Europeana's First World War roadshow returns to England in early August - the following is an abridged press release:
Yorkshire’s Forgotten WW1 Family Stories.
People across the region urged to contribute to unique online WW1 archive Europeana 1914-18
Europeana 1914-18 World War One Family History Roadshow
British Library, Boston Spa, Wetherby, West Yorks, LS23 7BQ
Saturday, August 2, 2014 11.00am – 5.00pm
Do you have a box hidden deep in the attic or under the bed that holds your great grandfather’s diaries from 1914-1918? His army medals? Or a photo with a special story behind it? If so, it could be part of a unique European WW1 project, shared worldwide to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the war.
The British Library’s northern site at Boston Spa has joined forces with Europeana - Europe’s digital museum, library and archive. We will be working together to gather and tell people’s family stories from 1914-1918. These valuable stories will then be shared via Europeana’s online archive - the most important pan European online resource of original WW1 source material. http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en
And we need your help!
We need people to bring photographs, letters, diaries, film or audio recordings, together with the stories of whom they belonged to and why they are important to their families to the Europeana 1914-1918 Family History Roadshow at the British Library, Boston Spa on Saturday, August 2.
Historians and experts from the York Museums Trust, Lancaster University and local history societies will be on hand to talk about the significance of finds, while staff from the British Library will professionally digitise the objects which will be uploaded to the dedicated Europeana 1914-1918 website.
Visitors on the day will also have a chance to discover the British Library’s newly refurbished Boston Spa Reading Room, where you can consult the Library’s vast collection of research journals, books and periodicals, along with free access to more than 8 million pages of digitised historic newspapers. There will also be a range of WW1 themed activities, including local curator talks from experts at The Castle Museum, York, film screenings from the Yorkshire Film Archive and a WW1 brass band.
Europeana have been holding Family History Roadshows in more than 20 countries across Europe in the lead up to the WW1 Centenary. Each individual story - that otherwise might never be told outside of the family - is essential to creating a unique global archive and perspective of WW1. Through this archive, stories from countries across Europe will be shared online, accessed by others worldwide and saved for future generations. And now it’s the time for the people of Yorkshire to come forward with their stories.
The British Library have led the UK’s contribution to Europeana 1914-1918, as part of the First World War Centenary programme. They have created a brand new British Library First World War website with over 500 items from across Europe and articles by leading experts and teachers’ notes. www.bl.uk/world-war-one
The British Library has digitised 10,000 items (more than 350,000 images) of a wide range of materials related to the First World War from its print collections. Personal diaries, trench maps, printed books, WW1 poetry, literary manuscripts, photographs and music scores are among the broad selection of the Library’s contribution, which can be found at www.europeana1914-1918.eu
(With thanks to Wendy Archer)
Chris
Now available for UK research is the new second edition of the best selling Tracing Your Family History on the Internet: A Guide for Family Historians, whilst my new book British and Irish Newspapers is also now out. And FindmyPast - please reinstate the original Scottish census citations on your new site.
Showing posts with label Europeana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europeana. Show all posts
Tuesday, 15 July 2014
Monday, 17 June 2013
British Library seeks London’s Princeton School students
Can you help with the following British Library appeal concerning London's Princeton Street School?
Seeking Students Of London’s Princeton School
The British Library Europeana Collections 1914–1918 project team is trying to trace descendants of 30 pupils of the Princeton Street School (later Princeton Primary School), Bedford Row in London’s Holborn district who recorded their impressions of Zeppelin air raids on the city on 13 October 1915.
The children's accounts were recorded in a beautifully illustrated workbook, now held at the British Library in St Pancras. The Europeana team would love to digitise this work and make it available for everyone to read online at www.europeana.eu and www.bl.uk. This is part of a wider project that will see around 10,000 British Library items related to the First World War go online next year, helping to increase access to culturally significant material as we commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of war.
We are trying to track down the former students and their descendants to seek permission for publication. The names of the students written in the workbook are:
J Allen
F Balen
Alfred Banks
A.E Bazley
R Beasley
E.G Bracknell
E Brown
G Eldon
Alec Fraser
F Grainger
J Haynes
Charles Hill
F Howard
R Julyan
Edwin Lato
Albert Ling
J Littenstein
F Maddox
Herbert Mansen
J Marriage
J McHenry
Ernst Meager
John Mee
W Pullery
Joseph Restick
G.A Rist
J Sandell
Richard Sandell
J Sayers
J Spinks
If you believe you are descended from any of these people, please e-mail laura@vivatheritage.co.uk or write to Foteini Aravani, Project Manager for Europeana 1914-1918, British Library, St Pancras, London NW1 2DB.
(With thanks to Laua Berry at Your Family History magazine)
Chris
My new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, is now available from Pen and Sword. My Scottish land and church records ebooks are available at http://www.gen-ebooks.com/unlock-the-past.html, whilst my next Pharos Scottish course, Scottish Research Online, starts Sep 4th - see http://pharostutors.com/details.php?coursenumber=102. Time to smash a few brick walls...!
Seeking Students Of London’s Princeton School
The British Library Europeana Collections 1914–1918 project team is trying to trace descendants of 30 pupils of the Princeton Street School (later Princeton Primary School), Bedford Row in London’s Holborn district who recorded their impressions of Zeppelin air raids on the city on 13 October 1915.
The children's accounts were recorded in a beautifully illustrated workbook, now held at the British Library in St Pancras. The Europeana team would love to digitise this work and make it available for everyone to read online at www.europeana.eu and www.bl.uk. This is part of a wider project that will see around 10,000 British Library items related to the First World War go online next year, helping to increase access to culturally significant material as we commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of war.
We are trying to track down the former students and their descendants to seek permission for publication. The names of the students written in the workbook are:
J Allen
F Balen
Alfred Banks
A.E Bazley
R Beasley
E.G Bracknell
E Brown
G Eldon
Alec Fraser
F Grainger
J Haynes
Charles Hill
F Howard
R Julyan
Edwin Lato
Albert Ling
J Littenstein
F Maddox
Herbert Mansen
J Marriage
J McHenry
Ernst Meager
John Mee
W Pullery
Joseph Restick
G.A Rist
J Sandell
Richard Sandell
J Sayers
J Spinks
If you believe you are descended from any of these people, please e-mail laura@vivatheritage.co.uk or write to Foteini Aravani, Project Manager for Europeana 1914-1918, British Library, St Pancras, London NW1 2DB.
(With thanks to Laua Berry at Your Family History magazine)
Chris
My new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, is now available from Pen and Sword. My Scottish land and church records ebooks are available at http://www.gen-ebooks.com/unlock-the-past.html, whilst my next Pharos Scottish course, Scottish Research Online, starts Sep 4th - see http://pharostutors.com/details.php?coursenumber=102. Time to smash a few brick walls...!
Friday, 14 June 2013
British Library First World War workshop
With thanks to Wendy Archer for alerting me to the following event at the British Library (www.bl.uk):
Part of Europeana Collections 1914 – 1918, the British Library is organising a workshop on Saturday, 29 June based on the digital corpus that has been created so far within the scope of the project.
