Introduction

Decades ago the College of Arms ran on paper letters and reference books, but nowadays websites and databases are critical to our operations.

These pages provide an introduction to these essential systems, both official Laurel resources and those run by individual heralds, from the perspective of technology: servers, software, interfaces, and more. It attempts to note current development plans, the gaps that remain to be addressed in the future, and how new folks with technical skills can find a way to get involved and contribute to the College’s digital future.

Note that this is a work in progress, reflecting just the information currently known to its author, and is not an official source of knowledge — always consult individual projects and relevant heralds for more-authoritative guidance.

Explore The Catalog

You can browse items organized by use case, by development status, alphabetically, or by tag.

Get Involved!

A number of the entries in this collection include ideas for future work, or you might have a unique idea for how to make an existing system better, or for something new that would fill a gap in our current ecosystem — that’s great!

If you need help reaching out to the heralds behind a current system, you can email me and I’d be glad to try to arrange an introduction.

Contributors

Assembled in January 2025 by Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin for discussion at VKWHSS.

Content shared under Creative Commons CC-By-SA.

Feedback would be welcome! If you’ve spotted a mistake, or have something to add, please let me know; I’d love for this information to be corrected and kept up-to-date.