The Public Record Office of Ireland (PROI) was established in 1867 to safely store centuries of Irish historical records dating back to the Norman invasion in 1169. As they gathered tens of thousands of documents into the allegedly fire-proof Record Treasury the PROI staff recorded each item in large handwritten volumes called the Transfer and Increment Books. In 1922, at the start of the Irish Civil War, the PROI was destroyed by an explosion and fire. In a single afternoon seven centuries of Irish records were lost. But, amazingly, the Transfer and Increment Books survived, They were imaged and their data manually transcribed into an Excel file. Each entry gives the title of the document, lists where it came from and specifies the floor and shelf in Record Treasury where it was placed. A schematic representation of the floors and bays in the Record Treasury also survives. (see virtualtreasury.ie)
This unique and historically significant data is untidy and not digitally useable in its current state.
A project on this data could investigate: modelling schema design work; URI design; data uplift challenges; data quality issues. There is also potential to tackle user interface design, allowing users to explore the physical arrangement of the records within the building.