Coventry Digital

Oh I see! Yet a different scenario! Early days I guess - let's hope they can iron out these teething problems.

C'mon, Archives... Take Rob on!

Dear Forum members, An interactive, digital record of Coventry featuring maps and photos charting the city's history has been launched. Designed to be enjoyed on desktops or mobiles The Coventry Atlas - https://www.coventryatlas.org/ - allows people to track Coventry's pre and post-war history through photographs and drawings placed onto maps of the city ranging from the ride of Lady Godiva through to celebrating Coventry City's FA Cup victory in 1987. Coventry Atlas has been produced by Coventry City of Culture Trust with a range of partners including Coventry University, Culture Coventry and Photo Miners. The launch of the site is, however, only the beginning. The people of Cov are being asked to upload and tag their images to build up a bank of photographs that will eventually lead to every street in Coventry being represented on the Coventry Atlas. Submissions for the Atlas can be done through Coventry University's https://coventry.digital/ site, which was launched earlier this year and will soon introduce a submissions portal, making contributing easy. Photo Archive Miners, will be working with communities over the next few months, to develop trails through Coventry. The trails will encourage people to get out and explore different bits of Coventry and will be created from collections of community contributed images and stories which will be available on Coventry Atlas. Coventry Atlas will act as an educational resource - with specific learning packs aimed at schools - and a site for the whole city to enjoy through 2021 and beyond. Chenine Bhathena, of Coventry City of Culture Trust, said: "This is a really exciting project that captures the history of Coventry in an interactive and creative way. It's something for everyone who lives, works or studies in Coventry to enjoy and also a resource to learn about the history of the city, right down to the road each individual lives in. "It charts the richness of Coventry's history and its people - from medieval times right up to the present, including the famous night that the city celebrated being awarded the UK City of Culture title in 2017. "For us to be able to showcase the history of each area and each street, we need people from right across Coventry to come forward with their images and help us to build up Coventry Atlas to act as a lasting record of the whole city as part of the legacy of UK City of Culture 2021." Dr Benjamin Kyneswood, of Coventry University, said: "It's been great working with the Trust to show items in Coventry Digital on the Atlas - it gives the public another way to enjoy their heritage and share their stories of the city." Mark Cook of Photo Miners said: "We have a fantastic platform in Coventry Atlas. Now we need to work with the public to surface the hidden stories that makes Coventry so special." Ruark Jon-Stevens, of Culture Coventry Trust, said: "Coventry Atlas is an amazing resource providing unique access and insight into the development and history of Coventry. "Culture Coventry Trust is delighted to partner with Coventry City of Culture Trust and Coventry University in its creation. This site enables Coventry Archive images to be featured alongside historical information from independent historians. "As a charitable trust we rely upon support from partners and other stakeholders to enable the continued enhancement of our digital offer and we look forward to growing this work as we move forward." The Coventry Atlas website has been developed by Error Agency with copywriting from author and historian Peter Walters and school resources provided by educational consultant Madalyn Baskerville. It is part of Coventry's Great Place project funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England, Historic England with partner funding by Coventry City Council, Coventry University, University of Warwick and Coventry BID. It has also received contributions by Historic Coventry Trust, Dr Mark Webb, Historic Towns Atlas and many of Coventry's skilled photographers. We look forward to continuing to grow this site. Victoria Northridge Archives Manager

Woohoo! Fantastic idea. Tagged images to the modern map is a bit rough and in some places entirely wrong but it's early days. Thanks for doing this. Clickable link to map.

We could add tons!

Victoria, is there any way members here can add comments to photos already on there? I'm sure you are aware there are some dedicated photo-hunters on here with some great knowledge and I can already identify some images I've seen on there that are marked as 'Unknown?'

