www.eogen.com seems to be an American based Wikipedia for family historians, with entries being provided (and amended) by individual contributors. The site contains no postal address or details of the individuals or organisation managing the website. There is already an impressive number of entries, but the veracity of each entry needs to compared with information about the same subject elsewhere on the web or in published sources. It may be useful, which is why we have mentioned it here.

www.ancestorsonboard.com is a new website providing online access to ‘the first comprehensive database of passenger lists from ships departing from the United Kingdom between 1890 and 1960 and had been developed by www.Findmypast.com and The National Archives. The site has over 1.5 million pages listing some 30 million names. Of more interest to local historians will be the fact that the database also names every ship, the date of departure, the port they departed from and their destination.

An email from Marcus Botterill telling us about his new website prompted me to look at what you will see on the first page of the Google search engine if you type in ‘Northamptonshire history’. It is an exercise which you can carry out for any place or county you like and how would it compare to my findings for Northamptonshire?
www.northampton-live.co.uk is a new local history website in its infancy and is not listed on the first four pages of Google (I didn’t look any further, nor does typing in ‘Northampton Live’ get a listing). This is hardly surprising, but if Marcus can establish links with other sites, then he should be able to improve his position in the Google and other search engine listings. The site is easy to use and has an online forum to encourage participation by site visitors. Marcus deserves to succeed and says ‘the site is designed for the collection and sharing of information about Northamptonshire towns, villages, people and landmarks’. What I particularly like about the site is its crisp, easy to read, layout and its obvious potential. Having an online forum should help.

www.northampton.org.uk/history/history.htm is top of the Google list for ‘Northamptonshire history’ and has a chronology of events relating to the county, as well as links section that takes you to a list with twenty-two entries, of which only two directly relate to local history and only one of these is actually based in the county.

www.british-history.ac.uk, the website of the Victoria County History, is second in the Google listing and has references to two places in Northamptonshire. What pushes it up the list is the number of other websites linked to it. In local history terms, this is an important website, but its importance is clearly less than NALH as a potential starting point for looking at an aspect of the county’s history.

www.northants-fhs.org is the website of the Northamptonshire Family History Society and ranks third and fifth in the Google list. A visitor to the site’s Homepage clicking onto the heading ‘About the county’ will probably find this section of more assistance than any other link, since it is devoted to ‘resources for family history research in Northamptonshire’ (read ‘local history’), but there is no reciprocal link to NLHA , which has a link to the NFHS site. As we have said before, local historians need to recognise the importance of family history to local history in so many ways and this site is just one of numerous examples of why this is the case. Our interests are mutual, so co-operation, especially at local and county levels, is vital.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ Northamptonshire is the fourth entry in the Google list and from the Wikipedia website, which relies on users to submit entries or extracts from publications out of copyright — which appears to the case with this entry, since a reference at the end of the text says ‘this article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition, a publication now in the public domain’. These entries can be amended or enlarged by other contributors and there are many links from the website to other sites. The chances are that Wikipedia would appear on the first page of any search because it has so many links with other websites.

www.northants-history.org.uk is the site of Northamptonshire Association for Local History and is sixth in the Google list, but its home page says it was ‘last updated 29 February 2004’. Its news section does say where the Association’s AGM will be in October 2005 and that seems to be the latest entry. There is no way of knowing if the list of local history societies (and links) is up-to-date. Issue 107 of Local History Magazine (March/April 2006) reported that the Association had decided it couldn’t cope with emails because it was receiving over 100 spam emails a day and had decided to disable the service. What this otherwise workmanlike site reveals is that managing websites is not easy, especially when one person is likely to be responsible for keeping the website up-to-date. As we know from personal experience, illness, holidays and other pressures can make it very difficult at times.

www.northants-black-history.org.uk is seventh and a model website with an online database which is easy to search. The Northamptonshire Black History Association recently secured a Lottery grant of £249,500 for its education programme and related activities. It shows what can be achieved, yet this site does not appear to be linked to any of the previously mentioned sites.

www.localhistorywebring.co.uk doesn’t actually appear when you type in ‘Northamptonshire history’, but it is worthy of a mention, simply because it is a bold attempt at online co-operation. There 175 local history related websites linked to The Local History Web Ring, but it appears to have been last updated in March 2006 and has suffered from problems caused by rogue visitors, resulting in parts of the site being closed down. Unfortunately, there is no postal address or details of who actually manages the website. Each participating website should show a link button bearing the title ‘The Local History Web Ring’ and ‘Next / Previous / List Sites’. This is intended as a way of improving site rankings on search engines, such as Google, Yahoo etc. Unfortunately, ring members are not listed geographically or alphabetically, which suggests that the main aim of the site is to boost web rankings, but there is no evidence to suggest that this happens.

Using the web to search for information about local history requires a great deal of tenacity. The more specific you can be in choosing the words you enter into your preferred search engine the better your chances of being successful, even if there are a few dead ends along the way! Type in ‘Northamptonshire local history’ and NALH have the top two entries, with www.local-history.co.uk on the same page. Perhaps each county local history association should look at how well the web is serving local history in their county and how, by working together, interested organisations can make the process of researching local history on the web easier and to the mutual advantage of both users and societies. Perhaps county associations and others, like the British Association for Local History and ourselves, should be talking to the Local History Web Ring about helping them to develop their website?