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Online
History or Genealogy Projects are an excellent way to introduce
residents in a community - especially senior citizens - to
ICT. These projects provide tools to exploit existing interests
and have proved popular in a variety of settings and cultures.
However, don't limit participation to seniors. This is a way
to get all generations engaged in their family and community
history - and technology as well.
This
project description was written by Terry Grunwald for the Scottish
Communities Channel in 2001, but is now longer available
there. We plan to update here shortly.
What
do Local History and Genealogy Projects do?
- Community
outreach to encourage local residents to experience the
rich local history and genealogy treasures available on
the Net
- Offer
Internet demonstrations with local "experts"
- Create
content and special sections on local community web sites
as a community building strategy
- Scan
family documents and photos and take digital photographs
of local artefacts and post them on the web site. In this
case, the owners do not have to part with the originals.
- Engage
the whole community in "filling information gaps" in local
history
- Create
inter-generational programmes in which young people interview
local "elders" and get them to tell stories which are posted
online sometimes using multimedia
- Promotes
online cultural exchange and "twinning" projects
Resources
Genuki
is a voluntary effort to make information about genealogy
in the UK readily available on the web. There are resource
pages for every county listing everything from maps to online
parish records. It also includes hand-written documents, newspapers,
and is no-frills, text-based and non-commercial.
Cyndi's
List of Genealogy Sites - Scotland provides loads of useful
links. So does Scotlandsclans.com
- as does UK Genealogy. Each county has an archive service
and Internet resources useful to genealogists. Find links
to the county info on UK
Genealogy.
A
useful "Getting
Started" article can be found at the Gathering of the
Clans web site.
Models
The
Caithness Community Web
Site demonstrates several examples of local history as
a community building tool. To get the 100-year Centenary of
a local church online, residents were asked to review old
photos and fill in the names of the unknown persons in the
pictures.
The
Loch Awe Community
Web Site demonstrates the range of local history issues
that can be addressed from old postcard views to sports archives.
South
Edinburgh Net provides excerpts from books along with
old photos on its web site.
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