The digital collection comprises a myriad of items including, maps, manuscripts, music sheets, photographs, official publications, trench journals, pamphlets, ephemera and a large number of rare and out-of-print material. Metadata for all items in the collection will be available to download on the day.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together a variety of users including historians, genealogists, hackers and others who are interested in exploring how the content can be used and presented in innovative ways and in connection to existing open tools such as geo-referencing platforms and OCR scripts for extracting information from the content and linking the material to other similar resources.
More information on the workshop including the description of the collection and programme: http://bit.ly/11fs9RX
The workshop will run from 10:30 to 16:30 at the British Library Foyle Suite.
If you want to attend please register at www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/7052374843#
We are looking forward to seeing you there!
Foteini Aravani
Europeana Collections 1914-1918
Project Manager
http://www.europeana-collections-1914-1918.eu/
Chris
My new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, is now available from Pen and Sword. My Scottish land and church records ebooks are available at http://www.gen-ebooks.com/unlock-the-past.html, whilst my next Pharos Scottish course, Scottish Research Online, starts Sep 4th - see http://pharostutors.com/details.php?coursenumber=102. Time to smash a few brick walls...!
Part of Europeana Collections 1914 – 1918, the British Library is organising a workshop on Saturday, 29 June based on the digital corpus that has been created so far within the scope of the project.
The digital collection comprises a myriad of items including, maps, manuscripts, music sheets, photographs, official publications, trench journals, pamphlets, ephemera and a large number of rare and out-of-print material. Metadata for all items in the collection will be available to download on the day.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together a variety of users including historians, genealogists, hackers and others who are interested in exploring how the content can be used and presented in innovative ways and in connection to existing open tools such as geo-referencing platforms and OCR scripts for extracting information from the content and linking the material to other similar resources.
More information on the workshop including the description of the collection and programme: http://bit.ly/11fs9RX
The workshop will run from 10:30 to 16:30 at the British Library Foyle Suite.
If you want to attend please register at www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/7052374843#
We are looking forward to seeing you there!
Foteini Aravani
Europeana Collections 1914-1918
Project Manager
http://www.europeana-collections-1914-1918.eu/
Chris
My new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, is now available from Pen and Sword. My Scottish land and church records ebooks are available at http://www.gen-ebooks.com/unlock-the-past.html, whilst my next Pharos Scottish course, Scottish Research Online, starts Sep 4th - see http://pharostutors.com/details.php?coursenumber=102. Time to smash a few brick walls...!
Sunday, 28 April 2013
Democratising or Privileging archives conference - day 2
Friday past saw the second day of the Democratising or Privileging: the Future of Access to Archives conference in Dundee, at which I attended and participated as a bod from the genealogy community. For a summary of Day 1's proceedings visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/democratising-or-privileging-archive.html.
There are two ways you can start a conference day (after the requisite cup of coffee). One is to have a talk on an uncontroversial topic to gently set the pace. The other is to have a speaker in full blown attack mode against aspects of the archival sector, crying "Havoc!", letting slip the dogs of war, spouting Calvinism and going for the jugular with all the theological verve of a modern day Andrew Melville or John Knox. We didn't see the former! Allan Macinnes, a historian from Strathclyde University, started his talk with a few interesting tales of being served lunch by a butler whilst researching archival material at Dumfries House and also being imprisoned at the Vatican Archive. With the room suitably begging for more, the fun then began - both tubes were armed with photon torpedoes, and all hell appeared to break loose! He lambasted National Records of Scotland with experiences on trying to gain access to materials at the institution, citing antiquated policies that made it incredibly difficult to carry out research, to the point where he is now trying to construct research topics that actively try to avoid using the facility - instead preferring to create research that involves visits to what he describes as more user friendly environments, such as the archives in Aberdeen. I had previously described the feeling of search room feudalism in my talk on Thursday, where at times it felt as if researchers - especially family historians - were still being treated in some large institutions as mere humble vassals to the institutions' self-perceived role of superior. It's fair to say Allan was a wee bit further down that road in his thinking!
The following discussion, including a spirited defence from ex-keeper George Mackenzie and some current members of NRS staff, as well as from other archivists on both sides of the debate, was one of those rare moments when getting it all out in the open was not only thoroughly educational, but actually entertaining. One archivist tweeted that he had wished Allan had supervised his university work. This was, of course, a long-running issue between him and the NRS and other sectors, which is precisely why they should, and did, invite him as the opening key-note speaker - and the conference was all the richer for it. The only comment I didn't agree with was his statement "we all get frustrated with the genealogists" - though to be fair, probably about as much as I used to get frustrated with some academic egos when I worked in TV - but beyond that, it was a powerful and very useful 'blast' in the old John Knox tradition!
With the talk over, and the casualties taken to dressing stations to have their wounds attended to, we then heard from Michael Moir of York Universities Library in Canada on how to manage access to sensitive information in personal archives; Jean Dryden on copyright issues, and how some archives should have the courage to adopt actual or likely risk as a factor when contemplating which records to digitise and put online (instead of self-censoring for the hell of it); and the wonderful Zofia Sulej from South Africa, who provided a great overview on the changes in South Africa in the archive sector since the fall of apartheid.
Francois Cartier from Quebec then opened the next session with a talk on archives, networks and public policies; Cathryn Spence talked about both the frustrations and successes of working in a community archive twice a week, using Edinburgh City Archives to help her in a dissertation looking at women in the city from 1560-1640; and Vivienne Dunstan provided a disabled user's perspective in using archives and libraries.
After lunch George Mackenzie then gave a a quick spiel on the International Council on Archives (www.ica.org). You know the Sale of Goods Act 1979, which allows you to go in to a shop and demand certain rights when a product is not fit for purpose? Well, here's a useful equivalent to read up on! The ICA has several principles, and to all us humble genies, here's at least three worth being aware of - 1) The public has the right of access to archives of public bodies. Both public and private archives entities should open their archives to the greatest extent possible; 7) Users have the right to appeal a denial of access; 8) Institutions holding archives ensure that operational constraints do not prevent access to archives. I have in the past been told at NRS that records such as kirk session material are not available for conservation reasons ("computer says no"); but when I then asked what the level of damage was, how long it would take to be conserved, etc, the archivist went and checked, returning soon after to say that it's perhaps not as bad as it might have been, and could perhaps be consulted under supervision, which I can more than live with. Ye don't ask, ye don't get - Matthew, Chapter 7, verse 7!
Karl Heinz discussed the brilliant European Monasterium project (www.monasterium.net), providing many of Europe's virtual documents from medieval times online. All I can say is go and play with it, it's brilliant. Maria Gussarson Wijk from Sweden then discussed the Archives Portal Network at www.archivesportaleurope.net/, something of a parallel project to Europeana, which "provides access to information on archival material from different European countries as well as information on archival institutions throughout the continent". A map was shown with participating countries - guess which one was not involved? Little Britain...
Amanda Hill was then front and centre, discussing her Deseronto community based archive in Ontario, which has little money, a small population, but a lot of heart. Amanda's solution to granting access was crowdsouring through social media - she overcame her distrust of Facebook, for example to discover it to be the most useful hunter-gathering tool in archive terms for her project, with dozens of contributions submitted by users in virtual form to her collection. The archive blog is at http://deserontoarchives.wordpress.com. The final talk was from Frances White on the Iris Murdoch archive (www.kingston.ac.uk/informationservices/archives/collections/iris_murdoch/).
