Welcome to what is effectively the Third Edition of Merrill Rhodes acclaimed work on Sutton, Bransholme and Wawne. The first two editions were conventional printed books, produced very much as books had always been produced for hundreds of years. The technology of printing changed vastly over the centuries, leaving long behind us the now seemingly crude presses of Gutenberg and Caxton of six centuries ago, right through to our modern presses of beautifully bound volumes, glossily printed in clear lithography on superbly made paper.

The First Edition, published in 1999 just weeks before the turn of the Millennium, was just such a glossy edition, and with photographs. What would Caxton have made of that, I wonder. Merrill started her journey through the ages by first briefly looking forward to the new era of "this fast-moving age" and then by tasking our imaginations to look back - way, way back, into the depths of history and a time six-and-a-half centuries ago to when England was still ruled by the Plantagenet kings, when the official language of state was still very much the French of our Norman conquerors, and the when fledgling town on the large esturary to the south of us had just received it's first royal charter. For many of us, deep history indeed, and the centuries that followed would encompass so much incredible change.

Now we move to yet another major advance in technology, into an era that still seems strange and futuristic to our older generations, but in truth is still only a fledgling in the annals of time. This digital file encompasses all the best of the old, but with the added convenience of whole-text searches and just about as many colour photograps as one likes. No doubt the technology in time will change again, and this DVD will seem as outdated as medieval books do to us now, but we hope that the digital files will always be able to be read and transferred to whatever medium is current at the time.

A word here about formats. Which particular format to produce this digital on did give rise to several weeks of serious pondering. I did a lot of research into various 'readers' and 'tablets' to determine which format would be the most appropriate for Merrill's book, which would be the most practical for most people. After spending some time on these ponderables, I realised the answer was staring me in the face, and always had been; produce the chapters as if they were web pages, in HTML format. All computers to date, most tablets and a few E-readers can show HTML, and in future, an increasing number of TVs designated at 'Smart TV' will also read these files, along with the inserted images.

The problem of choice is compounded by the fact that there's no single format today that covers all machines and all readers. Our wonderful manufacturers have seen to that, each trying to limit the purchaser to their own file types, and of course, advertising. But, to cover most bases, I decided to include on the disc the same full text of the book, though without images, in two other popular formats, the ever-popular DOC, and RTF - or Rich Text Format. These are ideal for full text searches, when searching for that one particular word or name essential to your research, and most computer or tablet users should be able to load one or the other. Additionally, with many tablets, you will be able to transfer these files, in their folders along with the images, onto a memory stick or camera card, or another computer, just as you wish. As time goes on, an increasingly wider range of machines and gadgets will 'load' Merrill's book. In that sense, I hope it truly has been preserved for posterity.