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| north east midland photographic record | |
The story behind Picture the Past
The libraries and museums of Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire have in their collections, hundreds of thousands of historic photographs, slides, negatives, glass plates, postcards and engravings recalling the history of the local communities over the last hundred years and more. In the past, these treasures were held in filing cabinets and anyone who wanted to see them would have to make a trip to the library or museum - perhaps to several different locations. Thanks to a major award from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the four authorities are now working in partnership to digitise the images and make them available on the Internet, through this unique website. The project began when staff from the four library authorities put their heads together to come up with ways of making the collections more easily accessible to everyone, while protecting the images, many of which are fragile and irreplaceable, from wear and tear. The grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, backed up with funding from the four councils involved, is enabling people all over the world to log on and see the collections, while ensuring that the originals are properly conserved for future generations. Local studies librarians have been busily trying to sort out the copyright for individual images. In many cases, it is the library that owns the copyright, but many thousands of letters have been sent out to other copyright holders, seeking their permission to make their images available on the Website. With their co-operation, users of the Picture the Past Website are able not only to see the images they are interested in, but also to print copies if they wish. A printed copy from a home computer is perfectly adequate for homework or study purposes, but for those users wanting to own a top quality glossy photographic copy the Website includes an on-line ordering service. This enables users to browse the collection and order and pay for their selections securely on-line. The prints are produced on state of the art equipment and despatched by first class post. All the income raised from this service goes back into the conservation and preservation of the original pictures. There are some images in the collection that haven't been identified and Picture the Past welcomes help from members of the public in providing any further information.
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Latest News! Last updated Mon 8th Feb 10 New Books
(Nov 08) - Search by Date Period When searching for images you can now choose a date period to help you find the images you want. (Nov 08) - See more images on-screen You can now choose to see up to 128 ‘thumbnails’ on the screen at a time making it easier to see, and compare, images in your search. Just select the number to show in the drop-down box on the 'thumbnail' page. (July 07) - new images A new button has been added allowing you to search for all the new images that we’ve added in the last 30 days. Click here to try (May 07) - Changes to the website We have made a few changes to the site to make it easier for you to use. ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ buttons have been added to the information page, this means you can scroll through the images in your search one after another rather than having to go back to the thumbnails. (July 05) Two new books Two new books are now available each containing over 200 old photographs from Picture the Past. One covers the Chesterfield area and the other Derby City.
The pictures, supported by descriptive captions, provide a fascinating pictorial history of some of the buildings, people, transport and memorable events over a period of more than 150 years. To order a copy of the book Click Here to print order form in MS Word format Click Here to print order form in PDF format (April 05) New ways to find images We've made some changes to the search screens to make it easier to find the images you want. You can now combine keyword searches and subject searches with a list of towns and villages. We've also added a new 'search by map' facility to make it easier to see all the pictures of a particular town or village just by clicking on its name. (Nov 04) New print size and prices reduced! As well as our usual sizes you can now buy your favourite pictures sized at 8"x6". But that's not all, we have also reduced our prices as well, click here to see the new prices ! Two perfect reasons to buy your favourite historic prints of your area. New Search Features (Aug 04) We've added two exciting new search pages - Click the 'Popular Searches' tab to search by popular theme i.e. Robin Hood, DH Lawrence etc. (click here to try it). Click the 'Can you help?' tab to help us identify images and add your own information (click here to try it). New Print Button Added To make it easier for you to read all the text for each image we've added the ability to print out a small version of the image with all of its text. Just click the 'thumbnail' image go to the information page and then click the 'view full information' button. New Print Sizes We now offer two larger print sizes see the 'How to buy prints' page for more details New Images now at beginning Recently added images will now appear first when you do a search saving you scrolling through all the other images to see what's new. Use the 'next' and 'previous' buttons at the bottom of the page to see the other images
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