Thursday, September 4, 2014

Launch of the Hertfordshire on the Map Project

The ‘Hertfordshire on the Map’ project is a collaboration between the Heritage Hub at the University of Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire Archives & Local Studies, and the web site Historypin

This afternoon afternoon I attended the well attended inaugural meeting at the University of Hertfordshire. The aim is to build a collection of photographs and related stories linked to a map of the county, and to encourage people and organisations such as local history societies to share details of their own research.

After the talk a number of the people took part in a workshop where the first pictures were uploaded. It looks an excellent scheme and I will look to see how far I can link my own site to it so that information and pictures can be shared more widely. While I am taking things quietly this month (our Australian visitor arrives at Heathrow tomorrow morning) I will try and upload a number of pictures (both modern photographs and old images) onto the site over the next week or so and report back here on how I got on.

2 comments:

  1. Chris, how does the Heritage Hub differ from Hertfordshire Memories?

    ReplyDelete
  2. The “Heritage Hub” (see link in top post) is an organisation which co-ordinates history related research in Hertfordshire, particularly including work in some way sponsored by the County Council. “Herts Memories” is a web site where people can post stories and pictures about Hertfordshire but does not contain a map based element.. “Hertfordshire on the Map” provides a way of cross-referencing information on the county using a map based approach, and will be able to link together information from various sources, including “Herts Memories.” The system will also act as a repository for pictures and to some extent this could overlap with “Herts Memories” and also with other web based sites picture sites – such as one I already use for modern photographs – Geograph.

    I have started some test postings to see how it might work. Follow the “Hertfordshire on the Map” link (above) and zoom in on Watford. There is a pin for Watford Field School with a picture of the school's 1906 football team. The text ends with a link to the relevant page on my web site. If you follow the link you will find my web page contains (top RH corner) a link back to the HistoryPin map. Such an approach will allow people to look in a location and find relevant material elsewhere on the web, and also provide a communal map location service for any web site which wants to relate historical research on Hertfordshire to a specific location.

    You will also find two other such pages I have set up in the Abbots Langley area, and I have started to prepare some further pins for the Tring area.

    ReplyDelete

This is the newsletter for the Genealogy in Hertfordshire Web site. Comments on this blog are moderated and may be transferred to the web site where appropriate. If you have a local or family history query you want answered you must use "Ask Chris" - See box in right hand column. Anonymous comments cannot be answered.