This site was built by staff members of Richmond upon Thames Library Service in 2003. It is part of a wider online Local History presence intended to give access to the contents of Richmond's Local History and Archive collections to anyone who wishes to see them wherever they may be. It is designed to allow members of the public to submit their own local history images which can include newspaper articles, family photographs, artifacts, such as maps and documents, and much more.
The archive is a database with a website designed to store and display images of the borough and activities within it, primarily from the 20th century. The database is searchable across a range of keywords and concepts and the website is a themed gallery of the images stored in the database.
The archive is designed to complement the local studies collection by attracting contributions of images from people who live and work in the borough and who probably have many interesting 20th century pictures stored in their lofts.
It is intended to assist children and others researching recent history in the borough - the 50s, 60s and 70s are now on the curriculum as history but our collections on these years are patchy to say the least.
If you have images you would like to add to the archive, please see inserting an image.
Over time, we also intend to add futher images from our existing Local Studies Collection.
Every image is initially scanned as a high resolution ".tif" file. These are big so they, together with their database entry, are copied onto CD-ROM which are ultimately stored in our Local Studies Collection. Lower quality ".jpg" versions of the images are created for use on the web site. Metadata entries record provenance, details of the event, person or building, copyright ownership and permissions. Submitter's details are held in the database, but are not accessible through the website.
The team was made up of staff from all over the library service, all of whom volunteered to take part. Some were able to give more time than others but all made a contribution of some sort to the project.
| Support People | Staff |
|---|---|
| Jane
Baxter, Richard Corner, Paul Donaghy, Helen Flaherty, Sarah Livall, Sheila Harden, Belle Associates |
Sarah Alderson, Geoff Brown, Liz Brown, Fiona Campbell, Pauline Grover, Andrea Hurren, Rita Lindsay, Caroline O'Hanlon, Monica Vidana, Howard Vie, Tracy Walker, Gill Perkins, Roswitha Watson, Elizabeth Windaybank, Kim Hacker, Martin McNally, Peter Hey, Andy Hedgcock, Annie Turner |