Editing BBC Domesday Project (section)

== Purpose ==
Initially estimated to require the involvement of 10,000 schools and about one million children, the intention was to make the role of schools central in a data gathering project that would assign each school to a geographical area, have parents and local societies collect data, with the schools "acting as a focus and providing the computer". Questionnaires about geography, amenities and land use were to be completed, with school pupils and other contributors also able to write about their local area and "the issues affecting them" in their own words.<ref name="acornuser198412">{{ cite news | url=https://archive.org/details/AcornUser029-Dec84/page/n29/mode/2up | title=Domesday Plus 900 | work=Acorn User | date=December 1984 | access-date=25 October 2020 | pages=28–29 }}</ref>

In the context of the educational relevance of microcomputers and of information retrieval software operating on repositories of data that might potentially be built by children, it was felt that:
{{blockquote|It is in the handling of data that children can best develop an understanding of what counts for knowledge. They can be led into the areas of critical interpretation. As the computer takes over the role of storing and sorting the data, children can increasingly involve themselves in analysing the significance of the data.|Bill O'Neill, [[University of Ulster]]|quoted by John Lamb in ''[[New Scientist]], 28 March 1985''<ref name="newscientist lamb 1985" />}}

With regard to potential applications of the system and of its significance, one contemporary reviewer of the system reflected:
{{blockquote|The concept behind Domesday is very far reaching, since for the first time large quantities of images and data can be held together. For publishers and knowledge workers, the media for communication will never be quite the same. And this really is just the start.|Pip Forer<ref name="nzbitsandbytes198609">{{ cite news | url=https://archive.org/details/nzbitsandbytes-5-01/page/n33/mode/2up | title=Domesday: Geography (and much else) will never be quite the same | work=Bits and Bytes | date=September 1986 | access-date=28 December 2020 | last1=Forer | first1=Pip | pages=34–37, 66}}</ref>}}