Join Archives Portal Europe in a searchathon to find documents about medical history to help The Great Leap
You can register here for the Searchaton on 4 March 2026, 16:00-18:00 CET
Archives Portal Europe (www.archivesportaleurope.net) is the online search portal of the archival heritage from Europe and about Europe; it hosts millions of archival descriptions from more than 25 countries, in more than 20 languages, and from thousands of archival institutions. In this searchathon, you will test the portal to find documents related to medical history, in order to help The Great Leap project, a EU-funded project to study in the long term (1800-2022) the roots and drivers of health inequalities across regions and countries in Europe and beyond. This workshop will present the project and how Archives Portal Europe works, in order to search for documents – and the best archival digger will win a £40 voucher !
Objective
The goal of this Searchaton is to identify and locate historical archival sources that document causes of death and disease-related information across Europe. By bringing together archivists, researchers, and data specialists, we aim to map out the wealth of materials preserved in European archives that can shed light on public health patterns, medical practices, and mortality trends from the past two centuries. The Searchaton will focus on uncovering collections that contain systematically recorded health information, both in textual and tabular forms, and that could potentially be used for research on the history of medicine, demography, and epidemiology.
Context
Since the early 19th century, the systematic recording of causes of death became an important component of population monitoring and public health administration. Records documenting deaths and diseases were produced in many contexts – through parish registers, civil registration systems, hospital logs, and mortality reports. However, despite their historical significance, the extent and nature of these sources remain only partially known. In many countries, it is still unclear where and how information on individual deaths (rather than aggregated statistics) was recorded, preserved, or digitized. Existing documentation practices varied widely across time and place, reflecting differences in administrative organization, medical knowledge, and legal requirements. As a result, much remains to be discovered about the availability, accessibility, and structure of individual-level records that could reveal detailed insights into historical causes of death. Mapping and understanding these sources is therefore essential to reconstructing the health status and medical history of past populations, and to enabling comparative studies across regions and periods.
What We Are Looking For
During the Searchaton, participants will search for and identify archival sources (both digitized and in physical form) that contain any of the following types of information:
Registers of deaths (parish, civil, or municipal) that include causes of death or related annotations.
Hospital and infirmary records, such as patient admission logs, treatment records, and mortality registers.
Public health reports issued by local or national authorities, including mortality statistics or outbreak reports.
Medical officer reports or epidemiological surveys documenting disease prevalence or causes of mortality.
Military health and casualty records containing medical diagnoses or death causes.
Burial and cemetery registers with cause-of-death references.
Specialized databases or digitized collections that aggregate such records from specific regions or periods.