The records include over 150,000 wills and inventories of people from across the North East. North East Inheritance used HLF support to undertake the indexing, conservation and preservation of this diverse, local historical resource.

These documents are an invaluable source for social, genealogical, and economic studies. Many of the documents were in a fragile state, and required conservation to ensure their survival. Digitaisation of the collection was therefore used as a means of preservation.

Members of staff at the Durham University Library were joined in this project by a number of volunteers as well as the Genealogical Society of Utah who undertook digitisation of the records for display on the internet. All the records in the collection were digitised to allow the collection to be presented online and widen access. The choice of website was made in part so that the collection could be offered to the public free of charge.  

Volunteers who worked on the project were given training by the University of Durham.