If you've not yet visited the YIHO (Yorkshire Industrial Heritage Online) site, you must. It's just hit 4,000 entries. It is like a Wiki, but with quality control. Dozens of industrial history enthusiasts, from YAHS and affiliated groups from Teesside to South Yorkshire, have posted information and images on YIHO. Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society is also adding its own database to the site. The open access software has terrific potential for other uses - anyone wanting to develop a searchable site-based database of any kind.
The software masterminds John Suter and Robert Vickers sent this message yesterday. Note also the rebranding - YIHO becomes IHO:
Today, the 4,000th record and the 2,165th image were added to the IHO database. Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to achieving this major milestone. Taken together with the GLIAS records the database now contains the details of 7,361 Industrial Heritage sites. As such, it is almost certainly the largest volunteer-contributed and maintained database of Industrial Heritage sites in the country and it is an achievement that the whole team should be proud of.
These totals far exceed what we thought might be possible when we originally launched the website just over 3 years ago and show the strength and dedication of everyone in making IHO a real success. A big thank you to all of you. The question now is when will we achieve the 5,000th entry!
Since its public launch as part of the new YAHS website in February over 1,720 people have visited the IHO website and have viewed a total of 350,000 pages. This equates to 10 people per day from counties as diverse as the USA, many Europen countries, and India etc. Fuller details are given below. The available evidence also suggests that the number of daily visits is slowly growing and we will be closely monitoring usage and looking for ways to further promote the website over the coming months.
All the IHO related items identified as outstanding at the last meeting have been completed and extensive testing suggests that the website is now more stable than at any time previously. The few bugs that have been identified since the meeting have been of a very minor and often technical nature. We are now looking to the future and the rollout of exciting developments such as Calderdale Virtual Museum which will be released for initial evaluation during October.
As you are all aware, to date, we have asked users to focus on sites within Yorkshire and the immediately adjoining counties. Following requests and discussions we have now decided to modify this policy and we are now happy for sites anywhere within the UK to be added. At present not all databases have been enabled and should anyone wish to add data in other counties please let me know and I will discuss the necessary changes with you. As agreed at the last August User Group meeting we have rebranded YIHO as IHO - it does now cover more than Yorkshire, though Yorkshire is the main focus.