The National Archives of Estonia is inviting people to join in the Euro Project Community as Opportunity – Creative archives’ and users’ network by posting their personal photos on the webpage http://topotheque.eu. This web page called Topoteek in Estonian, allows an individual or a community (society, town or city, etc) to upload their personal photos of their hometown or surrounding area and post them on the web, thus creating a historical source of photographs for others. Topotheque ‘s goal is to provide a shared community website for individuals to digitally share their historical information, locate the places on a map, and in this way, expand access to local history into countries beyond Estonia. Photos, documents, audio and visual recordings can all be uploaded to Topotheque. The main focus is on photos, describing them, and placing images on a map to connect images locations in the past with images of the same places in the present. There are no limitations of time and date of images, thus Topotheque also welcomes images from more recent history and contemporary times. Topotheque is maintained through the efforts of volunteers and is coordinated in Estonia by the National Archives of Estonia.
Creating a Topotheque account is easy. Any interested volunteer, who wishes to post his/her own photos, or those of their friends (may also include other topics), may create a password and begin posting photos and describing them. The descriptions are simple and should include the author of the photo, the name of who’s collection it belongs to, the date, and description of the activity or object in the photo. There is also a handbook available for understanding how Topotheque works.
An Estonian overview of Topotheque/Topoteek can be found here: www.arhiiv.ee/public/Projektid/topoteegid.pdf
We welcome you to share the file and link above, or print and share in other ways. If you are interested in releasing your own personal heritage or community heritage and creating a Topotheque account, please contact archivist Sven Lepa, sven.lepa@ra.ee, +372 738 7556.