Recently the Nominet Trust  posted a must read post about their project with We Are What We Do about their Historypin project.  Often people and history types (so glad they exist) never bother with thinking about what local history can do to change the now, this post is about the what history pin is and how it has been accepted in just over a year. Historypin link

from wikipedia…

Historypin is an online, user-generated archive of historical photos and personal recollections. Users are able to use the location and date of an image to “pin” it to Google Maps.Where Google Street View is available, users can overlay the historical photograph and compare it with the contemporary location.

The website was created by the non-profit company We Are What We Do as part of their inter-generational work, with funding and support from Google as part of a series of commitments to digital inclusion. The website has over 30,000 images and recollections “pinned” to the Historypin map, mainly in the UK but also covering North America and continental Europe, with a small number in other areas. The beta version of the website was launched in June 2010 at the Royal Institute in London by Nick Stanhope, CEO of We Are What We Do

Highlights… the Nick Stanhope post about its development

Citizen history is all about local people taking charge of gathering, sharing and interpreting their local history and has a stream of positive benefits for themselves,

Citizen history is all about local people taking charge of gathering, sharing and interpreting their local history and has a stream of positive benefits for themselves, their communities and for our understanding of our heritage, culture and identity. Historypin, when it launched in summer 2011, set out to harness digital technology to add mainstream appeal and scale to citizen history and, with the support of the Nominet Trust, that is what we have started to achieve over the last 9 months.

We Are What We Do developed Historypin and the Trust funded it as a way of generating social impact. We set out to bring people together, from different genertations, cultures and backgrounds, to create and explore the history of their communities and, in the process, generate social capital, drive social and digital inclusion and establish new routes for the exchange of culture, heritage and identity. The external evaluation of our work by the Local Government Information Unit, conducting detailed analysis in Reading, found strong evidence of all of these layers of impact – both during direct delivery and as an ongoing, permanent legacy in the town.

Full post is here