by Adam Crymble (BHO Project Manager)
I got an email this morning from one of the readers of British History Online. It was from a 90-year-old lady in South Africa who expressed her delight at being able to read about her childhood home in Surrey. She had wanted to express her gratitude for having a resource like British History Online that evoked memories from the better part of a lifetime ago, from thousands of miles away.
This email was the first piece of feedback from a reader I’d received since taking over a few weeks ago as the new Project Manager. I’d like to think it will all be that easy – perusing nice letters from satisfied users of our collection. But I’ve learned quickly that there’s plenty of work to be done.
Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Adam Crymble. Like many of you, I fancy myself a bit of a historian, be that amateur or professional. I’ve done some traditional historical work, both as a family history researcher and in an academic setting teaching Early Modern British history at King’s College London (where I did my PhD in 18th century British history). And I’ve also had a fair bit of experience building websites over the years. I’m hoping to combine those interests to continue to bring a great and expanding set of resources to you that you can trust, via the British History Online website.
Stepping into a project that’s been running for more than a decade can be a bit daunting. There’s already so much content here that I need to get my head around. So many great ideas that have already been implemented. But there’s also places we can grow. The big task for this year is to help the rest of the team put together a new website to hold our content. The web has changed a lot in the last few years, and we’re excited about the possibilities of making the website even easier to use and make the content even easier to find.
We’re also excited about a number of new partnerships we’re pursing that we hope will bring even more great historical resources to the web for the first time. I’d like to invite you to get in on the ground floor of that initiative by supporting our collection’s growth, either by subscribing to the site’s premium content (£30) or by making a donation to our digitisation fund.
2014 promises to be a great year for British History Online. I’m pleased to be a part of it, and I’m looking forward to working with you as we build the best collection of British History on the web.