Oxfordshire Record Society - Digitisation of Book Archives
The Oxfordshire Record Society was founded in 1919. In 2019, it celebrated 100 years of publishing primary sources for the history of the county of Oxfordshire, and raising awareness and understanding of this vital evidence of the historic county. The cover of the Oxfordshire Record Society’s very first volume, published in 1919, showed its intention to cover the whole county, taking it beyond the Oxford city and university emphases of other organisations. The central symbol is the coat of arms of Oxfordshire County Council, the first modern county government, established in 1889 and just 30 years old in 1919; at the four corners of the cover are the seals of Banbury and Henley, Chipping Norton and Woodstock.
The new Society combined elements of old and new, of antiquarian traditions and fresh aspirations. It aimed to encourage newer fields such as economic and social history, to demonstrate the importance of local records, and to engage different audiences in the history of their locality’s past, through the growing schools system and the wider community. To read more about the founders of the ORS and its development, click here.
