Tomorrow's History is a major two-year project running from April 2000 to March 2002, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Millennium Festival Fund. The project has produced a major, web-based regional local studies resource for North East England through work with libraries, museums, archives and records offices and local and community groups to digitise and improve access to local studies resources. Additional material will be added to the site by partners after April 2002.

North East Museums Libraries and Archives Council

The project is being managed by NEMLAC, the regional development agency for museums, archives, libraries and information. This project is a cross-sectoral partnership including libraries, museums, record offices and higher education and commercial organisations.
Tomorrow's History project developed and exploited a vast digital regional history resource. It involved unprecedented levels of co-operation and partnership to ensure that the greatest economy was achieved. The resource will be managed to ensure the project's sustainability and that a tangible legacy will be bequeathed to the region's 3.2 million citizens.

Description and Content

Information gathered and created is accessible over network systmes (intranet, Internet). To ensure optimum coverage and to effectively use the available resources digital information, irrespective of its original format, is stored in a structured place within the overall matrix and readily accessible through a variety of search routes. These routes are targeted at different user groups based on the experience of partners in developing community history resources in consultation with user groups.

'In local history, above all, libraries house unique collections. Digital technologies will allow such collections - which are largely paper-based - to be converted into new formats.'
New Library, The People's Network, a report commissioned from the Library and Information Commission by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, 1997.

The north east is a diverse region, part urban, part rural. This community history project is inclusive of both urban communities where life has changed radically in the last half century and rural communities where, in some ways, life has changed less. There is a great deal of pride in the north east in its history and the history of its people - the historic successes of, for example, heavy engineering and extractive industries; the current success stories of new industry, and the cultural inheritance of people who have come to the region, bringing their cultures with them.

Construction of the content took place in two phases, creating two broad levels of information. This created a major regional history database including maps, photographs and text information, with links to library and archive catalogues and to indexes of archaeological sites, listed buildings, etc. The project digitised over 30,000 images and pages of text. Detailed mapping and graphical information is delivered to a wide range of outlets (libraries, schools) through broadband connections, and to users everywhere via the World Wide Web. Mapping includes for the whole region, by permission of the Ordnance Survey, current Ordnance Survey maps in two scales, and historic Ordnance Survey mapping in three early editions (from about 1860 onwards).

A local heritage resource covering every community in the region has been developed by the inclusion of material such as historic directories and local photograph collections.

Within this broad geographical coverage priority has been given to information and records relating to the social history of the industries which have made a particular impression on the life of the region and in all of which the region has played, at varying times, a leading national and international role: Shipbuilding and marine engineering; Railway history; Mining, in particular coal and lead; and the Chemical industries. Content selection also focuses on other industries significant in particular localities, on agriculture and rural life, and on the lifestyles, leisure, sport and entertainment characteristic of the region.