The aim of the project was to improve access to local and trade directories for the period 1750-1919 by making a substantial collection of English and Welsh directories available online as a Digital Library of Historical Directories. This digital resource comprises in total some 600 directories, covering every English county together with Wales, and ranging widely over the period 1750-1919 (the latter cut-off point chosen for copyright reasons). There is a particular focus on the 1850s, 1890s and 1910s, with at least one directory provided for each county in each of these decades. The digitisation of the volumes involved a two-stage process, in which (1) the hard-copy source was scanned to produce a graphic image of each page, and then (2) those images were processed using OCR software to generate a machine-readable text file.An online version of this resource can be found on the Website of the University of Leicester. This data collection includes the following directories:- Wright's Directory of Leicester (1906)- Kelly's Directory of the Counties of Leicester and Rutland (1908)- Wright's Directory of Leicester (1909)- Wright's Directory of the City of Nottingham including the following places in the immediate neighbourhood:- Arnold, Attenboro' and Chilwell, Beeston, Bilborough, Burton Joyce, Carlton and Netherfield, Cinder Hill (1911)- Wright's Directory of Leicester (1911)- Kelly's Directory of Derbyshire (1912)- Kelly's Directory of Leicestershire & Rutland (1912)- Wright's Directory of Nottingham and neighbourhood, 1913-14 (1914)- Wright's Directory of Leicester (1914)- Wright's Directory of Nottingham and neighbourhood, 1915-16 (1916)- Kelly's Directory of the Counties of Leicestershire and Rutland (1916)