Dear members My name is Ben Kyneswood from Cov Uni. I run the Coventry Digital website (and Coventry Atlas for that matter). I want to tell you about a few things I'll be doing soon, having being encouraged to do so by Rob. At the moment we're still building the repository, which is, atm, about 35,000 images. In the next week or so I'm delighted to tell you that we're going to publish about 4750 images from the Coventry Telegraph archive, courtesy of Reach Licensing. There are amazing images of the city before and after the war, plus coverage of most major post-war events in the city. Lots of football too. I hope you'll enjoy looking at and sharing the images as you already have via the embed and share buttons. Second, Reach have acquired and digitised the Arthur Cooper archive of about 10,000 glass plates from when he was photographer for, amongst others, the Coventry Standard. There's no info on these and so I'm building some software to allow some people to log in and add metadata before they are published on Coventry Digital. This should be in the New Year. I'm hoping some of you will get involved and share your knowledge so that the Cooper archive becomes a valuable city resource. You'd log in and choose the Cooper project, adding text next to an image to describe what you are looking at. Hopefully, that'll be names, dates, places plus personal reflections. I'm also keen to hear about how we can use the resource of Coventry Digital more: how might we link it to family archives and ensure stories are recorded for the future. Any ideas, please respond below or email ac4693@coventry.ac.uk. Thanks Ben

Woohoo! Hi Ben. As you may have guessed we're already fans. Between us I'm sure that we can help with some of the missing labels. I'm loving the higher resolution of some of those old photos. I can see bits of the city that were missing before. I've got my fingers crossed that some of the slum clearance pictures are there from the newspaper photos.

Hi Helen Thanks for the lovely comment. I'm really hoping people will find it a fun but serious thing to do. There's already the City Graphics images of slum clearances on Cov Dig. If you search 'city graphics' you'll find plenty there, such as this WH Smith's on Hertford Street, below: I've got a Twitter account @covdig and have just joined Facebook so I can begin to share more. I'm also hoping people will come to me with their contributions. I can make them a 'Contributor' to Cov Dig so they can drag and drop their own images to sit alongside those from the city archives. I love the idea of searching for a street and finding personal stories alongside old photographs etc. Best wishes Ben

Hi Ben! Aha, great. I have been communicating with Victoria Northridge about the site as I know we here can assist in identifying and labelling lots of images on there that are either incorrectly tagged or just listed as Unknown. Victoria has already made some changes on my suggestion. She did mention to me about the Heritage Lottery Fund Grant for Digital Volunteers that I was awaiting approval for as myself, Rob, Helen and I'm sure many others on here would love to help updating and locating many of the collections - especially the City Architects and City Graphics sets. If you review this forum you will see tons of amazing information we have collated over the years which I'm sure would be of value to the site and The Herbert etc. I am local too and Rob and I have been in to the Herbert before. Happy to help in any way - just shout!

Dear Neil Thanks for replying. Sadly we were unsuccessful with the NLHF bid for digital volunteers but I'm going to build the software anyway and see how we go, starting probably with the Arthur Cooper images. As you rightly say, many images at the archives are mislabelled. Victoria has changed, or asked me to change, metadata where we've been made aware, so thanks to you and the other members for that. The architects images are a very interesting set. Whilst we can say more about individual images, I'm also very interested in the stories these images prompt. Be good to collect some of those. I'll be in touch once I'm up and running. Best Ben

Thanks Ben - I'd still be happy to come in to the Herbert now and again to assist in identifying. Can't believe the bid was unsuccessful.

Sad about the funding Rob can advise you on good candidates for picture volunteers. Often unknown pictures get discussed and located here anyway, so we could sort out complicated attributions as a group before presenting our conclusions. The hard part is to do it systematically as not all of them are numbered. Because of the nature of the software, any large search option, the thing gets slower and slower the more you load, so we couldn't start at one end and work our way through. The demise of Old Maps also makes things difficult, although I appreciate the ones added to the site. I notice that not all of the old pictures we were familiar with have been loaded yet, which is why I haven't done an intensive search for mistakes or gaps.

Ben, we have a dream team here - me, Rob, Cliff and Helen as photo hunters and ID'ers, Heathite for the directories, Anne for the newspaper archives... the list goes on!

... not to mention, some senior citizens