{"id":16,"date":"2021-11-16T12:33:56","date_gmt":"2021-11-16T12:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/capturing-the-past\/?page_id=16"},"modified":"2022-03-21T16:24:32","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T16:24:32","slug":"about-us","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/capturing-the-past\/about-us\/","title":{"rendered":"About the Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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In recent years the nature of historical research has changed. Most family and local historians now combine the use of online digital resources with the photography of un-digitised materials in physical archives for later analysis. This methodology has fundamentally transformed the nature of historic research. Now, a single visit to an archive might produce hundreds of images. During the same years thousands of ‘citizen historians’ have come to contribute to large-scale collaborative heritage projects, drawing together academic historians, repositories, and local and family historians to co-create new ‘participatory archives’. Yet collaborative public history projects have taken a little longer to incorporate this \u2018click and collect\u2019 methodology. Capturing the Past<\/em> is designed to create the tools and workflows that will optimise archival photography to the benefit of all parties. It draws on this democratisation of history by using the affordances of smart phones and the cloud; of digital cameras and the growing significance of public history to recreate a community of sharing and scholarship<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Small Bills and Petty Finance<\/em> research volunteers inputting data to the online data capture tool.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

During a previous project, Small Bills and Petty Finance<\/em>, the team developed a suite of digital tools as a method of undertaking large-scale data collection and management. Capturing the Past<\/em>, the AHRC funded follow-on project, aims to develop the phone app used in this project to support image collection for individual and collaborative research. By working with community groups, academic or family and local historians it will explore methods of providing this easy, cheap, and simple technical solution for image capture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u00a0The team is now adapting this app for more general usage. Over the next few months the project will:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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cPast – Android app for capturing images of archives.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n