Europeana 1914-1918

For the last four-and-a-half years, much of our time has been spent on the Europeana 1914-1918 project. Using the Oxford Community Collection Model, the project has created a large archive comprising over 13,000 stories and 170,000 digital images relating to the First World War, all freely available online for anyone to use.

Map of Europe

The Europeana 1914-1915 project has run collection events across Europe

Among our roles in the large, multi-national project has been to support those who plan and run the collection activities, both the online component and the 150+ individual collection events that have been held across Europe so far. We have provided advice and support, run training and coaching sessions, created guides and template forms, and taken on different roles at various collection events. Despite short deadlines and long shifts, the work has been stimulating and rewarding. We are very grateful to have been given this opportunity to take what started here at Oxford as a small pilot project in 2007 and help turn it into a large, multi-national initiative that has involved thousands of people from across the Globe.

The Europeana Awareness project, which funded the 1914-1918 activities, finished at the end of 2014. That does not, however, mean the end of Europeana 1914-1918. The archive is available online, and it is still possible to add material to it through the website http://europeana1914-1918.eu. New collection events are planned, and we expect to see the archive continue to grow. Important activities to come are also the exploration and study of the material in the archive. It is unavoidable that the existence of this collection will inform future research and make possible new types of studies.

The RunCoCo team are happy to support and promote the Europeana 1914-1918 collection and other First-World-War-related activities also in the future. Please contact us if you want to know more about contributing to the archive, running collection events, or if you want to discss using the material for research, teaching or something else.

Posted in digitisation & ugc, project news | Comments Off on Europeana 1914-1918

Comments are closed.