SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

I seem to be having trouble accessing the Leodis site atm. Im just wondering if it's the same for everyone else?

I have had he same trouble for a few days now and if I try to access Secret Leeds through Google Chrome that is also a No Go.

Ah not just me then I've tried a couple of browsers too. However I did find a workaround of sorts if you know what you're after google it followed by the word leodis then switch to images.

polos wrote:Ah not just me then I've tried a couple of browsers too. However I did find a workaround of sorts if you know what you're after google it followed by the word leodis then switch to images.

No problem accessing Leodis for me in deepest Wales . I regularly check it for updates but these days new content is rarely added. Anyone know why?

blackprince wrote:

polos wrote:Ah not just me then I've tried a couple of browsers too. However I did find a workaround of sorts if you know what you're after google it followed by the word leodis then switch to images.

No problem accessing Leodis for me in deepest Wales . I regularly check it for updates but these days new content is rarely added. Anyone know why?

Chances are that the archive is close to being digitised fully now so there are few new images that are going on. Seems that now they add private collections or photos that have been donated which are far more sporadic.

I've sent them a ton of photos but they only added about 5.......they seem they would rather have 200 pics of the same building. I think they should get a couple of people, verify them, and let them add to the database.

When I send photographs there is always a delay. The librarians have to verify the subject, then add a description and notes, so that the search facility can operate effectively when someone else wants to find the photograph. We often find what we are looking for in the background or at the edge of a photograph. If the photograph had only the name or description of the main subject, we would never find the interesting bits on the edges. The information that the librarians add, makes the Leodis website one of the best.

Hi

We'd just like to confirm what Warringtonrhino has said - the digitisation/verification process does take a while with Leodis, hence the delay in adding images to the website. We do try to get everything up eventually!

As for issues with Leodis - please accept our apologies. We are aware that there have been problems recently and are working to fix them. As the problems are sporadic, we are having some difficulties establishing exactly what's going wrong - so, if you could let us know whenever you do encounter a problem, that would be fantastic, as we can pass that info on to our IT team there and then; just e-mail us at [email protected].

Have you seen the new Leodis Collections site - http://leodiscollections.net? It's a new way of accessing images by theme.

Thanks

Thank you for taking the time to reply The Librarian Team. Thank you for all the hard work you do keeping the site up to date it must quite a task well done.

tilly wrote:Thank you for taking the time to reply The Librarian Team. Thank you for all the hard work you do keeping the site up to date it must quite a task well done.

I'd certainly second that. On the matter of having several pictures of one location, I'd say please keep that up as well. It's obvious when you think about it but still worth saying, any picture archive is stuck with what pictures were taken at the time and still survive. When searching an archive like Leodis it's pure luck if you find what you want. So, if there are several views but with slightly different viewpoints or angles, you have that much more chance of finding just what you are after.

I think that another bit of the detailed work that has not been mentioned is the cross-referencing of related pictures. There's an official picture of the house where my great grandmother spent the last years of her life. Some time after I had seen that picture and commented, I found in one of my mother's albums, a picture of her grandmother (my great-grandmother) with some of the family on her doorstep. As it's only a family group, I checked with the Leodis team to ensure it was suitable and received a very nice reply. In due course, my picture was up there and both were cross-referenced. Hardly detective work in that case because I supplied the details of the original but it all takes time and it has to be done meticulously to avoid sending people down blind alleys.

It has occurred to me after I pressed the submit button that there is a bit of a confusing issue with the "Latest additions" feature, in that sometimes, the "latest addition" will not change eg if you do a google search to see if there's anything new, but later additions will be further down the list. I presume this is something to do with the way batches of pictures from a particular source are added, but until I realised it was happening, I got caught out by wrongly thinking nothing new had been added for a while.