Closing the whole thing off was a panel of some of the previous speakers, including shug here as the token genie! I mentioned how there had often been a perception by some in the family history community of researchers being treated as second division players in the order of priorities, and yet also seen as a major cash cow for archives, which frankly irks at times - but also that some of the topics discussed by the archivists in the room had actually affected my thinking on some of the projects that we as family historians sometimes get sucked into creating as offshoots from our research (my Ruhleben project as an example) - perhaps we can also learn some practices from the archive sector on how best to operate these? Crowdsouring is not just there to serve archives, as a crowd we can also serve our own projects but using some techniques that they use. George Mackenzie confirmed that family historians did indeed used to be treated in that way by the archive sector, but that there is a growing attempt to change that. After all the panel had said their bit, Caroline Brown then demonstrated the real skill of an archivist with a final summing up that clearly demonstrated how some archivists can catalogue material into a sense of order, neatly describing all the various points raised over the two days!
A fascinating event, an interesting glimpse into a world I've never been invited to engage with before, and a lot of food for thought. The real test though, as with any conference, is to see if any changes and approaches emerge within the archive sector as a consequence - and the sectors that engage with it (not really sure how constructive boycotting an archive might be!).
Chris
My new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, is now available from Pen and Sword. For my other genealogy books, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html; whilst for my online Scottish based genealogy courses please visit the Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd site.
There are two ways you can start a conference day (after the requisite cup of coffee). One is to have a talk on an uncontroversial topic to gently set the pace. The other is to have a speaker in full blown attack mode against aspects of the archival sector, crying "Havoc!", letting slip the dogs of war, spouting Calvinism and going for the jugular with all the theological verve of a modern day Andrew Melville or John Knox. We didn't see the former! Allan Macinnes, a historian from Strathclyde University, started his talk with a few interesting tales of being served lunch by a butler whilst researching archival material at Dumfries House and also being imprisoned at the Vatican Archive. With the room suitably begging for more, the fun then began - both tubes were armed with photon torpedoes, and all hell appeared to break loose! He lambasted National Records of Scotland with experiences on trying to gain access to materials at the institution, citing antiquated policies that made it incredibly difficult to carry out research, to the point where he is now trying to construct research topics that actively try to avoid using the facility - instead preferring to create research that involves visits to what he describes as more user friendly environments, such as the archives in Aberdeen. I had previously described the feeling of search room feudalism in my talk on Thursday, where at times it felt as if researchers - especially family historians - were still being treated in some large institutions as mere humble vassals to the institutions' self-perceived role of superior. It's fair to say Allan was a wee bit further down that road in his thinking!
The following discussion, including a spirited defence from ex-keeper George Mackenzie and some current members of NRS staff, as well as from other archivists on both sides of the debate, was one of those rare moments when getting it all out in the open was not only thoroughly educational, but actually entertaining. One archivist tweeted that he had wished Allan had supervised his university work. This was, of course, a long-running issue between him and the NRS and other sectors, which is precisely why they should, and did, invite him as the opening key-note speaker - and the conference was all the richer for it. The only comment I didn't agree with was his statement "we all get frustrated with the genealogists" - though to be fair, probably about as much as I used to get frustrated with some academic egos when I worked in TV - but beyond that, it was a powerful and very useful 'blast' in the old John Knox tradition!
With the talk over, and the casualties taken to dressing stations to have their wounds attended to, we then heard from Michael Moir of York Universities Library in Canada on how to manage access to sensitive information in personal archives; Jean Dryden on copyright issues, and how some archives should have the courage to adopt actual or likely risk as a factor when contemplating which records to digitise and put online (instead of self-censoring for the hell of it); and the wonderful Zofia Sulej from South Africa, who provided a great overview on the changes in South Africa in the archive sector since the fall of apartheid.
Francois Cartier from Quebec then opened the next session with a talk on archives, networks and public policies; Cathryn Spence talked about both the frustrations and successes of working in a community archive twice a week, using Edinburgh City Archives to help her in a dissertation looking at women in the city from 1560-1640; and Vivienne Dunstan provided a disabled user's perspective in using archives and libraries.
After lunch George Mackenzie then gave a a quick spiel on the International Council on Archives (www.ica.org). You know the Sale of Goods Act 1979, which allows you to go in to a shop and demand certain rights when a product is not fit for purpose? Well, here's a useful equivalent to read up on! The ICA has several principles, and to all us humble genies, here's at least three worth being aware of - 1) The public has the right of access to archives of public bodies. Both public and private archives entities should open their archives to the greatest extent possible; 7) Users have the right to appeal a denial of access; 8) Institutions holding archives ensure that operational constraints do not prevent access to archives. I have in the past been told at NRS that records such as kirk session material are not available for conservation reasons ("computer says no"); but when I then asked what the level of damage was, how long it would take to be conserved, etc, the archivist went and checked, returning soon after to say that it's perhaps not as bad as it might have been, and could perhaps be consulted under supervision, which I can more than live with. Ye don't ask, ye don't get - Matthew, Chapter 7, verse 7!
Karl Heinz discussed the brilliant European Monasterium project (www.monasterium.net), providing many of Europe's virtual documents from medieval times online. All I can say is go and play with it, it's brilliant. Maria Gussarson Wijk from Sweden then discussed the Archives Portal Network at www.archivesportaleurope.net/, something of a parallel project to Europeana, which "provides access to information on archival material from different European countries as well as information on archival institutions throughout the continent". A map was shown with participating countries - guess which one was not involved? Little Britain...
Amanda Hill was then front and centre, discussing her Deseronto community based archive in Ontario, which has little money, a small population, but a lot of heart. Amanda's solution to granting access was crowdsouring through social media - she overcame her distrust of Facebook, for example to discover it to be the most useful hunter-gathering tool in archive terms for her project, with dozens of contributions submitted by users in virtual form to her collection. The archive blog is at http://deserontoarchives.wordpress.com. The final talk was from Frances White on the Iris Murdoch archive (www.kingston.ac.uk/informationservices/archives/collections/iris_murdoch/).
Closing the whole thing off was a panel of some of the previous speakers, including shug here as the token genie! I mentioned how there had often been a perception by some in the family history community of researchers being treated as second division players in the order of priorities, and yet also seen as a major cash cow for archives, which frankly irks at times - but also that some of the topics discussed by the archivists in the room had actually affected my thinking on some of the projects that we as family historians sometimes get sucked into creating as offshoots from our research (my Ruhleben project as an example) - perhaps we can also learn some practices from the archive sector on how best to operate these? Crowdsouring is not just there to serve archives, as a crowd we can also serve our own projects but using some techniques that they use. George Mackenzie confirmed that family historians did indeed used to be treated in that way by the archive sector, but that there is a growing attempt to change that. After all the panel had said their bit, Caroline Brown then demonstrated the real skill of an archivist with a final summing up that clearly demonstrated how some archivists can catalogue material into a sense of order, neatly describing all the various points raised over the two days!
A fascinating event, an interesting glimpse into a world I've never been invited to engage with before, and a lot of food for thought. The real test though, as with any conference, is to see if any changes and approaches emerge within the archive sector as a consequence - and the sectors that engage with it (not really sure how constructive boycotting an archive might be!).
