Many individuals and groups want a method of capturing and cataloguing old photos of their area and then making them accessible to the wider community.

Whilst acting as a Production Advisor for the Local Heritage Initiative, Roger met many local groups who wanted to use digital technology to archive their collections. The people he met were mostly people without sophisticated IT skills. They wanted an easy solution and were attracted by bespoke systems that seemed to cater for their every need.

Roger had had personal experience of one of the more popular of these kinds of systems. You got your training through them and you had to go through them to display your archive on the web, so effectively you were totally dependant on them.

He also heard of others who were being charged annual fees for support and whose providers introduced regular upgrades (for which you had to pay) accompanied by the news that they would not be providing support for earlier versions. Finally, many of the facilities being provided by this bespoke software would never be used by most community groups and only served to confuse and bewilder.

Roger set out to design a Community Digital Photo Archive that would:

• Use a widely available piece of software, Microsoft Access, on the assumption that in most communities there would be someone who was familiar with the software and could help a local group make any adaptations they needed

• Be simple to use and at the same time fairly foolproof if inexperienced people were entering data

• Be free

Thanks to the technical expertise initially of Peter Franklin and latterly of Michael Cox, a database template has been created and is available for different versions of Access.

You can download from here:

• A handbook that gives detailed instructions on how to create a Community Digital Photo Archive. This guide will take you step by step through the process of compiling a digital photo archive, from scanning the original photo to adding to a digital database and eventually uploading it to a website.

• Zip files with Access .mdb templates for creating your database in:

• Access 97
  
• Access 2000
  
• Access 2003
  

• A zip file with template for uploading your completed database on to the web.

• A zip file with the Wolverton example

You can also see an example of just what a Community Photo Archive looks like on the web.

The contents are based on Roger’s own experience and do not claim to be in any way perfect. “ I am not a techno wizard so what you have here, I hope, is a system which is simple to operate for others like me.”

If you spot mistakes or have better suggestions then please let me know so that this guide can be amended and improved.

If you want additional advice or support in using this system we can help you.