Readers of a group of newspapers in North Wales will be able to explore thousands of pictures from as far back as the 19th century through a new website.
Local Bygones features images from the photo archive of North Wales-based NWN Media.
The publisher says the site, which lets users browse, share via social networks and comment on pictures, is the first interactive site of its kind in the regional press.
Most images have never been posted online and some have not been published before.
Paul Taylor, NWN digital director, said: “The Local Bygones site is the first of its kind in UK regional press.
“The archive of material held by regional newspapers is a gold mine just waiting to be opened up.”
Users can also contribute caption information for pictures they may have knowledge on.
How the new website looks
Tim Bowden, NWN editorial manager, said: “We will be adding regularly to the thousands of pictures already online and crowd-sourcing some of the missing caption information is a great way to get users involved.
“There’s lots of fun to be had there too, of course – the site features plenty of faces and fashions from the past, and we’ve made it easy to share pictures through Facebook or Twitter.”
Images on Local Bygones can be sorted using a general search and further refined using tags such as location, decade and theme.
There is no charge to share images but users can pay £1 per download for pictures they want to keep.
NWN Media publishes daily, weekly paid-for and free newspapers in North and Mid Wales, Cheshire and Shropshire.
Titles include three-edition morning paper the Leader, covering Wrexham, Flintshire and Chester, and the Oswestry & Border Counties Advertizer, founded in 1849.
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What an excellent initiative. What is particularly valuable about this is the crowd-sourcing approach. Newspapers of any age have a vast and important record of social history in their picture archives and while the related copy and caption tell a certain amount, the record can be greatly enriched by third-party input. It requires a small amount of curating, but it’s worth the effort. What’s more, the whole thing becomes an asset with revenue generating potential.
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Not wanting to belittle what sounds like a great project, but the Derby Telegraph linked up with Derbyshire County Council on http://www.picturethepast.org.uk/ quite a while back, so it isn’t really the first of it’s type at all!
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Blimey, Kevin.
“Crowd-sourcing?”
“Revenue generating potential?”
You recently been on a newspaper management course?
All you needed was “hyper-local” followed by “citizen journalist” and you’d have had a buzzword royal flush.
Oh, you’d better throw in “editorial redundancies” as well, that’s quite popular too.
This industry need some new buzzwords.
Not heard of “citizen sales reps” yet, or “citizen accountants” come to think of it.
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How about ‘Data transfer system?’
It’s a briefcase…
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