A unique collection of historical material covering the lives and even
ts of an English village between 1400 and 1750 has been made available
via a Web-enabled information retrieval system. Since the expected re
adership of the documents ranges from school children to experienced r
esearchers, providing this information in an easily accessible form ha
s offered many challenges requiring tools to aid searching and browsin
g. We have replaced the file structure of the document collection by a
database, enabling us to present query results on the fly. A Java int
erface displays each user's, context in a form that allows for easy an
d intuitive relevance feedback. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science
B.V.