New First World War Digital Archive launches - The Ogilby Muster

[jaykayu]

 

Taken from a news article on  Royal Artillery Museum website..........

 

The Ogilby Muster (TOM). TOM is an online platform which provides access to the First World War archives held in Regimental Museums across the UK. Launching during Remembrance month, TOM has preserved the experiences and memories of those who served in the First World War for future generations.  

With over 75 participating collections, and more set to join in 2022, TOM will eventually hold over two million items including some never-before-seen material. Covering the period 1900 to 1929, the platform contains documents, photographs, letters, diaries and more, all related to the British Army and the men and women who served. 

https://www.theogilbymuster.com/

 

[UKAIF]

Thanks for alerting us to that - sounds like a promising resource.

[charlie962]

Heads-up was given on Skindles but thanks for link.

 

Can I suggest one interesting search

"army book 358" brings up 5500 hits and is  Attestation or Trf  Ledgers for a variety of units

Charlie

[Moonraker]

Looks a great resource, searching which should keep me occupied for several days. Thanks!

[jaykayu]

You are all welcome.   I can see myself spending a lot of time on TOM !

[charlie962]

21 hours ago, Moonraker said:

occupied for several days.

understatement of the year, I suspect

[Moonraker]

I've resolved to work though it by searching for a couple of my Wiltshire locations at a time. (There's probably 40 of these.) I've already discovered several items of interest, such as the provision of live cattle to be slaughtered as food for the troops during the 1910 manoeuvres, and the presence of troops later than I thought at one of Wiltshire's temporary wartime camps. Also a photo of great-grand-dad as one of 11 pompous-looking officers of the Denbighshire Hussars Imperial Yeomanry, all posing very stiffly.

[Colin W Taylor]

Some great information on here. However, at £4 a page to download a higher resolution copy (even just for personal use) it's a bit pricey. Some museums only have token content on thus far.

CT

[ss002d6252]

Very interesting. Found some pensions forms I've never seen before.

There are quite a lot of pages in amongst the records though that look very much like copies from taken Ancestry or FMP.

Craig

[johntaylor]

Like others on the Forum, I was excited to come across such a tremendous new source of information - until I found it costs £4 a page to download anything, even for personal use. I realise museums need all the income they can get, but the cost does seem a bit prohibitive. Obviously it's fine if you're interested in the odd page, but for in-depth research the only alternative is to squint at the pages that are free to download.

Anyway thanks to jaykayu for drawing this to our attention!

All the best, John

[Moonraker]

I'm finding it useful for bits of info about locations in Wiltshire and so far have usually been able to précis two or three paragraphs on a particular topic and type them into my notes. And I've saved a couple of pages as JPEGs, cropped particular articles of interest and printed them off. But this not possible with images of whole pages of broadsheet newspapers where it's very difficult to pinpoint the relevant article.

Best find so far is a report on how the US Army policed its servicemen in England.

It took me a short while to work out how to read an article spread over several pages when I'd been directed to just one: change the final digit(s) of the URL in the address bar.

I agree that £4 a downloaded page is a very high price. But overall I think that it's one of the best on-line resources to be introduced in the past few years. I wonder if some of us will get in the habit of referring newbies (and not-so-newbies) to the Muster?

[ss002d6252]

42 minutes ago, Moonraker said:

I agree that £4 a downloaded page is a very high price.

I suspect that the price will be counter productive. A lower price would get far more purchases - I'd happily pay 50p each for several dozen pages rather than £4 for one.

Craig

[johntaylor]

I couldn't agree more!

John

[Moonraker]

Background to the Muster

[QUEX]

4 hours ago, johntaylor said:

.... I found it costs £4 a page to download anything, even for personal use ...

Strewth, guvnor - that's a bit steep.  Had played with it but not got to the stage of finding anything I wanted to buy - can see myself being very sparing with purchases.  And this pricing is bad enough for someone looking for granddad, it's probably prohibitive for someone e.g. researching a PhD.  

[johntaylor]

The background is interesting because it says the collection will ultimately include more than 2 million items. I would have thought a subscription model would be more realistic, where you can sign up for a month/year and get unlimited access. Otherwise I can't see many of us being able to afford to use it to any great extent.

Still, it's a great initiative to digitise these documents and make them available online. 

John

[QUEX]

Agree. Some of the things I’ve seen so far are problematic- a page from a war diary that’s ended up in a regimental collection costs 4 quid, but 3.50 from TNA in normal times - you’re taking the mick ….

[johntaylor]

Hopefully they'll sort out the payment model to make this accessible to more users (other than Jeff Bezos, in the unlikely event that he's interested).

The other improvement I would like to see is some sort of browse function within each museum, as the search function hasn't worked very well for me so far. Once you've found the relevant museum, it would be great to have a list of available documents rather than looking through all the thumbnail images and trying to find the ones that look interesting. Or maybe I'm just doing something wrong...

John

Edited 7 November , 2021 by johntaylor

[charlie962]

2 hours ago, johntaylor said:

The other improvement I would like to see is some sort of browse function within each museum, as the search function hasn't worked very well for me so far. Once you've found the relevant museum, it would be great to have a list of available documents rather than looking through all the thumbnail images and trying to find the ones that look interesting. Or maybe I'm just doing something wrong...

I agree totally. (even on the point that it could be me- but then isn't that the point?)

Charlie

[ss002d6252]

I do like the save facility, that's useful.

I also wonder if there's going to be some of update on new records.

Craig

[charlie962]

1 minute ago, ss002d6252 said:

I also wonder if there's going to be some of update on new records.

It must be an ongoing process but it would be helpful to have a list of new releases.

[charlie962]

2 minutes ago, ss002d6252 said:

I do like the save facility, that's useful.

The email alerts for this search- does that just save the search or does it email you when new data meeting the search criteria comes available?

[johntaylor]

I've just sent an email to their administrator, informing them about this discussion and inviting them to respond and hopefully answer some of the queries. It would be great if they do, but if not at least they should be aware of the various points being raised.

All the best,

John

[ss002d6252]

4 minutes ago, johntaylor said:

I've just sent an email to their administrator, informing them about this discussion and inviting them to respond and hopefully answer some of the queries. It would be great if they do, but if not at least they should be aware of the various points being raised.

All the best,

John

We're probably going to be the single biggest group of users so it may be useful.

Craig

[keithmroberts]

I tried a couple of searches, making a lot of use of AND to narrow down the results, and indeed found a couple of interesting items quickly. Frustrating though to find masses of pages just scanned from OH volumes, which must take up masses of storage space, but are hard to narrow down, and that most dedicated researchers will probably have access to by one means or another.