- Number of variables: 22
- Number of cases/rows: 59
- Variable List: 
Ruleset H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Ruleset Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Ruleset rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 97
Ruleset rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'ruleset'	
Ruleset rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Ruleset rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Ruleset rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Library H-ID - pointer to the library to which the rule belonged, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer ->t85	
Library Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Library rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 85	
Library rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'library'	
Publication date - the date of publication of source used by researchers to document the ruleset, YYYY-MM-DD, repeatable	
Drafting Date - The date at which the ruleset was originally drafted, if known. The original draft may have been amended by time of publication, YYYY-MM-DD
Rule Source (Key source) H-ID - pointer to the source from which the ruleset was taken, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer ->t60, repeatable	
Key source Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Key source rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 60	
Key source rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'key source'	
Type of Document - Records type of regulatory document, using name applied by library itself, repeatable	
Word for Ordinary Members - The preferred term used to describe ordinary members in this ruleset	
Monetary units used - Types of currency and/or monetary units given in text, term list [cents, dollars [Spanish], dollars [U.S.], guineas, pence/pennies, pounds, shillings], repeatable	
Formality of Rules - Describes degree of legalism or formality around rules, term list [formal legalistic, informal, structured]	
Number of articles - Records the number of articles within the ruleset. Where unnumbered this box gives the number of paragraphs giving rules, numerical

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t98-rule-(article).csv]

- Number of variables: 19	
- Number of cases/rows: 1135
- Variable List: 
Rule (article) H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical
Rule (article) Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Rule (article) rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 98	
Rule (article) rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'rule (article)'	
Rule (article) rec_Added - date record added, DD/MM/YYYY	
Rule (article) rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY	
Rule (article) rec_AddedByUGrpID - unique identifier for record creator, numerical	
Ruleset H-ID - pointer to the ruleset(s) of which the rule forms part, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer ->t97, repeatable
Ruleset Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately	
Ruleset rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 97	
Ruleset rec_RecTypeName - description of linked record type, 'ruleset'
Item number - This is the number assigned to the rule. Items in square brackets are assigned by project team; [p1] etc. refers to unnumbered prefatory paragraphs/items; [s1] refers to supplementary material after numbered items.	
Rule text - the text of the rule, free text box	
Annotations - a handwritten amendment or comment supplementing the note in the original record, free text box	
Subject tag (Rule category) H-ID - pointer to structured subject tags concerning rules, drawn from project ontology developed by Julian Walker, unique identifier for linked record, record pointer ->t99, repeatable	
Rule category Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 	
Rule category rec_RecTypeID - ID number for linked record type, 99	
Rule category rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'rule category'	
Research notes - miscellaneous notes explaining aspects of the rule or the annotations that may be unclear. This may include missing text, ambiguous characters etc, free text

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)

DATA-SPECIFIC INFORMATION FOR: [ECLOv.1-t99-rule-category.csv]

- Number of variables: 8
- Number of cases/rows: 127
- Variable List: 
Rule category H-ID - unique identifier for record, numerical	
Rule category Record Title - constructed record used as title mask, do not upload separately 	
Rule category rec_RecTypeID - ID number for record type, 99	
Rule category rec_RecTypeName - description of record type, 'rule category'	
Rule category rec_Added	- date record added, DD/MM/YYYY
Rule category rec_Modified - date record last modified, DD/MM/YYYY
Rule category rec_AddedByUGrpID	- unique identifier for record creator, numerical
Rule subjects - category from the Julian Walker ontology of C18 Library Rules, free text box

- Missing data codes: n/a
- Specialized formats or other abbreviations used: | used to separate multiple values for repeatable variables (as marked above)




