Special Features - National Archives sets up online community

National Archives sets up online community
(07/12/07)

The National Archives has set up an online community - Your Archives - for people to share information from different historical sources in the UK.

Find out how the government dealt with the famous highwayman, Dick Turpin, on Your Archives.

A great source of information

Your Archives is already a great source of information for budding historians including material on foreign affairs; central government; migration; the First World War; and slavery.

You can also find records about some less researched subjects such as maps; art and design; and welfare and the poor law on the website.

Some fascinating facts

Users browsing through Your Archives will find some fascinating facts. For example, did you know that a series of unidentified flying objects made people in the UK believe the world was being invaded by aliens in the 1960s?

Information about how the government dealt with the famous highwayman, Dick Turpin, is on there, along with details of how Rudolf Hess, Hitler's second-in-command in the Nazi Party, fell into British hands when he crash-landed in Scotland in 1941.

Special features added frequently

Special features bringing historical figures to life are also frequently added to the site. Stories currently on there include:

The case of Harvey Crippen, physician and murderer
Will of Jane Lodge of Leeds, 1757
Miscellaneous naval birth and marriage certificates, 1815-1835
Robert Thomson, Superintendent of Public Gardens and Plantations in Jamaica between 1867 and 1877.

Make a request

Visitors to the website can even request content they'd like to see on the site. The SAS, Australia, HMS Bounty and HMS Victory are four of the subjects currently in demand, so if you know of any documents with information about these subjects, log on to the site and share them with the other users.

Find out more in-demand subjects on the Wanted Pages page of the site.

Based on wiki technology

Your Archives is based on wiki technology, meaning that anyone can edit pages on the website and add documents that they think users might find useful.

Wikis - the most famous example of which is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia - have become increasingly popular ways of sharing information in recent years as user-generated content has become more and more influential online.

Expect to see more historical organisations using wikis as a way of sharing content in years to come.

Related links

UK History and Heritage