AddressingHistory launch

Professor Robert Morris holding punch card versions of the historical Post Office directories. Photo by AddressingHistory

AddressingHistory, a new EDINA ‘crowdsourcing tool’ connecting historical Scottish Post Office Directories to digitised maps from the same era, was launched on Wednesday 17 November at an amplified event at the National Library of Scotland.

The launch event provided an opportunity to celebrate Scottish history and to meet in person many of the local history and genealogy experts, community groups and bloggers that AddressingHistory has been in contact with throughout the six-month JISC-funded project.

Presentations were given on a wide variety of Scottish history and genealogy tools including historical post office directories, the Statistical Accounts of Scotland, NLS digitised mapping projects, the Visualising Urban Geography project, Tobar an Dualchais (see page 2 in this edition of Newsline), in addition to the digitisation programmes being undertaken by the NLS and the Internet Archive thus providing an insight into the possibilities that new technology offers for exploring Scotland’s past.

Stuart Macdonald and Nicola Osborne, both of EDINA, gave an overview of the work that had been undertaken to convert digitised trade directories into a geo-referenced database which facilitates both browsing and editing and concluded their presentation by launching the AddressingHistory tool and API. A key element to the success of the project to date has been the use of social media to engage with communities. Having embedded blogging, tweeting and online engagement throughout the AddressingHistory project it was encouraging to see our launch attendees tweeting (on the event’s Twitter hashtag #AHLaunch), videoing and blogging the event out to the wider Scottish history and genealogy communities online. An edited version of the live event blog and videos of the presentations are now available on the project blog.

AddressingHistory is an open website, and so can be accessed by all.

The project team welcomes any feedback on the project or the website.