shawmat
Member
Today, I am collecting a second batch of 1960s timetables from the Bus Archive in Walsall for digitising (see photos from my visit in Aug). When they have been completed, the scans will be viewable in https://timetableworld.com but, importantly, will be published as a free web service that can be embedded in other websites. One of the volunteers does the scanning, and anyone can sign up online to do the indexing. It is a crowd-sourced digital archive.
A related project is to create a historical database of bus operators – public, municipal, and private. It would provide a framework to hang all sorts of digital artefacts from. It is likely to be a considerable research effort. Can readers suggest some good databases, books and research sources?
This page on Wikipedia is a good start but is missing several local operators that I’m using as a completeness check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bus_operators_of_the_United_Kingdom
http://www.old-bus-photos.co.uk/ has a database of operators that seems to include the ones I’ve checking for.
I envisage the bus operators’ database will also be crowd-sourced and published as a free service, like the timetables. My job as the instigator is to build the 90% that is easy, and then invite bus fans to help with the 10% that is less well documented.
Please share this post, and let me know via the website if you'd like to help at this early stage.
A related project is to create a historical database of bus operators – public, municipal, and private. It would provide a framework to hang all sorts of digital artefacts from. It is likely to be a considerable research effort. Can readers suggest some good databases, books and research sources?
This page on Wikipedia is a good start but is missing several local operators that I’m using as a completeness check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bus_operators_of_the_United_Kingdom
http://www.old-bus-photos.co.uk/ has a database of operators that seems to include the ones I’ve checking for.
I envisage the bus operators’ database will also be crowd-sourced and published as a free service, like the timetables. My job as the instigator is to build the 90% that is easy, and then invite bus fans to help with the 10% that is less well documented.
Please share this post, and let me know via the website if you'd like to help at this early stage.