Chris
My new book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, is now available from Pen and Sword. For my other genealogy books, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html; whilst for my online Scottish based genealogy courses please visit the Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd site.
Monday, 29 October 2012
Europeana WW1 roadshow in Banbury
The Europeana 1914-1918 Family History Roadshow will be visiting Banbury Museum on November 3rd, following up on their recent successes in both Dublin and Preston in asking the public to bring along mementoes of their families' involvement in the Great War.
For further details read the ITV story at www.itv.com/news/meridian/2012-10-28/bring-us-your-ww1-artefacts/.
(With thanks to @geneally)
Chris
Scotland 1750-1850 - 5 weeks online Pharos course, £45.99, taught by Chris Paton from 2 NOV 2012 - see www.pharostutors.com
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)
For further details read the ITV story at www.itv.com/news/meridian/2012-10-28/bring-us-your-ww1-artefacts/.
(With thanks to @geneally)
Chris
Scotland 1750-1850 - 5 weeks online Pharos course, £45.99, taught by Chris Paton from 2 NOV 2012 - see www.pharostutors.com
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)
Tuesday, 26 June 2012
European Library website launches
The Europeana project has tweeted about the launch of a new European Library website at www.theeuropeanlibrary.org.
From the site:
Designed to meet the needs of the research community worldwide, our online portal offers quick and easy access to the collections of the 48 National Libraries of Europe and leading European Research Libraries.
Users can cross-search and reuse over 9,550,651 digital items and 103,420,910 bibliographic records.
Chris
Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)
From the site:
Designed to meet the needs of the research community worldwide, our online portal offers quick and easy access to the collections of the 48 National Libraries of Europe and leading European Research Libraries.Users can cross-search and reuse over 9,550,651 digital items and 103,420,910 bibliographic records.
Chris
Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
Europeana: WW1 - Untold Stories exhibition
Some results of Europeana's recent tour to find hidden gems across Europe concerning the First World War, which included visits to Dublin and Preston, are now available on an exhibition hosted at http://exhibitions.europeana.eu/exhibits/show/europeana-1914-1918-en/europeana-1914-1918-themes. Some interesting material in there, well worth a visit.
(With thanks to the latest Europeana newsletter at http://e2.ma/message/ny4lb/jbgsob)
Chris
Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)
(With thanks to the latest Europeana newsletter at http://e2.ma/message/ny4lb/jbgsob)
Chris
Check out my Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
New book: It's Perthshire 1866 - there's been a murder... www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/The-Mount-Stewart-Murder.aspx (from June 12th 2012)
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
Europeana WW1 roadshow results
From the Hague, a press release about the new Europeana WW1 roadshow digitisation project which recently visited Preston and Dublin:
Untold and extraordinary real-life stories from World War 1 have come to light and will be shared online as a result of family history roadshows run by the digital innovation service Europeana (www.europeana.com). They include a life-saving Bible, the first-hand testimony of a centenarian, and a postcard from a 27-year-old soldier named Adolf Hitler, which suggests that the future dictator had problems with his teeth and his spelling.
In preparation for the 100th anniversary of the conflict, WW1 roadshows have been held in Germany, England, Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Denmark. People are invited to bring along WW1 memorabilia to be seen by experts and digitised. The Europeana 1914-1918 website also shows people how to upload their own digital scans. The idea for the roadshows came from the success of the University of Oxford's Great War Archive in 2008, funded by leading UK educational technology innovator, JISC.
Two thousand people of all ages from across Europe have attended the roadshows to share family stories. Roadshow participants have been joined by online contributors and 45,000 photos of objects, scanned letters and diaries have been uploaded onto the website to date. Most of these are previously unpublished and have never been seen or studied outside the families.
Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana said: “The project’s success highlights the huge interest that Europeans have in their shared history. People pass their stories down their families, and in Europeana have found the means to preserve them for future generations, and make them universally accessible. Europeana brings a new approach to cultural history, linking people’s own stories to the official histories of the war that we’re collecting from the national libraries and archives.”
Markus Geiler contributed pictures of his grandfather’s life-saving Bible, with the lump of shrapnel embedded in it from the grenade that killed his comrades while they slept. He said: “I am here to show how a family story can actually become part of the collective memory of Europe. I hope that there will be many, many such stories, and the European idea will develop even further when people deal together with the past and tell each other their stories.”
In Preston, UK, John Stafford’s first hand account of the Battle of the Somme was brought along by his daughter Joan Almond, 85. The typed manuscript documents Stafford’s experiences and illustrates how he coped with post traumatic stress disorder, decades before the condition was recognised. Stafford lay horribly injured for two days until Allied troops found him and carried him across ‘Death Valley’ to medical help. Joan said: “I think the war must have haunted him a lot, especially when you read his account. My mother used to encourage him to write down his experiences and this seemed to have a calming influence.”
The participation of Irishmen in WW1 was politically sensitive and as a result many of their stories have never been told. That was one reason why the Dublin roadshow was the best attended in Europe so far. More than 600 people turned up, some queuing for hours, to share their memorabilia and stories. They include a marvellous wartime love story, told by Joseph Heapes’ daughter-in-law, Máire, of how Joseph found the love of his life, Mary, while a prisoner of war in Germany.
Slovenian centenarian Slavko Zupan is one participant able to share his direct memories of the war. His enthusiasm for the project was such that he visited the roadshow in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, twice. To illustrate his childhood recollections Slavko brought along a bottle containing a richly decorated wooden crucifix. It was made by a Russian prisoner of war in Slovenia. Existing on meagre rations, prisoners crafted such objects to barter for food or cigarettes. The crucifix has been in Slavko’s family since 1916.
The Munich roadshow revealed what at first sight appears to be just one of many postcards sent by soldiers in the field. The postcard, ‘Greetings from Nuremberg’, describes the sender’s recent trip to the dentist and his desire to go back to the front line. That soldier was Adolf Hitler, writing to his comrade Karl Lanzhammer in December 1916.
Director of Oxford University Computing Services, Dr Stuart Lee, one of the digital experts attending the roadshow, recalls the moment when he was first handed Hitler’s postcard: “I felt a shudder run through me. I found it hard to believe that at a local event to record ordinary people’s stories, I was seeing a previously unknown document in Hitler’s own hand. Europeana’s project is remarkable in that it can bring in the most meaningful story in a person’s whole existence - the Bible that saved a life, for example - as well as the mundane and misspelt jottings of the future dictator.”
Oxford University has provided professional expertise to Europeana 1914-18, leading the training for the family roadshows, and providing expert support in digitising and cataloguing.
(With thanks to Europeana)
Chris
British GENES on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES and Twitter @chrismpaton
Untold and extraordinary real-life stories from World War 1 have come to light and will be shared online as a result of family history roadshows run by the digital innovation service Europeana (www.europeana.com). They include a life-saving Bible, the first-hand testimony of a centenarian, and a postcard from a 27-year-old soldier named Adolf Hitler, which suggests that the future dictator had problems with his teeth and his spelling. In preparation for the 100th anniversary of the conflict, WW1 roadshows have been held in Germany, England, Ireland, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Denmark. People are invited to bring along WW1 memorabilia to be seen by experts and digitised. The Europeana 1914-1918 website also shows people how to upload their own digital scans. The idea for the roadshows came from the success of the University of Oxford's Great War Archive in 2008, funded by leading UK educational technology innovator, JISC.
