[okfn-discuss] Local History Portal

[Rufus Pollock]

2009/6/30 IAN ELSOM <ian.elsom at btinternet.com>:
> Thanks for your response, Rufus.
>
> The central repository is the ideal (for me) - a search for a place or
> person returning hits broken down into book, journal, thesis, map,
> photograph, dataset etc with details. (It would be great to have an abstract
> or synopsis of everything!) On the basis of zero experience in creating such
> a repository I imagine it would not be a difficult task so much as very
> demanding in terms of person hours and would require significant
> sponsorship/funding. But maybe there are not enough local historians out
> there who want a resource like this to make it an idea worth pursuing.

I think it is useful to distinguish between a repository and a
registry. A repository would be a place where you stored all this
stuff while a registry would be listing pointing to the existing
places that material exists. To get started I think a registry is a
much better idea than repository and you could start off straight away
just by adding items to http://www.ckan.net/

> Your suggestion to “focus on a more decentralized approach in which you pull
> together in a looser way interested individuals and communities” would seem
> to be a good way of establishing the level of interest and commitment. I’m
> pleased you mentioned a blog because that was the first box I ticked in my
> ideal portal site framework. I imagined it would be written by several local
> historians (as a team) to ensure a regular flow of posts offering different
> perspectives on the subject. Some of the posts, and maybe even the majority
> initially, would be announcements of existing resources located.

That sounds a great idea and would be the perfect place to start --
and it would scale well. One can even start with just one person
blogging and scale up as more people get involved.

> Found resources would no doubt come in all shapes and sizes and fall in wide
> ranges of accessibility, usability, usefulness and cost. Presumably
> inputting details of resources to a database, as and when found, would give
> a clearer indication of the practicability of creating the ideal central
> repository.

http://www.ckan.net/ sounds ready-made for this.

> Thanks for the offer of help in taking some of these ideas forward but even
> with your support I can’t imagine flying solo with this.  Happy to be one of
> the blogging team and to help with growing the database of resources but
> really need some active partners to take it forward.

The Foundation could definitely provide infrastructure and I
personally would be interested in helping out. What about drafting a
simple call-for-participation along the lines of what you have been
saying as the basic starting point (i.e. running blog and creating
registry of resources). This could be sent to relevant online forums
and mailing lists and we could also blog it put it in our bimonthly
newsletter.

Regards,

Rufus