More great websites
HistoryPin ( historypin. org) allows you to upload images and pin them to Street View, meaning users can explore today’s streets with old photos superimposed. The site also encourages content from archives and image libraries, and sticking with our TNA example, you can explore its pinned content via historypin.org/en/person/ 31500.
The National Library of Australia’s Trove ( trove.nla.gov. au) posts on Twitter (@TroveAustralia) are fascinating. It’s easy to waste hours on the website, trawling images and reading newspapers, even if you don’t have Australian connections.
A good regional example is West Sussex Past Pictures ( www. westsussexpast.org.uk/pictures), which draws on materials held by the county library service and seven local museums. There’s also the excellent Picture Oxon ( pictureoxon.com), home to images of Oxfordshire and the Thames Valley from the 1850s to the present. The actual parent collection is vast – almost half a million photographs – but the online archive allows you to search 300,000 catalogue records of images, and 100,000 actual digital images. Again these are drawn from county libraries, the museums service and the Oxfordshire History Centre.
Red Rose Collections ( redrosecollections.lancashire.gov. uk) is a new archive of Lancashire local history resources. The much older Leodis ( www.leodis.net) has 60,000+ photographs of Leeds, including the official city engineers collection. The site is dated, so I also recommend the curated leodiscollections.net.
Keep your eye out for useful indexes. Staffordshire Name Indexes ( staffsnameindexes.org.uk), for example, has an index to Stafford Gaol Photograph Albums from 1877-1916. Plus last issue we heard from the county archive service that volunteers are currently indexing Staffordshire photos.
You can explore British Library digital collections via British Library Labs ( labs.bl.uk/ Digital+ Collections), plus there’s Brighton & Hove’s Digital Media Bank ( dams- brighton museums.org.uk), Cumbria Image Bank ( cumbriaimage bank.org.uk), Shetland Museum & Archives Photo Library ( photos.shetland- museum.org.uk), Historic England Archive ( historicengland.org.uk/images- books/archive), Britain from Above ( britainfromabove.org.uk), Museum of London Picture Library ( museumoflondonimages.com), People’s Collection Wales ( peoplescollection wales.co.uk) and The Wellcome Trust image library ( wellcome images.org). Finally commercial picture libraries include Mary Evans ( maryevans.com), Getty ( gettyimages. com) and Francis Frith ( francisfrith.com).