Leodis latest content

Bunkers, shelters and other buildings
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blackprince
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Joined: Tue 04 Sep, 2007 2:10 pm

Leodis latest content

Post by blackprince »

I regularly check the latest content at Leodis for interesting new photographs.
The last couple of times I get nothing but photocopies of playbills and tickets for music performances in Leeds over the years.
Reading into it, Leeds libraries are in the process of uploading about 5000 playbills to the site. ( What next restaurant menus and football programmes ?)

The title of Leodis was a photographic archive of Leeds when it was set up in 1999. I am sure that playbills and other ephemeral printed matter could have their own website but it seems daft to me to mix the 2 together and divert resources away from the core purpose of Leodis.

And before anyone asks, yes I have contacted Leeds Libraries with my thoughts on this and received a pleasant but anodyne reply.
It used to be said that the statue of the Black Prince had been placed in City Square , near the station, pointing South to tell all the southerners who've just got off the train to b****r off back down south!

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Leodian
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Re: Leodis latest content

Post by Leodian »

Hi blackprince. I noticed them yesterday and did think there was a lot but so far only 4 pages! I guess someone kept them so I wonder if he/she went to all of the events.
A rainbow is a ribbon that Nature puts on when she washes her hair.

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blackprince
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Re: Leodis latest content

Post by blackprince »

Hi Leo,
They are now adding tickets to the collection of 5000 Playbills owned & copyrighted by Leeds libraries.
When you do a search on the whole database they can be filtered out. But you can no longer see the most recent photos added to the site - all you get is tickets. They are adding so many tickets that the latest photos added , if any, just disappear quickly.
They say Leodis has never just been about the photographs despite being called"A photographic archive of Leeds" since 1999, well you could have fooled me!

BP
It used to be said that the statue of the Black Prince had been placed in City Square , near the station, pointing South to tell all the southerners who've just got off the train to b****r off back down south!

jma
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Joined: Fri 05 Aug, 2016 3:38 pm

Re: Leodis latest content

Post by jma »

I believe the Leodis archive is funded by grants from the National Lottery so I presume that depends on bids for funding periodically. I also presume that the lottery funding is not unlimited so there's an element of competition in the bidding for grants. I could imagine a bid based on the material blackprince is objecting to might miss out when up against something of a less specialist interest.

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blackprince
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Re: Leodis latest content

Post by blackprince »

Hi jma, I don't object to the new material as such. Tickets and playbills are not my bag but I am sure lots of people will be interested. It is the decision, misguided in my view, to mix the tickets and photographs on the same site which I object to.
At one time I designed and managed 4 or 5 of my own websites on diverse topics ranging from a photography club to hikes in the Alps. Each site had its own design theme and its own separate domain. If I followed the logic of the Leodis administrators I should have just dumped all the information into one mish-mash of a site and said to users you can sort out what you want to look at by using filters in the search facility.
It used to be said that the statue of the Black Prince had been placed in City Square , near the station, pointing South to tell all the southerners who've just got off the train to b****r off back down south!

jma
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Joined: Fri 05 Aug, 2016 3:38 pm

Re: Leodis latest content

Post by jma »

blackprince

I think your "pleasant but anodyne reply" probably says it all.

I'd suggest that people accessing Leodis might be broadly divided into two. The first might be termed "researchers" which covers those who are searching for something, using the search and advanced search features.

Then there are the casual visitors who may be regulars, looking for anything of interest to them and the pot luck, latest additions and can you help? features are surely aimed at them. These are the people who might have personal knowledge eg of some house where they lived or a school they attended. They are unlikely to be attracted by endless playbills (and note that some now being added date from 2023) nor are they likely to reminisce about the City Varieties.

I have gained a lot of interest and indeed pleasure from Leodis. I've added what I believe are worthwhile comments based on a lifetime mainly spent in Leeds and also several images from family albums which I thought might be interesting to the wider public. I lost the plot when Leodis was revamped.

I've been waiting in vain to see if there was anything from others.

TABBYCAT
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Joined: Mon 02 Apr, 2007 6:55 pm

Re: Leodis latest content

Post by TABBYCAT »

Before the "revamp" I found Leodis to be one of the fastest sites to surf and the search feature spot on.
Now since the change for changes sake I find it to be amongst the slowest and the search feature a complete dogs breakfast,before I could enter a simple two word description to get what I want whereas now I have to endlessly filter out the many pages of unwanted crap it decides to throw up.

An example being say XXXX street. The old search engine took me straight to all that was relevant, now anything and everything with street in the title gets thrown up. Still that's progress as they say.

jma
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Joined: Fri 05 Aug, 2016 3:38 pm

Re: Leodis latest content

Post by jma »

My personal good news is that this thread motivated me to make another attempt to revive (?) my leodis account and this time I seem to have been successful.

I make no claim to any expertise in information technology so things like searching are hit-and-miss for me.

I will return to my comments about what I referred to as "casual" visitors. I'm talking here about people who look to see if there's anything of interest. For some of us, it's a daily thing and it's sometimes been even more frequent for me in the last three years of lockdown etc. Now, the only reasons I can see for the sections which present casual visitors with a selection which involves no searching eg latest editions is to offer them just that: an interesting selection without searching. The value to the Leodis archive is that these "casual" visitors may by chance see an image for which they have personal knowledge which they will submit, making it more generally available

I don't know why Leeds City Council receives so many of these playbills. I know that the council is now involved with the management of the Grand Theatre and City Varieties but this predates that by many years. I suspect that it's something to do with the fact that before the liberalisations of the early 1960s, all theatre productions were under the supervision of the Lord Chancellor's department and I fancy this was delegated to local authorities who as a result received "playbills" for all productions in their area. There's a case to be made for archiving these documents as a historic resource but I cannot see any value in presenting them to what I've described as casual visitors, especially if it means that the "recent additions" section contains little or nothing else and the "pot luck" is moving in the same direction.

I think it's unlikely that anybody with personal experience of the City Varieties in the good old days (that's an attempt at clumsy humour) would admit it on an open forum

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chemimike
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Re: Leodis latest content

Post by chemimike »

The source of them cannot be from lord chancellor's days , as I notice that there are very recent pop concert ones from as late as 2016. As the recently posted additions are of that late, perhaps they have nearly reached the end of them. In passing I would wonder if there has recently been an addition to those running Leodis who is a bit of a theatre-nut

jma
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Re: Leodis latest content

Post by jma »

According to the Leodis Help and Info page, the "Playbills" collection dates from 1781. I'm broadly comfortable with my reference to the Lord Chancellor but that's not really the issue. This is a sort of disclaimer from Leodis itself:-
The language and imagery used in the historical playbills reflect the context and culture of their creators, and may include words, phrases, and attitudes that would now be deemed insensitive, inappropriate or factually inaccurate.
https://www.leodis.net/HelpAndInfo/AboutPlaybills

In other words, if you are easily shocked, be careful.

I feel the problem with that approach is that this should be a family-friendly resource. As a recent example, I helped my granddaughter (primary school pupil) with her research into WWII with some Leodis images of Anderson shelters in Leeds gardens. She should be able to browse the main archive safely, rather than navigating City Varieties posters aimed at the dirty mac audience.

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