We have had various blog posts throughout the last few months that help explain why the historical Post Office Directories that feed into AddressingHistory are so useful. But a few weeks ago we decided we would go one better and go and look around, take some pictures and ask our various project partners and supporters if they wouldn’t mind being on camera. As a result we will be sharing various videos over the next few weeks that explain what the PODs are, why they are useful, how they have been digitised and – my personal favourite – the strange things one can find out from them!
So… why are the Post Office Directories – especially when connected to the map in AddressingHistory – so useful? Richard Rodger, Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Edinburgh and Chris Fleet of the National Library of Scotland have some suggestions:
We know there are lots of reasons why you find the PODs and, hopefully, AddressingHistory so useful and we would love to hear your own comments and thoughts in any format – maybe you could make your own video!
Since we have been working mainly with the data from the Post Office Directories we were excited to be able to photograph and film both the physical PODs and the scanning process that the NLS and the Internet Archive are currently undertaking. Our second video features Zaria and Jamie who are digitising some 600,000 pages of Post Office Directories – they explain the process and show off their scanning kit!
We hope to bring you more videos soon as we have various silly POD highlights to share and our developer Joe has explained the process of turning the PODs and maps into the AddressingHistory website. We will also demonstrate how you edit an entry in AddressingHistory and the kinds of searches and information you can run very shortly. If there is something specific you would like to see or contribute we would love to hear from you.
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