Date: 13 November 2006 20:01

COMMUNITY ACHIVE PROJECT PUTTING PEOPLE IN THE PICTURE

An on-line community archive network is putting Cambridgeshire communities 
in the picture thanks to a project launched by Cambridgeshire County 
Council.

 The County Council's Libraries, Archives and Information Service 
successfully bid for a £299,500 Heritage grant from the Heritage Lottery 
Fund to establish the Cambridgeshire Community Archive Network, enabling 
local people to build their own virtual collections of photographs, 
documents, text and oral histories via a new website www.ccan.co.uk 
http://www.ccan.co.uk/ .  This pioneering website will preserve a valuable 
local heritage resource in a fully searchable, networked online archive.

Cambridgeshire Community Archive Network staff have recently been working 
with people in 10 Fenland and Huntingdonshire communities to produce a 
digital record of their cultural heritage on the website.

The project is scheduled to roll out across Cambridgeshire until July 2008 
and funding has been allocated to establish around 40 groups who have 
previously expressed an interest in joining.

The digital archives created by the new Groups are being made available via 
the worldwide web thanks to a collaboration with Commanet, a registered 
charity which has helped the development of many successful Community 
Archives worldwide.

For more information on the Cambridgeshire Community Archives Network go to 
www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk and follow the link from the Leisure and Culture 
section, or view the growing online collections at www.ccan.co.uk

A successful pilot project in 2005 (funded by a Your Heritage grant from the 
Heritage Lottery Fund) has already created active community archive groups 
in Mepal, Witcham, Wicken, Pymoor, Little Downham, Aldreth and at Denny 
Abbey and the Farmland Museum. Their digital collections can be seen at 
www.commanet.org. These collections will be added to the new website in the 
New Year.

The project will also fund artists to work with children at schools local to 
the new community archive groups, using the online collections as 
inspiration for exciting workshops. Exhibitions will also be held at the end 
of each roll-out Phase, designed to 'bring community archives to life' - 
encouraging more people to become involved in community heritage.

Library Learning Services Project Manager Steve Capes, said: "The 
Cambridgeshire Community Archives Network offers local communities a means 
of gathering and preserving a rich, diverse and easily lost source of social 
and cultural heritage - local photographs and documents and the memories 
they stimulate - making them available across the whole world via the new 
website. The project also encourages local communities to become more 
involved in the county's rich heritage resources - held in libraries, local 
studies collections, archives, archaeological collections and museums.

"Our team is anxious to build on the success that has already been achieved 
and they are looking forward to working with volunteers from other 
communities around Cambridgeshire."

John Reynolds