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:- Kelly's Directory of Wiltshire (1903)- Kelly's Directory of Wiltshire (1907)- Kelly's Directory of Dorsetshire (1911)- Kelly's Directory of Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands, 1911. [Hampshire & Isle of Wight only] (1911)- Kelly's Directory of Wiltshire (1911)- Gillman's Devizes Public Register and Business Directory for the Year of our Lord, 1913 (1913)- Warren's Winchester & District Directory, including 160 neighbouring places (corrected yearly). List of magistrates for the county, county aldermen, councillors and county officials (1913)- Gillman's Devizes Public Register and Business Directory for the Year of our Lord 1914 (1914)- Gillman's Devizes Public Register and Business Directory for the Year of our Lord, 1915 (1915)- Kelly's Directory of Dorsetshire (1915)- Kelly's Directory of Wiltshire (1915)- Gillman's Devizes Public Register and Business Directory for the Year of our Lord 1916 (1916)