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Here’s a cautionary tale about digitisation of

For the WW1 centenary, the National Library of Wales created cymru1914.org, to pull together scans of primary sources relating to the period. By all accounts it was brilliant.

Naturally, like all such projects, the site disappeared once the money ran out, taking everything with it. Rip.

Peter Keeling

But! That’s where the fun starts. From what I can tell, when the NLW added things to cymru1914, they neglected to add the copies to their own website at the same time.

Consequently, cymru1914’s main legacy appears to be a 1914-1918 shaped hole in the NLW’s digital collections.

See for example, the scans of the diaries of the MP J.H. Lewis: 42 out of 46 volumes are online…

archives.library.wales/index.p

archives.library.walesPocket and desk diaries, - National Library of Wales Archives and ManuscriptsThis series comprises pocket and desk diaries kept by John Herbert Lewis. Their contents vary considerably; some include detailed descriptions of c...

@jessamyn

I have since been pointed to this statement: library.wales/catalogues-searc

("Technical difficulties", sure...)

I expect nothing was lost, and that one day I will be able to snoop around Sir John's diaries from the comfort of my living room.

But this was completely foreseeable. NLW is otherwise so good at doing digital.

www.library.walesCymru 1914 - National Library of WalesA page explaining that the Cymru 1914 website is no longer available.

@PMKeeling Oh gosh what a mess I bet there's a bad story behind that.

I know we like working with them at the Flickr Foundation but like a lot of the orgs we work with, they're under-resourced and often the digital stuff suffers the most when that happens.

@PMKeeling I still mourn the demise of that archive. So much work just gone and lost.