Coventry Digital

Hi Annewiggy I don't get much choice with what I get tbh - according to Reach Licensing (who manage the newspaper archives) they are slowly digitising what came in when the CT closed. Sadly, many glass plates were skipped before this happened, so many glaring omissions. The good news is that Arthur Cooper, newspaper photographer from the 1940s and 50s (who has a few images in the CT archive but mainly worked for the Coventry Standard), kept his archive. This is being digitsed atm and hopefully we'll move on it sometime this year.

Hi Helen I see it now. It seems Coventry Archives have uploaded the asset twice. My system won't present a thumbnail size within the SmartFrame, so we're getting the problem. If you search for 10 Gulson Road, you'll see the proper images. Ben

Dear all I'm putting this into the Cov Dig thread but admins may deem Richard Sadler needs his own thread. If so, please move this there. Through Photo Miners, I've been busy digitising a lot of Richard's negs and prints. At Xmas the City of Culture gave us the go ahead for three exhibitions at the Old Grammar School, starting Feb 8th. We're calling the exhibitions 'Pioneering Coventry: the post-war photography of Richard Sadler'. First up is Richard and the city, second Richard and Courtaulds and finally Richard and the cathedral. They'll run for about five weeks each, finishing at the end of May. Online exhibitions are here. More information on Richard Sadler. High resolution images yet to go onto Cov Dig and all prints will go into Coventry Archives this summer. Ben

This is an example of those pictures that still haven't made it yet into Coventry Digital from the old system.

Dear Helen As I understand it, Victoria and her team are completing a catalogue audit atm - I'm hoping lots of assets will reveal themselves and be digitised and uploaded. For my part, I'm focusing on public art in its broadest terms, so any advice would be most welcome. Finally, don't forget the Richard Sadler exhibition at the Old Grammar School is on. Lots of amazing images from 1950s Coventry. We'll also feature Courtaulds and the Cathedral too (including this image).

Hi Ben, I wasn't grumbling, you're all doing great things. I just wanted to credit the Herbert for an image that will eventually turn up. The only minor problem we've encountered is the search function. In some ways it can be too selective eg 'kiln' will not find 'kilns'. In other ways it is too blunt and it's hard to filter out things like the 2020 sketchbooks or modern Godiva festival. The modern photos are massive in number and while wonderful, they swamp the old images. As time goes on those modern collections will only get bigger. They almost need sections of their own or a filter for rough date ranges eg pre war, post war, post 2000, not Coventry. It would make corrections easier as sections could be viewed from end to end, thus not missing anything. Just suggestions. Cheers Helen

Well said, Helen

Agreed, Helen. Yes, Ben, a date search option (pre 1940/1980 etc.) would be really useful.

As Helen (and so many others) said, it is a fantastic resource that you're putting together, Ben - and we hope that with our suggestions it can become an even more amazing resource. I've just noticed one very useful positive, though, regarding Coventry Digital's search feature.... it does accept Boolean logic searches, which makes narrowing down much easier. For instance, if I just search for stoke, then I get far too many results, overwhelmed by hundreds of colourful school-kid's pictures - very lovely, but hardly what I'd be looking for (honest!). However, if I add to the search a word, or words, preceded by minus signs, then they can be excluded, giving me a much more targeted result. So, searching for stoke -primary -secondary gets rid of the clutter. Helen's example above, of "kiln" not find images labeled as "kilns" can be misleading, though, and anyone not knowing that it must be an exact word search will assume, falsely, from an initial search that no images of kilns exist. Also, anyone who goes straight to Coventry Digital and enters a search gets sent straight to the "sign in" page.... but then, when returned to the search box, it's empty, and you need to do the search again (assuming that you remember what it was you came to search for - a bit like walking into a room and forgetting why!). I've only just noticed that if you click the three bars at the top of your page, then select "Help", then find "Advanced Search" there are tips on better searching. I hadn't noticed that before, and I'll bet most other people also hadn't. Would a quick link to that (or even a "pop up on hover" window) be handy right next to the search box, so people would be aware of the advanced features? Oh, and a "result count" would be useful, so we can see how many images our search has found - and help us know if additional images become available at a later date. And.... does it need to be an "infinite" page that just rolls on and on, like Facebook? Really long pages become increasingly slow, and I think some people will eventually give up looking. I'd think something like 50 or 100 images-per-page would work well, and would be snappier to use. Just a few little ideas to make a great site even better!

All good comments and suggestions Rob Like any curious child I see a button and I like to press it... never let me near a self destruct button so I'd found the advanced search. I've long experience with Boolean logic but it has its flaws and gets less useful as a database gets bigger. It can either lead to very long lists of exclusions and/or miss out items you were looking for, eg. I routinely exclude Sarah when I search eBay but that means I would miss anything with a Sarah, not just Sarah Coventry jewellery. Coventry City football memorabilia pains me regularly because excluding football only removes a small fraction of images. Google has become annoying due to the lengths I have to go to in order to find what I want. The must include convention of quotes - "Coventry" - is essential. When looking for new images of Coventry, I search the last month only in the hope that new but not Google promoted images popup. It might be impossible to find many of the early images that drew me to Historic Coventry or other sites and now feature in my street by street collection of images. Thankfully Coventry Digital has no advertising pressure to promote one picture over another! Some sites offer date order but that usually relies on when the image was uploaded, not the age of the photo. Another feature is image type options, eg. line drawing or black and white but those rely on correct labelling. I don't know how those less familiar with searching ever find what they want. A surfeit of riches, to have too much data to look at.

Thanks for the suggestions all. On the log in - this is also where it asks new users to register. It's much easier to log in first, then begin searching. You'll be able to use the tool bar which will pop out when the button next to the search button is clicked (it looks like three lines with dots on each) to refine search too. I appreciate that the menu is behind the three lines but this is now a convention. Cov Dig works great on mobile - you can share via WhatsApp now. The main issue it seems is getting people to items they want as quickly as I can. I'm looking at revamping the front page so that it features a key image or series of collections to prompt searches. As you say, search for 'Coventry' and everything appears. The real benefit is when I get to 100K+ assets. At this point we move away from Boolean and into machine learning. This isn't a creepy Facebook thing but rather a way of ordering (via clusters of similar words) search and recommending new content. It makes life much easier once it's working.

Coventry Archives has been adding images of bomb damage from a collection they call 'City Graphics'. I've made it available to scan through here. Hope you enjoy it. Ben

For those who are yet to join Coventry Digital can I offer you encouragement to do so? While not a complete copy of the Herbert's collection, yet, there are images there that are far superior to many floating about the internet. The search function is a bit of a mystery but when you find the image you want, they're spectacular. I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from posting images but I think you'd have great time looking through the ones Ben has already uploaded. The same goes for Rob's collection. Posting these images might be harder to grasp but if you need help, we can talk you through it. Please, please don't see this as criticism, it's just a reminder of what's available. Other sites worth remembering are Historic England and Britain From Above. The latter is well worth logging into because of the zoom function. Below is an example of a great image but click on it to zoom into the amazing detail, eg I can read AD1931 carved on the Central Hall!

Dear all I've begun to receive the archive of Coventry-based photographer Arthur Cooper. MirrorPix rescued and digitised 8,000 glass plates. However, there is no metadata, which is where we all come in. I'm planning to hold a few meetings to go through Arthur's images. I'll post later where and when and hopefully you'll all come. For the moment, here's a little gallery. Use the arrows at the side to move between assets.

Excellent .......