Two thousand people of all ages from across Europe have attended the roadshows to share family stories. Roadshow participants have been joined by online contributors and 45,000 photos of objects, scanned letters and diaries have been uploaded onto the website to date. Most of these are previously unpublished and have never been seen or studied outside the families.
Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana said: “The project’s success highlights the huge interest that Europeans have in their shared history. People pass their stories down their families, and in Europeana have found the means to preserve them for future generations, and make them universally accessible. Europeana brings a new approach to cultural history, linking people’s own stories to the official histories of the war that we’re collecting from the national libraries and archives.”
Markus Geiler contributed pictures of his grandfather’s life-saving Bible, with the lump of shrapnel embedded in it from the grenade that killed his comrades while they slept. He said: “I am here to show how a family story can actually become part of the collective memory of Europe. I hope that there will be many, many such stories, and the European idea will develop even further when people deal together with the past and tell each other their stories.”
In Preston, UK, John Stafford’s first hand account of the Battle of the Somme was brought along by his daughter Joan Almond, 85. The typed manuscript documents Stafford’s experiences and illustrates how he coped with post traumatic stress disorder, decades before the condition was recognised. Stafford lay horribly injured for two days until Allied troops found him and carried him across ‘Death Valley’ to medical help. Joan said: “I think the war must have haunted him a lot, especially when you read his account. My mother used to encourage him to write down his experiences and this seemed to have a calming influence.”
The participation of Irishmen in WW1 was politically sensitive and as a result many of their stories have never been told. That was one reason why the Dublin roadshow was the best attended in Europe so far. More than 600 people turned up, some queuing for hours, to share their memorabilia and stories. They include a marvellous wartime love story, told by Joseph Heapes’ daughter-in-law, Máire, of how Joseph found the love of his life, Mary, while a prisoner of war in Germany.
Slovenian centenarian Slavko Zupan is one participant able to share his direct memories of the war. His enthusiasm for the project was such that he visited the roadshow in Nova Gorica, Slovenia, twice. To illustrate his childhood recollections Slavko brought along a bottle containing a richly decorated wooden crucifix. It was made by a Russian prisoner of war in Slovenia. Existing on meagre rations, prisoners crafted such objects to barter for food or cigarettes. The crucifix has been in Slavko’s family since 1916.
The Munich roadshow revealed what at first sight appears to be just one of many postcards sent by soldiers in the field. The postcard, ‘Greetings from Nuremberg’, describes the sender’s recent trip to the dentist and his desire to go back to the front line. That soldier was Adolf Hitler, writing to his comrade Karl Lanzhammer in December 1916.
Director of Oxford University Computing Services, Dr Stuart Lee, one of the digital experts attending the roadshow, recalls the moment when he was first handed Hitler’s postcard: “I felt a shudder run through me. I found it hard to believe that at a local event to record ordinary people’s stories, I was seeing a previously unknown document in Hitler’s own hand. Europeana’s project is remarkable in that it can bring in the most meaningful story in a person’s whole existence - the Bible that saved a life, for example - as well as the mundane and misspelt jottings of the future dictator.”
Oxford University has provided professional expertise to Europeana 1914-18, leading the training for the family roadshows, and providing expert support in digitising and cataloguing.
(With thanks to Europeana)
Chris
British GENES on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES and Twitter @chrismpaton
Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk and www.facebook.com/ScottishGenealogyResearch
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Europeana to host First World War footage
This looks like an exciting First World War project development from Europeana (www.europeana.eu):
World War 1 Film Footage in Cyberspace
Films about World War 1 that have never been seen outside a cinema or on television are to be made available on the internet for the first time ever.
The European Film Gateway 1914 (EFG1914) plans to digitise up to 650 hours of footage and make it freely accessible via europeana.eu, Europe’s digital library, museum and archive. It will also appear on the film portal www.europeanfilmgateway.eu
The 2-year project was launched during a meeting of more than 40 representatives from 25 partner institutions at the German Film Museum in Frankfurt am Main.
The footage, which includes newsreels, documentary films and footage as well as fiction films from and about World War 1, is being digitised by archives across Europe, including the Imperial War Museum in London - which has one of the largest institutional World War 1 related collections - along with partners in France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Spain and the Netherlands.
Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana, said, “This is an enormously valuable project for historians, schools, researchers and film buffs, and will provide a remarkable resource in time for the 2014 centenary, when public interest will really peak.”
“It’s important too because although a considerable amount of film material covering the Great War was produced, but experts estimate about 80% of that footage has been lost forever. Surviving films remain in analogue format, but access to them can be difficult, cumbersome and costly. But through digitisation, the material can be accessible to all on the web.”
Project organisers are sharing hundreds of hours of film material and expertise from a number of individual European archives in order to highlight the benefits of film digitisation and digital preservation of historical films across the sector.
NOTES
EFG1914 is coordinated by the Deutsches Filminstitut on behalf of the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE), with support from the European Union. It follows the success of the European Film Gateway, which has become the most frequently used web portal for finding films and film-related material from the film archives and cinémathèques of Europe. Between 2008 and 2011, more than 500,000 objects were made available for users to view online.
Partners in EFG1914
Deutsches Filminstitut – DIF e.V. (Frankfurt), coordinator
· Arhiva Nationala de Filme (Bucharest)
· Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (Frankfurt/Brussels)
· Athena Research and Innovation Center in Information Communication & Knowledge Technologies (Athens)
· Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée – Archives françaises du Film (Bois d´Arcy)
· Cinecittá Luce S.p.A (Rome)
· Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique (Brussels)
· Cineteca di Bologna (Bologna)
· CNR-Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell´Informazione (Pisa)
· Det Danske Filminstitut (Copenhagen)
· Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen (Berlin)
· Estonian Film Archive (Tallinn)
· EYE Stichting Film Instituut Nederland (Amsterdam)
· Filmarchiv Austria (Vienna)
· Fondazione Cineteca Italiana (Milan)
· Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS (Erlangen)
· Imperial War Museum (London)
· Instituto de la Cinematografia y Artes Audiovisuales – Filmoteca Española (Madrid)
· Instituto Valenciano del Audiovisual y de la Cinematografia Ricardo Munoz Suay (Valencia)
· Jugoslovenska Kinoteka (Belgrade)
· Magyar Nemzeti Filmarchivum (Budapest)
· Národnà filmový archiv (Prague)
· Nasjonalbiblioteket (Oslo)
· Österreichisches Filmmuseum (Vienna)
· Reelport GmbH (Cologne)
For more information about EFG1914 see the project website www.project.efg1914.eu
(With thanks to Europeana)
Chris
British GENES on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES and Twitter @chrismpaton
World War 1 Film Footage in Cyberspace
Films about World War 1 that have never been seen outside a cinema or on television are to be made available on the internet for the first time ever.
