Background

Europeana 1914-1918 is based on an initiative at the University of Oxford where people across Britain were asked to bring family letters, photographs and keepsakes from the War to be digitised. The success of the idea – which became the Great War Archive – has encouraged Europeana, Europe's digital archive, library and museum, to bring other national institutions across Europe into an alliance with Oxford University. The collaboration brings European stories online alongside their British, German, Slovenian, Luxembourgian, Irish, etc. counterparts in a World War One stories collection.

Click here to view press mentions about the project and Family History Roadshows

What we are doing

The project is collecting memorabilia and stories from the period of the Great War (1914-1918). This phase of the project is focussing on European items: letters, postcards, photographs and stories from Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, Slovenia and the UK. Contributions can be made in two ways:

1. Europeana 1914-1918 website - add a picture of the item or type in the story online.
2. At Family History Roadshows - bring the item(s) to the event where project staff will photograph the items and record the stories that go with them

Europeana 1914-1918 Family History Roadshows

At the Family History Roadshows, members of the public are invited to bring their documents, artefacts and stories from the First World War to be recorded by the project staff. The stories and scanned or photographed images of the objects are then added to the archive.

Our Family History Roadshows began in Germany in 2011, and since then we have visited many more countries.

Family  History Roadshows for 2013:

• Fort Monte Maso, Valli del Pasubio, Italy, 18 May 2013
• Biblioteca Nazionale, viale Castro Pretoria 105, Italy, 15 May 2013
• Antwerp, Belgium, 21 April 2013
• Dublin National Library, Ireland, 21 March 2013
• Fondazione Museo storico del Trentino, Forte di Cadine, Trento, Italy, 16 March 2013
• Ljubljana City Library, Slovenia, 25 February 2013
• Cyprus, 6 February 2013

Roadshows have previously been held at the following locations:

2012

• Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres, Belgium, 12-13 December 2012
• Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture, Cyprus, 1-2 December 2012, 10 am - 5.30 pm
• Aarhus Public Libraries, Denmark, 9-15 November 2012
• Vejle City Archives, Denmark, 9-10 November 2012
• Gentofte Library, Denmark, 10 November 2012
• Guldborgsund Main Library, Denmark, 9 November 2012
• Roskilde, Denmark, 9 November 2012
• Herning Library/Herning & Aulum Archives, Denmark, 9 November 2012
• Copenhagen Central Library, Denmark, 9 November 2012
• Hunt Museum, Limerick, Ireland, 5 November 2012
• Banbury Museum, UK, 3 November 2012, 10 am - 4.30 pm
• Celje Public Library, Slovenia, 23 May, 2012 9am - 6pm 
• Sønderborg Castle, Denmark, 24 April, 2012 10am - 6pm 
• Military Museum of the Slovenian Armed Forces, Slovenia, 19 April, 2012 9am - 6pm 
• France Bevk Public Library, Slovenia, 28 March, 2012 9am - 6pm 
• National Library of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland, 21 March, 2012 10am - 7pm 
• Museum of Lancashire, Preston, UK, 10 March, 2012 10am - 5.30pm  
• National Library of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, 6 March, 2012 9am - 7.30pm  
• Provinzialbibliothek Amberg Staatliche Bibliothek, Germany, 26 January, 2012 

2011

• Stadt- und Regionalbibliothek Erfurt, Germany, 14 June 2011
• Sächsische Landes- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, Germany, 22 June 2011, 10am-6pm
• Zentralbücherei Kiel, Germany, 29 June 2011, 10am-6pm
• Staatliche Bibliothek Regensburg, Germany, 20 July 2011, 10am-6pm
• Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 31 March 2011
• Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Germany, 2 April 2011
• Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munchen, Munich, Germany, 6 April 2011
• Wurttembergishche Landesbibliothek/Bibliothek Fur Zeitgeschichte in Stuttgart, Germany, 12 April 2011

Online story collection

The online story collection opened in March 2011. At the website, anyone can add their objects to the collection together with their stories. More information about how to add something to the collection can be found on the http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en/contributor page. The objects that are submitted will be checked by the project team and then made available through Europeana.

Run your own Family History Roadshow

          

If you are interested in running your own Family History Roadshow to digitise and add material for Europeana 1914-1918, we can offer help and advice on how to do that, including the following documents (as .pdf files):

• Event Brief (DRAFT version) (.pdf, 42 KB) 
• Preparing for a submissions day (.pdf, 1.6 MB)
• Catalogue Guide (pdf, 218,4k) 
• Europeana Contributor Information Sheet (pdf, 17k)  
• Workflow for a Submissions Day (.pdf, 49k) 
• Postcard w. thank you note (in German)(.pdf, 2MB)
• View collateral material 

Please contact us via the email address 1914-1918@europeana.eu for more information or if you are having problems accessing the documentation