The Scottish Military Research Group - Commemorations Project

john burnett · Joined: 29 Jan 2007 Posts: 790 Location: Fife

I, along with other volunteers, are involved in this project.
http://www.kirktonoldchurch.org.uk/

I am not saying we ought to have a similar website but one of our volunteers created the website with the aid of Digital Fife. (Digital Fife is a Fife Council run organisation and provided FREE assistance to us set up the website).
I wonder if there are similar schemes in other regions?
Could a college/university take this on as a project set up a website for us?
There is also the work done by Imperial War Museum and War Memorials Online - the latter supported by Historic Environment Scotland - could they assist or would they regard us as duplicating their work?

Just throwing out suggestions.

dalblair · Joined: 26 Aug 2010 Posts: 564 Location: coupar angus

Very happy to help in whatever way I can. Absolutely no it skills regrettably but I'll do what I can.
Hugh

mhomac · Joined: 15 May 2010 Posts: 779 Location: South Lanarkshire

I'm willing to help in any way I can. Let me know if you are having a meeting and I'll attend if possible.
Have no real suggestions at the moment but happy to read the comments and perhaps help find a solution.

ADP · Joined: 13 Jun 2008 Posts: 467 Location: Edinburgh

My tuppenceworth is to hope that you can find a solution where the project is the host for the photos as well as the forum. That way you are master of your own destiny. However, that does depend on the many contributors to the site being willing to hand over their photos into your custody. As it stands just now, the contributor holds the control of their work, be it with Photobucket, or some other hosting service.

Personally, I am happy that my photos are used here, and by virtue of them appearing in my posts on the forum, it infers a sort of ownership by me. I put them on the forum via Photobucket for the good of the project, and certainly am happy to continue with that aim. So if you do end out hosting the photos, I am happy to re-upload my lot, even though it would be a long drawn out task. I have 379 photos on Photobucket, and at a guess about 350 of them are to do with War Memorials or War Graves. Uploading them is one task, then rebuilding the links on the forum would also be a major task.

I hope that others will be prepared to follow in the same spirit to allow the project to continue its good work.

Your hosts may well offer a photo hosting gallery that you can run alongside phpBB, and link the user memberships through a bridging facility. At TalkingScot we have such a facility using Coppermine. Unfortunately, I would be struggling to recommend Coppermine. From the admin side, I find it very clunky - and in truth our installation of it is not working well these days. Back in the days when it worked better, anyone with a forum membership could upload photos (or scanned images or the like) there, and then put a link on the forum for others to view it in the same manner as is used here for Photobucket and the like. I am guessing that there are other similar programs that you can install on your webspace that can work with the forum. If bridging between the two is not practical, then the users would also have to take out a membership of the image hosting package.

Food for thought...

ADP

adb41 · Joined: 03 Jan 2008 Posts: 178 Location: Stornoway

I have a Flickr account and am prepared to host pictures on it for this project, on behalf of other users - with their permissions. I am happy to help restore the forum's images.

Kenneth Morrison · Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 7:43 pm Post subject:

David - back in July you posted this:
We are very close to having a finalised plan of action to have our own, website/database created - one that’s easier to use, easier to search, and generally more user-friendly.

Almost a year later I see the same phraseology is still in use, so where are we.

What has happened, what is happening, what will happen?

I'm really getting fed up with trying to explain to people that we have a temporary problem thanks to the behaviour of Photobucket, but that a resolution is in hand.
I have to ask "whose hand"?

A lot of folks expressed a wish to help resolve this issue and there are lots of folks who have personal experience of setting up and running web sites (even the dear , departed Jim Grant's sites are still active on the Project)

Has anyone been asked to contribute?

I have forwarded details of a number of web-sites who have done and are doing what we need to be doing.
Has anyone spoken to them?