The European Film Gateway 1914 (EFG1914) plans to digitise up to 650 hours of footage and make it freely accessible via europeana.eu, Europe’s digital library, museum and archive. It will also appear on the film portal www.europeanfilmgateway.eu
The 2-year project was launched during a meeting of more than 40 representatives from 25 partner institutions at the German Film Museum in Frankfurt am Main.
The footage, which includes newsreels, documentary films and footage as well as fiction films from and about World War 1, is being digitised by archives across Europe, including the Imperial War Museum in London - which has one of the largest institutional World War 1 related collections - along with partners in France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Spain and the Netherlands.
Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana, said, “This is an enormously valuable project for historians, schools, researchers and film buffs, and will provide a remarkable resource in time for the 2014 centenary, when public interest will really peak.”
“It’s important too because although a considerable amount of film material covering the Great War was produced, but experts estimate about 80% of that footage has been lost forever. Surviving films remain in analogue format, but access to them can be difficult, cumbersome and costly. But through digitisation, the material can be accessible to all on the web.”
Project organisers are sharing hundreds of hours of film material and expertise from a number of individual European archives in order to highlight the benefits of film digitisation and digital preservation of historical films across the sector.
NOTES
EFG1914 is coordinated by the Deutsches Filminstitut on behalf of the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE), with support from the European Union. It follows the success of the European Film Gateway, which has become the most frequently used web portal for finding films and film-related material from the film archives and cinémathèques of Europe. Between 2008 and 2011, more than 500,000 objects were made available for users to view online.
Partners in EFG1914
Deutsches Filminstitut – DIF e.V. (Frankfurt), coordinator
· Arhiva Nationala de Filme (Bucharest)
· Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (Frankfurt/Brussels)
· Athena Research and Innovation Center in Information Communication & Knowledge Technologies (Athens)
· Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée – Archives françaises du Film (Bois d´Arcy)
· Cinecittá Luce S.p.A (Rome)
· Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique (Brussels)
· Cineteca di Bologna (Bologna)
· CNR-Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell´Informazione (Pisa)
· Det Danske Filminstitut (Copenhagen)
· Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen (Berlin)
· Estonian Film Archive (Tallinn)
· EYE Stichting Film Instituut Nederland (Amsterdam)
· Filmarchiv Austria (Vienna)
· Fondazione Cineteca Italiana (Milan)
· Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS (Erlangen)
· Imperial War Museum (London)
· Instituto de la Cinematografia y Artes Audiovisuales – Filmoteca Española (Madrid)
· Instituto Valenciano del Audiovisual y de la Cinematografia Ricardo Munoz Suay (Valencia)
· Jugoslovenska Kinoteka (Belgrade)
· Magyar Nemzeti Filmarchivum (Budapest)
· Národnà filmový archiv (Prague)
· Nasjonalbiblioteket (Oslo)
· Österreichisches Filmmuseum (Vienna)
· Reelport GmbH (Cologne)
For more information about EFG1914 see the project website www.project.efg1914.eu
(With thanks to Europeana)
Chris
British GENES on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES and Twitter @chrismpaton
Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk and www.facebook.com/ScottishGenealogyResearch
Thursday, 22 March 2012
Europeana WW1 roadshow in Dublin
The National Library of Ireland was yesterday the host to Europeana's latest stop on its First World War digitisation roadshow (see http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/major-ww1-digitisation-events-in.html).
Over 600 visitors - three times the number that turned up in Preston for the English leg - brought mementoes and stories to share for the project. RTE has a story online showcasing one of them - a helmet that was damaged by shrapnel but which saved a soldier's life at the Somme. To view the story visit http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2012/0321/media-3234751.html. (With thanks to @irishrootsmag on Twitter)
The Irish Independent has more coverage at www.independent.ie/national-news/families-rewrite-the-history-of-war-with-mementos-3058039.html
Chris
British GENES on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES and Twitter @chrismpaton
Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk and www.facebook.com/ScottishGenealogyResearch
Over 600 visitors - three times the number that turned up in Preston for the English leg - brought mementoes and stories to share for the project. RTE has a story online showcasing one of them - a helmet that was damaged by shrapnel but which saved a soldier's life at the Somme. To view the story visit http://www.rte.ie/news/av/2012/0321/media-3234751.html. (With thanks to @irishrootsmag on Twitter)
The Irish Independent has more coverage at www.independent.ie/national-news/families-rewrite-the-history-of-war-with-mementos-3058039.html
Chris
British GENES on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES and Twitter @chrismpaton
Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk and www.facebook.com/ScottishGenealogyResearch
Monday, 19 March 2012
New linked data tools for Europeana partners
From Europeana (http://europeana.eu):
Announcing DM2E: Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana
The European Commission (EC) is to fund the development of Linked Data tools that will enable more libraries and archives to provide digital content to Europeana – Europe's largest cultural heritage portal. Funding has also been allocated for the development of tools that will enable innovative re-use of Europeana data in teaching and research contexts.
The software to be developed will allow for the contextualisation and linking of vast cultural heritage data sets drawn from some of Europe's most prominent memory institutions. This will in turn allow scholars, students and the wider public to interact with with cultural objects and their associated metadata in innovative ways.
Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana, highlights the importance of the project for the teaching and research communities that reuse the data made available through Europeana:
“DM2E's development of tools helps content providers to integrate and enrich their data with Europeana for re-use by scholars, teachers and students; and digital humanities developers to build applications best suited to the needs of scholars. The project is therefore key to facilitation work of Europeana in opening up access to our cultural heritage in new and exciting ways.”
The project will be led by Professor Stefan Gradmann from Humboldt University with community and dissemination work to be led by the Open Knowledge Foundation. The technical development will be based on an exemplary set of digitised content provided by some of Europe's leading cultural heritage institutions such as Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Deutsches Textarchiv and Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.
In line with the recent Europeana Data Exchange Agreement, all contributing institutions have agreed to make their metadata available under the Creative Commons Public Domain License (CC-0) which will make it easier to reuse in diverse contexts.
(With thanks to Europeana)
Chris
British GENES on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES and Twitter @chrismpaton
Announcing DM2E: Digitised Manuscripts to Europeana
The European Commission (EC) is to fund the development of Linked Data tools that will enable more libraries and archives to provide digital content to Europeana – Europe's largest cultural heritage portal. Funding has also been allocated for the development of tools that will enable innovative re-use of Europeana data in teaching and research contexts.
The software to be developed will allow for the contextualisation and linking of vast cultural heritage data sets drawn from some of Europe's most prominent memory institutions. This will in turn allow scholars, students and the wider public to interact with with cultural objects and their associated metadata in innovative ways.
Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana, highlights the importance of the project for the teaching and research communities that reuse the data made available through Europeana:
“DM2E's development of tools helps content providers to integrate and enrich their data with Europeana for re-use by scholars, teachers and students; and digital humanities developers to build applications best suited to the needs of scholars. The project is therefore key to facilitation work of Europeana in opening up access to our cultural heritage in new and exciting ways.”
The project will be led by Professor Stefan Gradmann from Humboldt University with community and dissemination work to be led by the Open Knowledge Foundation. The technical development will be based on an exemplary set of digitised content provided by some of Europe's leading cultural heritage institutions such as Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Deutsches Textarchiv and Österreichische Nationalbibliothek.
