3 replies to this topic

[ph0ebus]

Hi all,

A very, very interesting story and idea in Deutsche Welle:

With the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I quickly approaching, a European project is digitally documenting personal memorabilia - before it is lost forever to time and indifference.

You can read the full story here:

Everyday Stories from World War One

You can contribute your own items to the archive (and tour the archive) here:
Europeana Erster Weltkrieg

-Daniel

[healdav]

Europeana is now up and running and has some amazing stuff on it. It really seems to have shaken the attics of many people.

I haven't looked at everything, of course, but for what I am interested in I have found previously unknown men, medal citations, photographs, etc.

Check it out.

[Jim Smithson]

I've already spent a number of hours scouring the German diaries especially.  The big problem is that the larger this collection gets the less use it is becoming to a researcher because they are searching on the additional information field which leads one all over the place.  For example if you search for Ypres you wil get every collection where the soldier served at Ypres, whether there are any pertinent items or not.  There are some amaxing postcards in many of the collections but there is little else to do, if you are looking for particular ones than put in a key word and then put away a few hours looking through them all.  Careful with the key word(s) though as they will have to be very general.  

Great to spend some time on though and certainly worth a visit if you have not been.


Jim

[healdav]

There may well be a lot of interesting stuff to go on that is still in the queue.

I was talking yesterday to the lady who is in charge of uploading and organising all the stuff handed in here, and she told me that one woman had turned up with a file of all the letters sent by her grandafather from the French army to her grandmother.

Unfortunately, they can't just be scanned as they are in poor conditin and written in pencil. They whole thing has been sent for professional conservation and restoaration before they do anything with it. YThere could well be some very intersting info there when it finally sees the light of day (or not as the case may be).