In Their Honour
- Contest Winner
- Notable Mashing Achievement and People's Choice Award
- Created by
- Tom Horn, Jacqui Kennedy
- Other datasets used
- National Archives of Australia with assistance from The Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Flickr stream from the Australian War Memorial. Google Geocoding API
In Their Honour is a mashup dedicated to the service men and women who fought and died for Australia. We have indexed over 100,000 service records and linked them to their burial location in one of over 3000 War Cemeteries in Europe and around the world.
We have also taken the WWI photographs from the Australian War Memorial and created a Timemap. A chronological and geographical, photographic record of Australia’s experiences during wartime. We hope to extend this to include other photographic collections, integrate historical events and user contributed personal histories.
In Their Honour is an invaluable resource for teachers, genealogist and researchers studying Australia’s wartime experience and particularly for family members locating their relative’s final resting place.
Features:
- Searchable database of over 100,000 service men and women.
- Detail page for each individual in the index.
- Links to service records.
- Photograph of cemetery or memorial.
- Detail pages for almost 4000 War Graves and Cemeteries, worldwide.
- Links to additional cemetery information.
- Driving directions
- Geographical and chronological photographic record.
Judges' Comments:
In Their Honour brings together service records, maps and photographs for each of the service men and women who have died for Australia. The judging panel felt that although a similar service already exists provided by the Australian War Memorial, this entry explored the data in a noticeably different way attracting the opportunity for a different kind of engagement with the same datasets.
Once we adjusted for the malicious voting up and voting down (shame on you who partook), the clear winner of the People’s Choice Award was In Their Honour — which is consistent with the judge’s thoughts on its usability. As commenter Nerida Deane said, “I just looked up my Great Uncle Al and found the site easy to use and I liked the information it gave me. Maybe one day I’ll have a chance to visit his memorial.”
Looks interesting, but I’m trying to understand what you’ve actually done as the description’s a bit vague. It seems that it’s mainly a new interface to the CWGC database, with the intention to add links elsewhere, as well as a timeline/map of Flickr images from the AWM.
I’m interested in seeing how you’ve linked to service records, can you provide an example? I couldn’t find any.
Of course Mapping our Anzacs (http://mappingouranzacs.naa.gov.au/) provides links to all 376,000 WWI service records as well as a growing number of user-contributed photos and notes (more than 1,000 at the moment), so there’s some danger of needless reinvention. That said, a number of inquiries to Mapping our Anzacs relate to gravesites and proposed battlefield visits, so links between the two would be very valuable.
In general, we have a number of useful databases — eg AWM Roll of Honour, Nominal Lists, Embarkation lists, Mapping our Anzacs, CWGC, and now also a soldier settlement project from State Records NSW — what would be really interesting and useful would be to see how we can best link these up, perhaps through the NLA People Australia project.
Yes Wragge, it would be great to link all the projects together. Having done a Battlefields tour of Europe and knowing how difficult it was to find location information on cemeteries, it seemed a logical extension to the CWGC site to map it. I’d like to think we have taken boring data and presented it in a slick, user-friendly manner with a more interesting interface.
The Mapping our Anzacs site is indeed terrific, but I think birthplace is less revelant to family researchers than burial place. MoA lists all soldiers whereas our focus has very much been honouring those who sacrificed their lives.
I certainly agree that it’s a great new way of exploring the CWGC data (not so sure about burial place being *more* relevant than birthplace though).
I was mainly concerned about your use of the term ‘service records’ and the references to the NAA, but Tom has been explaining via Twitter.
My great-uncle was just found in Fromelle this week.
This is a really great site.
Adam – That is amazing!! and very special!
My 4 great uncles fought in WWI and just last year we discovered over 100 letters from one of the boys. I transcribed them here
http://www.smythe.id.au/letters/
This is a fantastic resource for students!
!!
I was teaching year 9 last year and they would have LOVED this!
Excellent work Tom & Jacqui
Thanks very much Tammy
.
We are going to extend the image section to give a historical context to the sacrifice made by Australian service men and women.
We hope this will be a useful educational tool
I just looked up my Great Uncle Al and found the site easy to use and I liked the information it gave me. Maybe one day I’ll have a chance to visit his memorial.
Hi Jacqui,
Site looks good but I can’t get the search function to work.
Cheers,
Anne
Hi Anne,
It should be all fixed now. It was a hiccup with Internet Explorer (surprise surprise).
Cheers
Jacqui
[...] In Their Honour which brings together service records, maps and photographs for each of the service men and women who have died for Australia. The judging panel felt that although a similar service already exists provided by the Australian War Memorial, this entry explored the data in a noticeably different way attracting the opportunity for a different kind of engagement with the same datasets. [...]
Wow! Completely Floored. Thanks very much to everyone who voted for us.
Oh, I’d love to get this data into freebase.