In line with the recent Europeana Data Exchange Agreement, all contributing institutions have agreed to make their metadata available under the Creative Commons Public Domain License (CC-0) which will make it easier to reuse in diverse contexts.
(With thanks to Europeana)
Chris
British GENES on Facebook at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES and Twitter @chrismpaton
Scotland's Greatest Story research service www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk and www.facebook.com/ScottishGenealogyResearch
Tuesday, 28 February 2012
Major WW1 digitisation events in Preston and Dublin
The following press release comes from Europeana (www.europeana.com), and concerns a major First World War pan-European digitisation project requiring your help:
World War One 1914 -1918 Digitising pictures, letters and memories for the 100th anniversary
Do you have a box hidden deep in the attic or under the bed that holds your great grandfather’s diaries? Maybe a letter from the front line? Or a photo taken at the time? Is there a special story behind it? If so, we want to see it.
We are building the first ever online European archive of private memorabilia from WW1 in time for the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of war – and we need your help to do this.
Today we are urging people to root out memorabilia from 1914-1918 to bring along to the Museum of Lancashire in Preston, on Saturday March 10 – one of the first in a series of WW1 Family History Roadshows that will be visiting Luxembourg, Ireland, Slovenia, Denmark and Belgium during 2012.
We anticipate that it will be the first time many of these items have ever been seen outside the family – creating a new and exciting source of material for historians, schools, genealogists and cultural organisations in their interpretation of how the war affected the lives or ordinary people.
We want families to tell us about their keepsakes, who they belonged to and why they are so important to them - and we will save those memories in our archive (see www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en).
Europeana 1914-1918 brings together a partnership of libraries, museums, academic and cultural institutions, which in the UK includes the British Library, Oxford University, JISC, and Lancashire County Council.
On roadshow days, historians and experts will be available to talk about the significance of the finds - while our staff will professionally digitise and upload them to the website.
And if you are unable to attend the event, you can scan or digitally photograph your own material and upload it on the website (www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en).
As the centenary approaches, it is vital we preserve these precious documents for future generations. Digitisation saves them from being lost or thrown away – and it allows the information to be incorporated into apps for smartphones and tablets that will bring history alive for people in contemporary ways.
In 2011, more than 25,000 digital images were recorded from nine family history roadshows held in major cities across Germany. These included: unpublished diaries, hand-drawn maps, portraits, sketches and photographs recording life under fire and on the home front.
Stephen Bull, curator of military history and archaeology at the Museum of Lancashire, said: “As the centenary of 1914 and WW1 approaches, it is more important than ever that we save these items. It tells us what life was like for the ordinary people of Lancashire – the soldiers, their families and the workers back home who kept the country going.
“We are hoping people will bring in anything from that period, be it a family photo, a love letter, some sort of document or object. It doesn’t matter if they don’t know the background behind it, once it’s online then it’s likely people will be able to fill in some of those gaps.
“And while experts scan these precious items, visitors can use the opportunity to enjoy our museum with its replica WW1 trench, meet costumed re-enactors and experience at first hand some of the sights, smells and sounds from a conflict that affected the everyday lives of virtually all Europeans.”
Jill Cousins, Europeana’s executive director, said: “Memorabilia and stories are kept by families for a while, but after a century their significance starts to fade.
“That’s why our online archive, which is collecting material from across Europe in a series of roadshows, is so important.
“The Preston event will give people the opportunity to share their memories, photos and diaries with future generations, while learning about the sacrifices their ancestors made.”
Jamie Andrews, head of English and Drama at the British Library, said he was delighted to be involved in the project.
“We’re already set to digitise more than 400,000 items from national libraries in eight European countries with our Europeana Collections 1914-1918 project,” he said.
“Add to this unseen material from people’s own homes and we will have a truly rounded picture of the impact of the war on families from all the different communities involved.”
Stuart Lee, director of Computing Systems and Services at Oxford University, said: “We’re thrilled to be part of this project. We pioneered this idea of collecting the memories of the community online - and concentrating on an individual town like Preston will give us a wonderful opportunity to assess the lasting legacy of the war in the regions.”
The roadshows are funded in the UK by JISC, which promotes IT innovation in higher education.
Stuart Dempster, programme director at JISC, said: “These roadshows will give universities, colleges, museums, galleries, archives, libraries, the creative industries and schools the opportunity to work together with the public to create new and exciting ways of considering the historical, political and social legacy of the war through innovative digital technologies.”
NB: The following are the UK and Ireland dates for participation, at venues in Preston and Dublin:
Saturday, 10 March 10.00 – 17.30
Museum of Lancashire Stanley Street Preston PR1 4YP
Tel: 01772 534075
Wednesday, 21 March 10.00 - 19.00
National Library of Ireland Kildare Street Dublin 2
Tel: +353 1 603 02 00
(With thanks to the Europeana press office)
Chris
World War One 1914 -1918 Digitising pictures, letters and memories for the 100th anniversary
Do you have a box hidden deep in the attic or under the bed that holds your great grandfather’s diaries? Maybe a letter from the front line? Or a photo taken at the time? Is there a special story behind it? If so, we want to see it.
We are building the first ever online European archive of private memorabilia from WW1 in time for the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of war – and we need your help to do this.
Today we are urging people to root out memorabilia from 1914-1918 to bring along to the Museum of Lancashire in Preston, on Saturday March 10 – one of the first in a series of WW1 Family History Roadshows that will be visiting Luxembourg, Ireland, Slovenia, Denmark and Belgium during 2012.
We anticipate that it will be the first time many of these items have ever been seen outside the family – creating a new and exciting source of material for historians, schools, genealogists and cultural organisations in their interpretation of how the war affected the lives or ordinary people.
We want families to tell us about their keepsakes, who they belonged to and why they are so important to them - and we will save those memories in our archive (see www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en).
Europeana 1914-1918 brings together a partnership of libraries, museums, academic and cultural institutions, which in the UK includes the British Library, Oxford University, JISC, and Lancashire County Council.
On roadshow days, historians and experts will be available to talk about the significance of the finds - while our staff will professionally digitise and upload them to the website.
And if you are unable to attend the event, you can scan or digitally photograph your own material and upload it on the website (www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en).
As the centenary approaches, it is vital we preserve these precious documents for future generations. Digitisation saves them from being lost or thrown away – and it allows the information to be incorporated into apps for smartphones and tablets that will bring history alive for people in contemporary ways.
In 2011, more than 25,000 digital images were recorded from nine family history roadshows held in major cities across Germany. These included: unpublished diaries, hand-drawn maps, portraits, sketches and photographs recording life under fire and on the home front.
Stephen Bull, curator of military history and archaeology at the Museum of Lancashire, said: “As the centenary of 1914 and WW1 approaches, it is more important than ever that we save these items. It tells us what life was like for the ordinary people of Lancashire – the soldiers, their families and the workers back home who kept the country going.
“We are hoping people will bring in anything from that period, be it a family photo, a love letter, some sort of document or object. It doesn’t matter if they don’t know the background behind it, once it’s online then it’s likely people will be able to fill in some of those gaps.
“And while experts scan these precious items, visitors can use the opportunity to enjoy our museum with its replica WW1 trench, meet costumed re-enactors and experience at first hand some of the sights, smells and sounds from a conflict that affected the everyday lives of virtually all Europeans.”
