Capturing the Past is a continuous community-based digital archiving project managed and run by the Friends of the Dales. It provides training and support to individuals and groups in the Ingleborough Dales area enabling them to catalogue and digitise local history archives and make these available to the public through a new online facility. The scheme has been developed by the Ingleborough Dales
Landscape Partnership and is supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund. The Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust is the lead partner on the Ingleborough Dales Landscape Partnership. We know that many local groups and individuals in the area have collections of material relating to the history of local communities and their use and management of the landscape but the range and content of this archival heritage is only partly understood. It remains an under-used resource - unseen, inaccessible or at risk of deterioration or loss. Based on the principle that a community's sense of place rests on an understanding of its past, we wish to encourage and enable wider, sustained, rigorous and ultimately more useful access to this archival heritage. The aim of the project is to equip volunteers with the skills needed to assess and interpret these archives and to make them available through an online databank with links to existing extensive heritage resources. A comprehensive package of digitising and conservation equipment will be purchased and made available to volunteers for use within the project. The principal outcomes will be a team of trained volunteers who will have the skills and access to equipment to continue their work in subsequent years, and a tested online databank to which material can continue to be added. Staff at the North Yorkshire County Records Office will assist in project delivery. Making the archival heritage available online will benefit all with an interest in the history of the project area, transforming intellectual access to the area’s history. Beneficiaries will include professionals involved in landscape interpretation, school teachers developing local history projects, members of local heritage bodies, visitors to the Yorkshire Dales, and a wide public, including those with an interest in local and family history of the project area.
