The purpose of the project was to make accessible for historical analysis the biographical information contained in Emden's <i>Biographical Registers</i> of the Universities of Oxford to 1540 and Cambridge to 1500. It was not intended to eliminate the need to consult the printed volumes, but rather to facilitate access to the different categories of material contained in them. For example, one could extract the names of those meeting certain predetermined criteria such as members of Merton College between 1320 and 1339 (dates were encoded as belonging to 20 year 'generations') who were authors. For fuller details the printed volumes would have to be consulted.