This dataset contains scanned copies of Oxford's Radcliffe Observatory manuscript archives, 1760-1945. The entire manuscript collection of meteorological observation registers and tabulated records from the former Radcliffe Observatory, a little over 32,000 pages in all, was commercially scanned in high resolution by Autodocs Ltd of Glasgow between January and March 2022. The project was funded by a NERC grant. Each page was scanned and the output stored in three formats, namely PDF, JPEG and TIFF, in increasing file size order. The TIFF files are highest resolution (600 dpi) and retain true document colours. JPEG files use lossy compression to reduce file size, but are otherwise identical for all practical purposes. The PDF files have had contrast and colour adjusted slightly to improve legibility, and file sizes are smaller. Page contents are identical regardless of file format.

Separate PDFs for e.g. daily sheets for one month's observations have been combined into a single file for ease of use and reference, while the TIFF and JPEGs remain one file per page.

The collection covers the following:
- 1760-1805 MS observation notes by Thomas Hornsby
- 1811-1820 Daily registers, mostly 3 obs/day. Note that the original logbook was missing when the scanning was undertaken, and these pages are JPEG and PDF files (no TIFFs available) from photographs taken by Tim Burt in 2017
- 1820-1860 Daily (e.g. max, min, rainfall) and 3 obs/day data
- 1855-1934 Sub-daily data in a variety of formats, including hourly transcriptions of many elements. A more detailed catalogue is available upon request providing more granular data by element and period
- 1873-1935 Copies of climatological returns to the Met Office (incomplete series) - originals are in Met Office archives (and have since been scanned and made available online)
- 1893-1945 Daily rainfall registers - two or more daily raingauges, with 00-00h totals as well as the standard 09-09h for some of this period.
- 1952-1995 Various miscellaneous site and metadata information

In all, the TIFF collection amounts to 31,462 files and 0.98 TB: PDF 1983 files, 47.5 GB. JPEG files are not held on this disk, but are available on request, in original 'Volume number' and file name order. Both PDF and TIFF files have been re-sorted from the original volume/folio order into meaningful folder names, and the file names identify the content, such as 'Oxford_Daily_Data_1822.pdf' or '071_003_Oxford_Eye_Readings_1889-04-05.tiff'.

Where records relate to a month, the form yyyy-mm for year-month is used, months numbered 01-12. Additional numbers after the year such as -00 or -99 usually indicate front and back logbook covers, some of which contain handwritten notes on e.g. instrumental calibrations or adjustments.

More information on the Observatory records, including extensive metadata, is given in Oxford Weather and Climate since 1767 by Stephen Burt and Tim Burt, published by Oxford University Press in 2019, pp. 544. (see online resources for link).

The scanning was funded through support from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS).