At a launch in the Senedd in Cardiff recently the new Communities Archives Wales (CAW) website was launched by Leighton Andrews AM and Rhodri Glyn Thomas AM.

CAW is a 15-month pilot project which started in January 2007 and the current phase will come to an end in September 2008. The development officers work with 11 groups in Communities First areas across Wales to create digital archives documenting the history and heritage of their communities. The groups receive technical training to digitise, upload and interpret their own material and share their stories with the world.

The launch of the website is the culmination of several months of hard work by the groups and the CAW team. The colourful and interactive new website has a number of features which allow the user to search and view the images uploaded by the community groups. Also, users can contribute to the project themselves by commenting on individual images – if you have information about any of the material or simply want to share your thoughts this feature allows you to do so, and others will be able to view your comments.

Thanks to the technology used the image quality is excellent and the ‘magic zoom’ feature allows the user to view the images up-close; it is possible to read text from letters for example. The website allows the fascinating material collected by the community groups to be viewed in all their glory!

If you are interested in contributing to the CAW project but do not live anywhere near any of the groups why not get involved by using the CAW Flickr group:
This group enables people from across the world to become involved in the CAW project and has created a new online community.

For more information about the project please contact caw@culturenetcymru.com

Culturenet Cymru
Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru,
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3BU
Tel: +44 (0)1970 632500
e-mail: newyddion@culturenetcymru.com

Culturenet Cymru, which is based at The National Library of Wales, is sponsored by the Welsh Assembly Government.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 10:54 am and is filed under Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.