Literary Heritage - West Midlands is a project to develop comprehensive digital information about people, places and writing connected with the West Midlands of England where these have made, or will make, a contribution to the literary heritage of the region and beyond. Its starting point has been the materials featured in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection but has expanded to draw in resources from other libraries, literary associations and individuals.
The concept was developed from December 1999 and initially relied almost exclusively on voluntary contributions and assistance, especially through the Friends of Shrewsbury Library. In July 2001 the New Opportunities Fund announced substantial financial support for this project through lottery funding. An intensive programme of digitisation began in March 2002 with the establishment of a team who worked on the project until March 2003. Since that time pages have been updated and amended and small amounts of additional material have been added, particularly through voluntary contributions from users.
The Fund has awarded grants to 150 organisations across the UK, large and small, which are converting a huge variety of material into digital format. The range of material being digitised includes archaeology, maritime, architecture, film, fine art, social and oral history. The New Opportunities Fund provides lottery funding for health, education and environment projects across the UK. Literary Heritage - West Midlands is part of a wider regional consortium of digitisation projects led by Birmingham Libraries called A sense of place - West Midlands. Descriptions of all these projects can be found on the Digital Midlands portal.
Assistance was sought in collaboration with a range of partners to provide materials and the labour to select, index, write explanatory notes, digitise texts and to publish on the Internet. Project staff were appointed to carry out much of the work and to co-ordinate voluntary contributions from associate partners and others.
The following list includes some of the organisations that have been and still are associated with Literary Heritage - West Midlands. There are links to external websites with further information of these organisations:-
Libraries of the West Midlands have also contributed to the project individually, as members of The Libraries Partnership - West Midlands and through the Society of Chief Librarians - West Midlands.
Page created 1 October 2002 and last updated
9 August 2005
For your literary enquiries and comments please see the Who to contact page.
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