History Archive unveiled

The Audlem History Archive is a project designed to collect together as much of the documentary history of Audlem (and the surrounding area) in such a way that anyone with browser access to the internet can freely examine the contents of the collection and find records within it.

The project is a joint effort between the Audlem District History Society, AudlemOnline and ThenMedia (the Audlem based web technology company which has created the technical framework for Audlem Online).

Building the archive

Slowly but surely during the last year or so (basically since version IV of the website went live), a small group of people from the Audlem District History Society have been building up the Archive.

This has involved scanning in an enormous number of documents and pictures, mainly from the filing cabinets of the History Society, but from many other sources as well. As each item is added to the Archive it is categorised by date, place, organisation, building and so on.

Meanwhile the technical whizzkids in ThenMedia have been preparing the public interface so that anyone can look at the Archive and locate particular items, or just scan through entries until something catches their eye.

And now it is ready

And now at last we believe it is ready for public consumption. There are over 1500 items on the archive now (and more being added all the time), including the school (and other) photos which were so popular on the previous version of AudlemOnline together with the "pushpin" facility required to identify individuals where known.

To look at the archive, either click on the banner picture on the website home page, or click here.

How to use the archive

The Archive web site contains a "help" button which can be clicked to get information about how to access the information and browse through it, but we fondly believe that the user interface is so intuitive that people will find their way around easily (but then technical people always think that, don't they?).

Adding your own items

The Archive site also includes facilities for putting in information about an item if you know something that makes the item more interesting or better defined. You can also notify us about items in your possession which would make good additions to the Archive.

So please try it out and let us know what you think.

John Whitehead (Chairman, Audlem District History Society)
Celia Bloor (Researcher)

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