Please, please, please - what is happening?
and not theorectically - actually!
_________________
Ken

anne park · Posted: Wed Mar 21, 2018 9:02 am Post subject: Photo update

I try to delete the Photobucket info so we don't have all the mess at the start of an entry. It looks so messy so meantime can others maybe do the same.
_________________
Researching WWI info from Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, Kincardineshire & Morayshire.

stuartn · Joined: 13 Dec 2016 Posts: 2551

Tonight the IWM have launched the new public version of the War Memorials Register which now displays images, and has a fully searchable names function.
During the launch event I was talking to our web developers about this forum's issues with Photo bucket.
One option is that this forum could continue in its present form, researching the names, and the IWM could host the photographs on existing records, where we have them, and new records where we don't, which could be cross referenced in both directions between the 2 sites
The public website now updates nightly, and volunteers can now enter their own data, thus obviating the huge delays which the former UKNIWM system had.
We can now very quickly set up new volunteers to access the IWM system.
Initially there would be a lot of set up, but whatever option is chosen, that would happen.
This exercise has already been done for Dumfries & Galloway where all forum records have matching IMW records, so there all that would need to be done is to add the photographs, of which the vast majority are held by 2 people. If the IMW was sent the photographs the developers would be able to batch upload them, I am told.
The WMR is designed to be a 'forever' website, and we have multiple back ups.
It's a suggestion to try to find a constructive way forward.

Kenneth Morrison · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2018 7:58 am Post subject:

Stuart - I've just had a look at COLVEND (it's my local WM) and it looks really good.
This may well be the solution to the War Memorial Project issue.
_________________
Ken

apanderson · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2018 9:34 am Post subject:

Hi Stuart.

I've had a look at the site and it certainly does look like it would suit our purposes.

I wondered though .... as you'll know, we almost always had multiple images of any particular memorial so the names would show as clearly as possible and any of the ones I searched for only had one picture. Would we be able to add close-ups?

Anne

stuartn · Joined: 13 Dec 2016 Posts: 2551

Anne,

You can have as many images as you want on a record, and specify whether any particular image is for proof of names or not. So you would have an overall view, close ups of each names face, and maybe close ups of any notable architectural details.
Any current record with only one image, unless a simple plaque, is probably in need of enhancement!

stuartn · Joined: 13 Dec 2016 Posts: 2551

The Zetland County Memorial at Lerwick is a good example of multiple images (and extra information)-
https://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/6070.

and Milnthorpe in Cumbria is an example of where, as well as current images, there is an image of it from the 1920's. The historic images were only found yesterday!

https://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/4249

apanderson · Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2018 6:35 pm Post subject:

Thanks for that Stuart.

I have more questions (sorry!):

How would we go about sending the images and how would we index them?

Would we have to send them individually/in a group, i.e. a photo of 'X' memorial along with close ups of the names on panels (or whatever) so that whoever was uploading them would know they all referred to that exact 'X' memorial?

Would we then have to wait for them to be uploaded to the IWM site and check they're correct before we could add a link on our Forums?

Anne

stuartn · Joined: 13 Dec 2016 Posts: 2551

The idea, as I see it, would be that each regular forum contributor would be registered as an IMW volunteer. You would therefore create your own IWM reports, so would know that it was correct, and also have an instant cross reference, as you see your report instantly on the volunteer inputting site.
That would certainly work for the likes of the other Anne in the Aberdeen area, Ken Morrison etc. For more occasional or one off contributers maybe that might fall to someone from the forum responsible for a county, or some such idea.
My understanding is that the IMW can now set a volunteer up in a day or two.
Until the photo bucket debacle I was working my way in making the links, through the Hebrides, and the extreme west coast, and was then continuing to Orkney before linking up with my previous work on Shetland. That came to a grinding halt as I started on the Isle of Skye. In principle I'd be happy to look after the Inner and Outer Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland in the manner outlined above, if the historic photographs were able to be released, and certainly for new reports

David McNay · Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2018 1:21 am Post subject:

It's quite late for me to reply, but I think...this might be a solution to our issues.

We've been looking at website alternatives, but we've been hampered by the fact that what we want is either too big for some companies, or too expensive for a small group like ourselves. What I've not been willing to admit to myself is that to safeguard the data we have here...we really need to find someone "higher up" to take ownership of the work we've done. I think this might be that "person".

Since any decision needs to be put before the SMRG committee I'll need to run it past them, but I think that's what I'll be recommending. Not an end to the SMRG as such, but a change of focus somewhat.