IRL-TIPPERARY-L Archives

From: Christina Hunt <>
Subject: Fwd: [WATERFORD] Waterford County Museum Are World Champions
Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2006 13:08:20 -0400
In-Reply-To: <44326269.1000200@deisedesign.com>

Since Waterford is a next door neighbor to Tipperary, I thought our listers might be
interested in the award their museum has been given.
They do a great job. As does the Waterford County Library which contains genealogical data
under its Online Resources section.
http://www.waterfordcountyimages.org/exhibit/web
http://www.waterfordcountylibrary.ie/library/web

Christina
Listowner IRL-Tipperary


--- Original Message ---
From: "William Whelan"
To: <>
Subject: [WATERFORD] Waterford County Museum Are World Champions


1. Waterford County Museum Are World Champions
2. New Web site Article On Easter 1916
3. What Next For The Museum?
4. Make A Donation
5. Contact Us

Hi All
Great news it seems that waterfordcountyimages.org is the best
small museum web site in the world. Even the Chief of the
Information Technology Office at the Smithsonian Museum of Art
thinks so :) http://eyelevel.si.edu . This is a really great
achievement for us. I would like to thank all of the list members
who have helped us over the years from donations to words of
encouragement (and constructive criticism) it has all helped to get
us to this point. If anyone on the list has a contact in the Irish
national papers it would be nice if you could prod them into
covering this award.

Thanks again yours Willie And Martin Whelan and all at Waterford
County Museum

PS don't forget that you can donate to the museum online and help
us provide a better service, all of us at the museum are unpaid
volunteers so all monies donated goes directs towards preserving
Waterford history.

1. Waterford County Museum Are World Champions
==============================================

Waterford County Museum Press Release

Starts
-----------------------

Waterford County Museum Are World Champions

The digital image archive constructed by Waterford County Museum
has been awarded the Best Small Museum Web Site 2006 title at the
prestigious Museums & The Web International Conference held in
Albuquerque, New Mexico over March 22nd to the 25th. An eminent
panel of academics and web designers chose the award winners.

The panel of 24 judges included representatives from the Science
Museum - London, Rijksmuseum - Amsterdam, Georgetown University,
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of
Art - New York.

The award is open to all museums across the globe and is in effect
the unofficial world championship of web site construction for
museums and archives.

One of the judges commented that "I was very taken by the fact that
this site was developed with no budget at all, just volunteers and
donated expertise and support. Nevertheless it provides an
excellent archival resource and a timely reminder that we don't all
have the human and financial resources of the big organisations,
yet it is still possible to produce useful, good quality resources."

What is most remarkable about this project considering its scale is
the fact that it was created at no cost to Waterford County Museum
by mainly volunteer effort. Typically projects of this scale and
technical complexity cost over €100,000. The museum is a small
voluntary run organisation located at St. Augustine Street,
Dungarvan, Co. Waterford and has an annual budget of just €7000.
Such a complex project should be well beyond the reach of a small
museum, but by creating partnerships with local business, local
government and government agencies the project became achievable.

The image management software was written free of charge over a two
year period by Dungarvan web design company Déise Design. Martin
and William Whelan of Déise Design currently sit on the committee
of Waterford County Museum (William is the current museum
president). Fás provided a Community Employment worker, Alan Healy,
to input the images and Waterford County Library provided free
server space to store the digital images. The Heritage Council Of
Ireland provided €2800 worth of grant aid to purchase computer
equipment and scanners.

The archive currently contains some 2500 historic photographs,
sketches, postcards, paintings and drawings of County Waterford.
The system has been designed to ultimately store ten’s of thousands
of images. It is intended that approximately 2500 additional images
will be added per annum. In order to find new material for the
archive on an ongoing basis the museum has set up a history
outreach programme, already there are volunteer collectors in 10
villages around Waterford collecting photographs for the archive.

Waterford County Museum had two primary goals when it set up the
image archive;

Firstly, to allow the general public to have greater access to the
images. The photographs will be disseminated worldwide hopefully
encouraging interest in Waterford history and further image
donation.

Secondly, to preserve the images for future generations. Each image
is scanned at a huge size and algorithms are then used to resize
and watermark each image automatically for display online. A
digital copy of the original image is stored in the archive; in the
event of an image being destroyed or damaged the museum can
reproduce the image off of the digital copy.

Expressing delight at the award William Fraher, the curator of
Waterford County Museum, stated "that I would like to thank
Waterford County Library Service, The Heritage Council of Ireland
and Fás for their support of the project, in particular I would
like to thank Déise Design for their management of the project over
the past two years and also all of the image donors who trusted us
with their collections of photographs. I think this image archive
project is a great example of what can be achieved with volunteer
effort and how technology can allow a small local organisation
become a player on the global stage."

The archive can be viewed online at www.waterfordcountyimages.org.

-----------------------
Ends

The award is announced here
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2006/best/small-win.html


The panel that selected the prize winners can be viewed here
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2006/abstracts/prg_320000726.html

Any queries about this press release can be directed to:

William Whelan
Phone: 086 2748377
Email:

2. New Web site Article On Easter 1916
==============================================

In this article, Dave Hennessy hopes to bring a better
understanding of how different people viewed what was happening in
Ireland during Easter 1916; Opinions on how these events impacted
on them are given by everyone from ordinary people to Augustine
Birrell who was Ireland's Chief Secretary.

http://www.waterfordcountymuseum.org/exhibit/web/Display/article/207/

3. What Next for The Musuem
==============================================

The next year or so will be an exciting time for the museum. We are
scheduled to have almost 1 million invested in our building by
Waterford COunty Council. This will lead to an expansion of space
and hopefully lead to a better laid out museum. the construction
work is scheduled to commence before year end.

We are looking at a rebuild of the existing museum web site at
www.waterfordcountymuseum.org. Two main things will occur - it will
become more user friendly and incorporate the image archive and
futher databases (port records etc.) we are putting online in a
more coherent manner. One of the databases we will put up (no
promise on a time scale but we are looking at January 07 :)) will
be a catalogue of the museums objects with photos of the objects
from multiple angles. Secondly the updating of the site will move
into the museum proper, I will retain an editorial function. The
web site demands too much time from me at the moment (another
little baby Whelan is on the way :)) This should result in much,
much more quality content being published more frequently.

Lastl we are going to continue having travelling exhibitions in the
villages of Waterford. Our next port of call is Clashmore sometime
in early May. It is important that we are seen as a museum for the
whole county not just Dungarvan.

==============================================
4. Make A Donation
==============================================

We are a small voluntary body, dependent on donations in order to
stay running, our budget is only 7000 Euro per annum. If you can
afford to donate any sum no matter how small it will help us in our
work of preserving Waterford's history. Details of how to make a
donation online or by cheque can be seen here:

http://www.waterfordcountymuseum.org/exhibit/web/Display/article/145/2
/

==============================================
5. Contacting The Museum
==============================================

All general queries can be directed to the museum at


If you have a comment or complaint about the web site you can
contact

We are delighted to get all feedback, positive or negative. We
endeavour to act on all suggestions that we get but please bear in
mind that we are a voluntary organisation and it can take some time
to answer queries.

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