Presentations and Publications

Recent Presentations, Publications and Website Tweaks

Presentations and Publications, Project Updates, Site Admin Comments Off

Nov 162010

Things have been getting really busy prior to the big AddressingHistory Launch event this week so we thought we would quickly let you know what we’ve been up to.

Publications

We were delighted to be featured on page 8 of the Herald newspaper yesterday (Monday 15th November).

Last month we were also featured, along with the excellent AskScotland project, in IS News: the Newsletter of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland.

You can find information about these and other articles about the project in our new publications area. Do let us know if you have written about AddressingHistory for your local history newsletter, genealogy magazine, etc. and we will be delighted to mention and link to it here.

Recent Presentations

Earlier this month Stuart attended the RunCoCo Community Collection Online Sustainability and Business Models workshop to give a short presentation on AddressingHistory and to hear about the other exciting projects in the JISC Developing Community Content Programme which we are part of.

In late October Nicola also gave a presentation on AddressingHistory, and how we have been using social media (like this blog), to the CILIPS Autumn Gathering in Dunfermline and was delighted to meet librarians from across Scotland many of whom took AddressingHistory flyers and posters for their libraries and local history groups. Do get in touch with us if you’d like to do the same.

Changes to this Website

In readiness for our launch of the AddressingHistory tool we have been adding and changing a few things around here. We have added two new pages for Presentations and Press.

The Presentations page lists and links to the presentations we have been giving on the project – including numerous mentions of our wonderful blog readers and community around the project. The Press page has been prepared for journalists, bloggers and others who want to write about the project. There are links here to information about the project, the project partners and our new collection of images associated with the project.

There are a few other smaller changes to the website:

AddressingHistory Launch Event link added – this is a new area of the website for all things launch related. If you are in Edinburgh and can make it along or if you would like to read blog posts and live blogging from the event then this is the place to click.
Flickr link added – AddressingHistory is proud to announce our new Flickr account. Here you will find images of the physical Post Office Directories and maps which AddressingHistory will be making available online. We will also be adding images from our launch event, screen captures of the tool, and other images we think may be of interest to you or to people writing about the project.
AddressingHistory API Google Group link added – we have recently set up this Google Group (an easy to use email list) for those interested in using the API (Application Programming Interface) for AddressingHistory for their own websites, projects, or mashups.

You can view all of these changes on the site or see our annotated image below:

Previews of Forthcoming Attractions

Over the next few days we will also be adding:

A link to the AddressingHistory tool ready for tomorrow’s launch.
AddressingHistory Badges for you to add to your own website or blog.
Videos about the AddressingHistory project.

We also hope to add some guest postings from our first users of AddressingHistory – we’d love to hear what you think of it, what you have been researching with it or anything really interesting you’ve found out through the historical directories. Do drop us an email (addressing.history@ed.ac.uk) if you would be interested in contributing.

Perth 800: A Place in History

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Sep 092010

A Place in History, a two-day conference which forms part of a year long event celebration of the 800th anniversary of Perth (see the Perth 800 website for more information), begins tomorrow at Perth Concert Hall. The event will include presentations on the history and development of the city through the ages and AddressingHistory will be represented at an EDINA stand. Addy Pope will be showcasing various EDINA projects and services including Walking Through Time and AddressingHistory.

If you would like to grab a poster or flyers about AddressingHistory to share with your community or organisation, or if you would like a very early peek at the AddressingHistory tool, do stop by the EDINA stand and say “Hello!” to Addy.

Repository Fringe 2010

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Sep 092010

Members of the AddressingHistory team attended the very enjoyable Repository Fringe 2010 event in Edinburgh last Thursday and Friday with Nicola giving a short “Pecha Kucha” presentation on AddressingHistory to the 90 or so attendees.

The Repository Fringe, which has been running for three years and always takes place around the time of the Edinburgh Festivals, is an informal conference for people who work with all types of repository. We thought that this event would be a fantastic opportunity to share the AddressingHistory project as many of the repositories represented at the event contain academic papers, historical items and research data that discuss or relate to the same time periods and geographic areas as AddressingHistory.

In our Pecha Kucha (a novel super-short presentation of 20 slides shown for 20 second each) we particularly wanted to highlight the fact that AddressingHistory will provide an API (Application Programming Interface) as many of the attendees – including the excellent opening keynote speaker Tony Hirst – already create inventive “mash-ups” of online information and we think there is lots of potential for AddressingHistory to connect into these types of ideas and tools.

