DEEDS Project

The DEEDS Project at the University of Toronto
The DEEDS Project has been in operation since May 1992 at the University of Toronto. The Project consists of two distinct operations. The research projects of which there are currently three, (DEEDS Medieval English Charters, Ethiopia Arts and Culture, and Central and Inner Asia Studies) and the Training Courses. The common components of the two operations are the Project staff and the Project's Information Technology infrastructure.
The original name of the Project is an acronym for the Documents of Early England Data Set, which was the original research project of Michael Gervers, Professor of History, who is now the director of the DEEDS Project. The original research project was started in 1975. This project continues to operate as part of the now much enlarged DEEDS Project.

Research Projects
As of May 2008, the DEEDS Project has three Research Projects:
* DEEDS Medieval English Charters
* Ethiopia Arts and Culture. A Treasury of Ethiopian Images.
* Central and Inner Asia Studies
DEEDS Medieval English Charters
The DEEDS Medieval English Charters consists of a database of information culled from medieval property exchange documents, which are in Latin. Initially 1,500 private charters of the Great Cartulary of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem were converted to electronic format and stored in a database system. Computer-based analysis was conducted on the documents to create a research database containing personal names, relationships, occupations, properties, places and dates culled from the original documents. As was the common practice at the time, the documents are not dated. Dating of the documents is accomplished by comparison of common phrases in the documents. The DEEDS corpus has now been expanded to more than 9,500 property exchange documents from twelfth and thirteenth century England and Wales.

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