Why are the fronts and backs of documents separated into different folders?
Since this website is not a National Archives project, but only carried on under a licence from the National Archives, the documents were not disassembled. Disassembling the documents has been considered, but that procedure would have resulted in major expenses and delays. Although keeping the front and the dorse or the recto and verso together would have been better, the project could not have proceeded in any way that would have accomplished that. Moreover, renaming the images to match front to dorse would have taken more time than the acquisition and made the project, once again, not feasible. Turning a plea roll 180 degrees after every two images would have decreased the acquisition rate from 8-11 frames per minute to something like one frame each minute and would also have precluded acquisition of any document past about 1290 (the amount of physical labor involved in rotating the documents would have been too great). The compromise of keeping fronts and dorses separate is the best
