War Memorials Online

Not sure if this is the correct place for this, or if it has already been posted (although I couldn't see it), if it has, my apologies.

I just happened across this website: WAR MEMORIALS ONLINE | Help us to record, conserve and remember our war memorials which launched on Sunday. It's a collaboration between the War Memorials Trust, IWM's War Memorials Archive and English Heritage. As the name suggests, it aims to create an online record of all the war memorials in the UK, and their current conditions. They are asking for members of the public to upload information about/photographs of their local memorials.

I haven't looked into it in great detail at the moment, but it looks to be an interesting project.

 

I haven't come across this site before, thanks for the link, I can help with that site...got quite a few from around Leeds with more to come. Thanks.

 

I thought it might be helpful for War Memorials Trust to add to the discussion so anyone visiting War Memorials Online has some background to the project. Apologies for the length of this posting and I hope it isn’t breaching rules but I thought you might be interested.



[FONT=&quot]1. [/FONT]Project purpose
The driving force for this project is to generate a greater understanding of the condition of war memorials. This will assist as we approach the centenary in identifying the overall condition of the UK’s war memorial and help ensure we have adequate resources in place to support repair and conservation.

Therefore two of the key messages on each page is the ‘report a concern’ so people can easily highlight issues and the ‘condition’ tab where we hope people can tell us if the memorial is currently Good/Fair/Poor/Very bad.

Generating this information will help us show that the many war memorials are well cared for but also demonstrate the extent of problems which can be used to help ensure that adequate resources are in place to help communities who need to repair and conserve their war memorials. English Heritage, which funds a war memorials grant scheme, is supporting this project.

2. Stages
The current website offering is stage 1 of the project with a more substantial offering due by March 2013. We wanted to get something up for November when we could get wider interest and start the project to then build upon it over the next few months. We don't expect, for example, all locations to be corrected by March but we hope with people's help and our efforts we can improve data.

3. Location / Map markers being wrong
We know the pins are wrong on most records (wrong place, in the sea, etc) and one of the key aims of this project is to correct this. The website was initially populated with a cache of data from IWM’s War Memorials Archive (formerly UK National Inventory of War Memorials). The location data held by the Archive is OS based and often just relates to an OS square. Therefore when it was converted to long/lat references it isn’t precise. But by going onto a memorial record and editing address you can create a new pin in the precise location and update that information. With around 60,000 odd records getting location correct can be challenging and we hope people on the ground with knowledge of the local area can help ensure accuracy.

Any help you can provide in improving this data would be very welcome. As we note on the Get involved page www.warmemorialsonline.org.uk/get-involved location, images, condition and other sources of information are key at this stage of the project.

4. Photos
With condition and concern being important to this project getting dated images submitted is important in developing an understanding of condition.

Both IWM’s War Memorials Archive and War Memorials Trust have photos but there are issues of copyright to consider and also the resources around scanning/uploading thousands of photos. We are hoping that if people in the local community can upload a photo of their local war memorial this will achieve the objective far more quickly. We are uploading photos where they are available.

5. Sharing information
War Memorials Online recognises that many people have done a great deal of research on war memorials. For that reason it was really important for us to include the links option on each record. If you have, or know about, a war memorial website which provides lots of info then you can link it into that memorial page and that way users of War Memorials Online will be able to find more information via the links if they haven’t already found it via their own research. War Memorials Trust is currently getting one of our volunteers to go through and link memorial records to our Grants Showcase where we feature information on grants we have given.

We fully recognise that people may have concerns about another website showing their information but we hope that by offering the links information you can see that we are keen to show the wonderful websites out there. On the comments field you can also add books etc.

If you upload a photo it currently says who uploaded it but this should be changed in due course to show the copyright holder so due recognition will be given on the site to the copyright holder.

6. Missing memorials
When searching for a memorial you will find more records listed under Listings view rather than map view. We are working on an improved map search.

If you can’t find the memorial at all then please add it. Part of this site is looking to ensure everything is recorded.


I hope that provides some background. I apologise for the length but as I said I wanted to be helpful. I am happy to discuss this if anyone has further issues or I have missed anything.

Frances Moreton
War Memorials Trust
E: info@warmemorialsonline.org.uk

 

Frances welcome to the forum

for info

Please see link below there are a number of war memorials posted by Forum members.

http://www.ww2talk.com/forum/war-cemeteries-war-memorial-research/22691-can-you-photograph-your-local-war-memorial-80.html

regards
Clive

 

Ahh brilliant, thanks for taking the time to post that additional information Frances.

I shall certainly add information/photographs of my local memorials when the weather dries up enough!

 

Frances and castlin,

Thanks for posting the information, there are plenty of members here who can add to your project.

 

I was reading through the recent addition of the Burma Star magazine, Dekho and they had a good article on War memorials and their upkeep.

So I thought it would be a timely moment to bump this thread back up.

https://www.warmemorialsonline.org.uk

 

There are a few of the images on the 'War Memorials Online' website which were contributed by 'Yours Truly'. Some people have contributed a much larger number of images / information and have done a really fine job to freely share with everyone.