Jill Cousins, Europeana’s executive director, said: “Memorabilia and stories are kept by families for a while, but after a century their significance starts to fade.
“That’s why our online archive, which is collecting material from across Europe in a series of roadshows, is so important.
“The Preston event will give people the opportunity to share their memories, photos and diaries with future generations, while learning about the sacrifices their ancestors made.”
Jamie Andrews, head of English and Drama at the British Library, said he was delighted to be involved in the project.
“We’re already set to digitise more than 400,000 items from national libraries in eight European countries with our Europeana Collections 1914-1918 project,” he said.
“Add to this unseen material from people’s own homes and we will have a truly rounded picture of the impact of the war on families from all the different communities involved.”
Stuart Lee, director of Computing Systems and Services at Oxford University, said: “We’re thrilled to be part of this project. We pioneered this idea of collecting the memories of the community online - and concentrating on an individual town like Preston will give us a wonderful opportunity to assess the lasting legacy of the war in the regions.”
The roadshows are funded in the UK by JISC, which promotes IT innovation in higher education.
Stuart Dempster, programme director at JISC, said: “These roadshows will give universities, colleges, museums, galleries, archives, libraries, the creative industries and schools the opportunity to work together with the public to create new and exciting ways of considering the historical, political and social legacy of the war through innovative digital technologies.”
NB: The following are the UK and Ireland dates for participation, at venues in Preston and Dublin:
Saturday, 10 March 10.00 – 17.30
Museum of Lancashire Stanley Street Preston PR1 4YP
Tel: 01772 534075
Wednesday, 21 March 10.00 - 19.00
National Library of Ireland Kildare Street Dublin 2
Tel: +353 1 603 02 00
(With thanks to the Europeana press office)
Chris
Monday, 19 December 2011
Expect web design transformation over next few years
With thanks to Europeana (www.europeana.eu) for the following, which implies that our websites are about to undergo a radical design transformation as people switch to portable devices:
Culture on the Go: CIBER report says mobile browsing will transform the web
A new report, Culture on the Go, from UK web-watchers CIBER Research, shows how access to information is changing as people search for, read and use information on the move. A growing proportion of web browsing happens on smartphones like the new Mac iPhone 4S and tablets like the iPad, and no longer on PCs and laptops in homes and offices. This shift will have a radical impact on the design and functionality of websites, and will inevitably reflect back to the desktop screen itself.
Professor David Nicholas of CIBER said, "We are seeing a transformation of behaviour. We know that the mobile device will soon be the dominant platform for searching the Web and yet right now we know virtually nothing about how people seek, read and use information via these devices. The CIBER group are cyberspace voyeurs - we’ve analysed tens of thousands of visits and are making sense of these digital footprints to give us an understanding of behaviour in the virtual space."
The CIBER group has developed a bespoke deep log analysis technique for monitoring behaviours online. The group conducted their research for Europeana, Europe’s cultural heritage portal, to look at how it should be developing its information services for the Google Generation.
The report sets out to show how people search the Web via mobile devices and compares this with use of the same platform by PC and laptop users. The data was collected for visitors to Europeana.eu using deep log analysis and data mining techniques during 2010 - 2011. The main findings were that visits from users on the go are very different in the aggregate to those from fixed platforms. Visits are typically shorter, less interactive, and less content is viewed per visit. The variation between different mobile devices is huge, with information seeking on smartphones substantially different from that associated with PCs and laptops, whereas from iPads the behaviour tends more towards PC-based browsing.
Most websites have been designed for access from a PC or laptop, and accessing the Web via a mobile device is quite a different experience. Many websites from the cultural heritage sector are attracting a new demographic that includes more digital natives. This, coupled with the fact that people are used to paying for content via mobile devices, heralds a transformation in the way cultural web services will be delivered.
Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana said, "We were prescient in designing a Europeana ‘lite’ interface for users with mobile phones three years ago. However, the mobile screen is too small to get a good experience of the great books and paintings on Europeana. Tablet devices like the iPad give high-resolution display with enough screen estate to explore your favourite pictures. This report shows us that we must speed up our development for new mobile and tablet interfaces."
Culture on the Go also reported on the countries showing the heaviest mobile use of Europeana, and showed France led Europe with over 23% of mobile use. The study also shows that typically, Europeana users look at material from their own country, but that interest in other cultures varies by country and can be tracked. CIBER’s techniques have also been used to study each country’s take-up of mobile devices, and points to a greater democratisation of online access than was possible using fixed platforms.
Read the full report at: http://pro.europeana.eu/web/guest/publications.
Chris
Culture on the Go: CIBER report says mobile browsing will transform the web
A new report, Culture on the Go, from UK web-watchers CIBER Research, shows how access to information is changing as people search for, read and use information on the move. A growing proportion of web browsing happens on smartphones like the new Mac iPhone 4S and tablets like the iPad, and no longer on PCs and laptops in homes and offices. This shift will have a radical impact on the design and functionality of websites, and will inevitably reflect back to the desktop screen itself.
Professor David Nicholas of CIBER said, "We are seeing a transformation of behaviour. We know that the mobile device will soon be the dominant platform for searching the Web and yet right now we know virtually nothing about how people seek, read and use information via these devices. The CIBER group are cyberspace voyeurs - we’ve analysed tens of thousands of visits and are making sense of these digital footprints to give us an understanding of behaviour in the virtual space."
The CIBER group has developed a bespoke deep log analysis technique for monitoring behaviours online. The group conducted their research for Europeana, Europe’s cultural heritage portal, to look at how it should be developing its information services for the Google Generation.
The report sets out to show how people search the Web via mobile devices and compares this with use of the same platform by PC and laptop users. The data was collected for visitors to Europeana.eu using deep log analysis and data mining techniques during 2010 - 2011. The main findings were that visits from users on the go are very different in the aggregate to those from fixed platforms. Visits are typically shorter, less interactive, and less content is viewed per visit. The variation between different mobile devices is huge, with information seeking on smartphones substantially different from that associated with PCs and laptops, whereas from iPads the behaviour tends more towards PC-based browsing.
Most websites have been designed for access from a PC or laptop, and accessing the Web via a mobile device is quite a different experience. Many websites from the cultural heritage sector are attracting a new demographic that includes more digital natives. This, coupled with the fact that people are used to paying for content via mobile devices, heralds a transformation in the way cultural web services will be delivered.
Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana said, "We were prescient in designing a Europeana ‘lite’ interface for users with mobile phones three years ago. However, the mobile screen is too small to get a good experience of the great books and paintings on Europeana. Tablet devices like the iPad give high-resolution display with enough screen estate to explore your favourite pictures. This report shows us that we must speed up our development for new mobile and tablet interfaces."
Culture on the Go also reported on the countries showing the heaviest mobile use of Europeana, and showed France led Europe with over 23% of mobile use. The study also shows that typically, Europeana users look at material from their own country, but that interest in other cultures varies by country and can be tracked. CIBER’s techniques have also been used to study each country’s take-up of mobile devices, and points to a greater democratisation of online access than was possible using fixed platforms.
Read the full report at: http://pro.europeana.eu/web/guest/publications.
Chris
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