[open-humanities] London Hearth Tax Database

Mon Mar 14 19:33:05 UTC 2011

John,

Can you convert using a win32 library (Python and Perl have them) from 
the .mdb file into a csv or txt file and import into a database or 
reformat into XML or similar? I've just tried using OpenOffice3.2 and 
its crashing but I might not be allowing enough time for it to complete.

This tool might help if you've not seen it: 
http://mdbtools.sourceforge.net/  It claims to cover Access 2000 which 
this file appears to be in.

HTH,

Iain

On 14/03/2011 11:40, John Levin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The London Hearth Tax database has just been released:
> http://ihr-history.blogspot.com/2011/03/london-hearth-taxes.html
>
> This is a really important and useful resource for studying 
> restoration (1660s) London. But: it's in a proprietary format (MS 
> Access), the supporting docs similarly in .doc format, and the license 
> for the dataset extends to no more than "Available to public."
> (The online version at 
> http://www.british-history.ac.uk/catalogue.aspx?type=2&gid=54
> seems to be covered by quite a different - and frankly horrendous - 
> license:
> http://www.british-history.ac.uk/terms.aspx )
>
> Libre Office can't seem to handle the database - that might be due to 
> mistakes on my part, but even if so, it means the database is not 
> easily usable without proprietary software.
>
> So: anyone else interested in pushing for getting this data released 
> properly? Any suggestions as to how to take matters further?
>
> John
>