Road Transport History Internet Project

What is it?

It is a project to develop a web-based historical resource

What is it for?

For the last twenty years, I have been involved in a number of historical research projects – some transport related, others general industrial topics. During that time, the World-Wide-Web has grown in use and become a primary research tool for many students. For students of transport, whilst there are some web resources that deal with history, much of the UK’s road transport transport history lies locked up in documents held at various places – examples are the Public Records Office at Kew and the Kithead Trust at Droitwich. The overall objective of this project is to bring together as many historical resources as possible to make possible proper research into the UK’s road transport using the world-wide-web as a primary resource. So to answer the question, it is for any student of UK road transport history to use as a primary resource.

How might it be done?

This is something that is yet to be fully identified, but possible methods of data capture need to be investigated. One form it might take is a website that provides links to all known existing UK Road Transport websites with an abstract of the content for each. A more ambitious objective might be the ongoing digitisation of relevant historical documentation – examples of the types of documentation might be photographs, minute books, engineering drawings, work diaries from important personalities etc. A number of museums already have similar projects in operation on a smaller scale, though there does not seem to be a consistent approach to digitisation as yet. That, perhaps, could be one of the objectives of this project – to determine a set of standards for digitising and managing digitised resources. There is no intention to duplicate the good work of these other bodies, but perhaps to provide access to it via a system of portals. At the present time, full specification for the project does not yet exist, hence the on-line questionnaire. This questionnaire is part of the information gathering process that will lead to a software specification document for the project.

Who should be interested?

Students of transport history

Curators of historical documents related to UK road transport

Who is going to do it?

At the moment, the project is under the control of Nigel Furness at City of Bristol College and the work is being undertaken by City of Bristol Foundation Degree students as part of their work-based learning.