We were delighted with the reaction we had to the project and were thrilled to hear lots of very interested and supportive comments and to see lots of enthusiastic Tweets!

You can find out more about the event at the Repository Fringe website (where there is also a live blog) and you can view the AddressingHistory Pecha Kucha by looking in the “O” section of the Videos page there.

A Plethora of Press Appearances

Media Coverage, Presentations and Publications, Project Updates 1 Response »

Jul 302010

We’ve been a little quiet lately as most of the AddressingHistory team have been taking summer holidays. However AddressingHistory has been much discussed this month:

Nicola presented an AddressingHistory poster at the ARLIS 2010 conference in Edinburgh and debuted our lovely new flyers and posters (do email us if you’d like some of these for your own library, community group, or similar space).

The project also appeared in two National Library of Scotland publications which can be picked up in person from either the George VIth Bridge or Causewayside buildings or can be viewed online:

AH appears on Page 13 of the Summer issue of the Discover NLS magazine: http://www.nls.uk/about/discover-nls/issues/discover-nls-16.pdf

AH is also featured on Page 4 of the July issue of Cairt, the newsletter of the Scottish Maps Forum – http://www.nls.uk/collections/maps/subjectinfo/cairt17.pdf

And finally AH is mentioned in the current issue of Practical Family History Magazine on page 9 (that’s us in the fetching lime green on the right hand side of the image below).

Thanks to Chris Fleet at the NLS and to Chris Paton at Practical Family History for the above mentions. We’ve been so excited that so many people are getting excited about AddressingHistory and have heard some amazing stories of family history connections to Edinburgh as we’ve given poster presentations so we’re really looking forward to seeing what happens as you start to use the tool for your own explorations of the past.

We will have more news about the beta tool for you soon: watch this space…

Recent AH Team Adventures

Presentations and Publications, Project Updates, Related Projects and Services 1 Response »

Jul 022010

The AddressingHistory team may have been a little quiet lately but we’ve been very busy…

January 2010 Issue of Cairt

Joe, our software engineer, has been creating a fantastic beta/test version of the AddressingHistory tool (and as promised in our last post he’ll be writing us a guest blog post on how that has been going).

Stuart has been working with Chris Fleet, at project partner the National Library of Scotland, to create an article on AddressingHistory for Cairt, the Scottish Mapping Forum magazine, which should be out later this month. We will link to the digital copy as soon as it is available. Stuart has also written a piece on the project for the next issue of ALISS Quarterly (due out in August).

Nicola has also been out and about talking about the project. In mid June she gave a presentation to the JISC Regional Support Centres Scotland Web 2.0 Forum for Academic Librarians. The title, “AddressingHistory: Using Social Media to Frame an EDINA Crowd-Sourcing Project“, reflected that the talk looked at how we are using social media – tools including this blog, twitter and facebook – to help build awareness of the project.

Also presenting at this event was Gillian Hanlon of Ask Scotland. They are a real time service for asking librarians in Scotland questions about libraries, research, Scottish heritage questions… almost anything in fact (at the event we Gillian demonstrated the system live by asking a question about Cranachan and the history of this delicious Scottish desert). If you’re interested in giving it a try then take a look at the Ask Scotland website.

Nicola also attended a workshop run by the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement in London in mid-June and was excited to hear about a new Micheal Wood TV series for the BBC called “English Story” that will look at the history of a single village, Kibworth in Leicestershire, from it’s earliest origins through to the present day.

: Kibworth Church by RATAEDL

The programme makers (MayaVision) are still completing filming and post production so it may be some time before it hits TV screens but the initial glimpses looked fascinating and the wealth of local history knowledge and enthusiasm that the programme makers had found was inspiring. Given how many fascinating events had taken place in this one small village it is also fantastically exciting to think about what we may be able to find out about Edinburgh’s past when the AddressingHistory tool is launched.

Recent Presentations About the Project: IASSIST2010 and OKScotland

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Jun 012010

Stuart Macdonald, the Addressing History Project Manager, will be presenting a poster giving an overview of the AddressingHistory project at IASSIST 2010, which runs from 1st -4th June at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. IASSIST is the International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology and the theme of this year’s event is “Social Data and Social Networking: Connecting Social Science Communities across the Globe”.

If you are attending the event you can find details of the abstract on the IASSIST website. Anyone can access Stuart’s Addressing History IASSIST 2010 Poster here.

Stuart also recently gave a related overview presentation at the inaugural Open Knowledge Scotland event, the Open Knowledge Scotland presentation on AddressingHistory can be downloaded here.