In January 2001 the Faculty of the Built Environment at UWE Bristol won European Commission funding for a Virtual Archive and Library for Cathedrals project (VirtuAL). The project will trial novel computer technologies in order to create a methodological framework which once evaluated can be utilised for recording, managing and presenting similar historic collections. The VirtuAL is a part of wider investigation which is both an attempt to understand the effective design of web-based historic records, as well as to set up a methodology for creating multimedia recording of historic collections. This paper represents the work in progress describing the process undertaken and techniques used to date.