Catherine Emma (Kate) Jonesand Andrew Janes4 September 2013

Geography: the missing link for archives?A case study from the London Blitz

HO 192/862

Some sources for researching the London Blitz

• Log books, incident registers and reporting forms

• Maps plotting bombs or bomb damage

• Photographs and plans of bomb sites

• Investigation reports

• Records of institutions that were bombed

• Newspaper reports

• Local council minutes

• Personal accounts: diaries, memories, etc

Challenges of using primary sources

Doing research involves doing research …

• Most people aren’t familiar with using archives

• Historical data is complex and ‘messy’ to work with

• Time-consuming to discover what is relevant

• Different archives hold different sources

• ‘Hidden’ records?

• Most archival sources are not digitised

• Most records are not catalogued in lavish detail

Bomb Sight – the project

A step towards wider access to historical records

• Build an interactive mapping website and Android mobile app

• Selected Bomb Census maps from TNA

• Other historical data about the Blitz

• A resource for academic researchers

• A resource for geography teaching and learning

• A resource for ‘citizen researchers’ / the public

Project partners

Funded by

bombsight.org/about

Content Programme 2011-13

Project team

Andrew JanesProject Advisor

Dr Catherine JonesProject Director

Andrew JanesProject Advisor

Dr Catherine JonesProject Director

Jasia WarrenGraphic Designer

Dr Patrick WeberTech Lead / Web Developer

and student researchers Ali Nabbi and Felix Fennel

Dan KarranMobile Developer

Data sources

• Aggregate night-time Bomb Census maps, 7 Oct 1940 - 6 June 1941 – The National Archives (ref: HO 193/13)

• Weekly Bomb Census maps, 7-14 Oct 1940 – The National Archives (ref: HO 193/1)

• 24 hours of the Blitz, 7 Sept 1940 – Guardian Data Store 

• Anti-invasion defence locations – Council for British Archaeology: Defence of Britain Dataset

• Photographs – Imperial War Museum Images

• WW2 Memories – BBC History “People’s War”

• Present day street map and aerial imagery – Cloudmade

For full details and copyright information, see: bombsight.org/data/sources/

HO 193/1 sheet 15/18 NW

Weekly Bomb Census map for 7-14 October 1940

HO 192/341

The impact in numbers

• Discussed in 70+ different global print/TV/internet media

• 184,436 unique visitors on 7 December 2012

• 378,971 unique visitors in first two months

• Almost 450,000 unique visitors up to 29 August 2013

• Over 1,273,058 page views up to 29 August 2013

• Site accessed 102,000 times with a tablet or mobile phone

• Quiet rollout of native mobile app: 2600+ downloads since made

available via Google Play in mid-December 2012

• Compares to 827 original map folder productions in 2012/13

Engaging with technology

• Transformed data: New technology brings old data to life

• Enhanced data: Searchable, browsable and enriched

• For access: From ‘hidden’ records to popular website

• For preservation: Access without handling fragile originals

• For learning: Supports students to develop the knowledge

and skills for working with spatial data

Engaging with geography

• Geography: a missing link for archives?

• Maturity and popularity of digital mapping

• Academic ‘buzz’ around spatial data

• Using geography to link different sources together

• Archives: a missing link for geography?

• Maps are for more than just history of cartography

• Archives are for more than just ‘straight’ history

Engaging with the public

• User-focused development: Scenarios and user-testing

• Social media: A powerful tool for raising awareness

• Blog post and talk/podcast: Contributing to TNA’s public

engagement programmes

• Academia is relevant: Academic work responds to and

drives public interest in historical events (and sources)

• Archives are relevant: Sources contain a wealth of data

The Twitter buzz

“I have to say @BombSightUK is one of the most impressive online archive

resources I've ever seen. Brings alive the sheer scale of the Blitz.”

“The @BombSightUK map tallies well with anecdotal reports of WW2

German bombs from the old timers in my neighbourhood. Fascinating.”

“What an astonishing use of #augmentedreality & mobile apps by

@BombSightUK... this looks brilliant...”

“Always suspected my housing block was built on a WW2 bomb site, and

thanks to http://bombsight.org I can see I was right!”

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•Al-Jazeera English

•BBC News

•CNN

•The Daily Telegraph

•The Economist

•The Guardian

•Huffington Post

•Mail Online

•Mashable

•Le Monde

•Sky Australia

•Der Spiegel

•Wired

Challenges (1) – working together

• A first time for everything …

• Academia meets civil service

• Joint working = staking everyone’s reputation

• Intellectual property rights

• Many WWII-era sources are still in copyright …

• … but much is Crown copyright or licensable

• Required non-commercial licences utilising open source

and low cost solutions

Challenges (2) – margins of error

• Records made under wartime conditions

• Bombs missed during the survey

• Mis-plotted or unclear bombs on map sheets

• Transforming the data: paper to digital

• Mismatches between historic and modern map layers

• Potential for errors in manual geo-locating

• Inevitable errors in the Open Street Map layer

• Long-term preservation

• Sustainable formats, e.g. GeoTiff

• To be deposited with EDINA Digimap and ShareGeo

• Short-term sustainability to meet public demand

• A small academic project went viral …

• Unanticipated level of public and media interest

• Worked with CloudFlare to keep the site running

Challenges (3) – digital sustainability

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• Complete the dataset for London to enable exploration by

timeline?

• Capture richer information from ‘BC4’ reporting forms?

• Expand to other parts of the UK?

• Crowdsource the capture of information?

• Crowdsource additional data, e.g. memories, photos?

• Develop a framework to help smaller archives create their

own interactive mapping applications?

• Seek more funding?

Some ideas for the future

Website – bombsight.org

Blog – blitzbombcensusmaps.wordpress.com

Twitter – @BombSightUK

Kate – @SpatialK8 Andrew – @cartivist

A podcast about the development of Bomb Sight

is available via media.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Watch this space …