The Rural History Database, containing over 40,000 records, covers the period prehistory to the recent past and mainly consists of journal articles. Many date from the late 18th and 19th centuries. (For example some 1400 articles have been extracted from the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England which began publication in 1840). However the majority of articles in the Database were published in the leading and lesser known journals from the 1940s up to the present year. The database also contains over 5,000 theses awarded degrees world-wide since the 1870s, including contemporary surveys which are now of historical interest. There are also 7,000 books in the database, most of which are held by the Rural History Centre's library, and articles from edited works. References have been trawled from published bibliographies, footnotes, and over 1500 journals. The Rural History Database is updated regularly.