Limerick History Archive Appeal GoFundME ViralExposure Campaign
My name is Gerry Hannan BA MBS and I am building a free access archive of Limerick History stories and images LIMERICK HISTORY GAZETTE ARCHIVE. I am also publishing a series of 100 books between September 2015 and January 2020 all of which are researched, compiled and edited by myself.
All of the images need enhancement, indexing, captioning and repair work and I do these one-by-one using PhotoShop and other tools but always ensuring to maintain the integrity of the image itself.
I am a Limerick 20th Century Historian & Archivist and I founded LIMERICK HISTORY GAZETTE GROUP in September 2015 with the objective of crowdsourcing 20,000 previously unpublished images of Limerick in the 20th century. In its first 3 years, the group has now in excess of 23,000+ Members and a growing archive in excess of 40,000 images, 20% archived to date, (as of 17.08.2018) and continues to grow at a rate of 100+ new members and new images every week.
Using social media, I crowdsourced the images and built an online archive across numerous social media platforms including:
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
GOOGLE+
PINTEREST
TUMBLR
LINKEDIN
Here they will remain permanently archived for present and future generations of Limerick people worldwide to see and enjoy without FREE OF CHARGE long into the future.
All of the images in the archive belong to the people of 20th Century Limerick and come from their own private home collections. These are images captured throughout the century by the people who lived their lives on the streets and lanes of Limerick and, as such, witnessed first-hand the history of their native city unfold and opted to capture it forever in photographic form.
This fact makes the archive unique because what they captured was Limerick life from their perspective and their images show us their reality and what was important to them. In fact, unintentionally or otherwise, this is a pure, unbiased representation of historical fact as evidenced by the images themselves.
However, it is not sufficient to just produce a collection of images without trying to capture the social and economic environment in which these people lived.
https://youtu.be/RVXVN5jto-M
To achieve this I continue to access and search through local, national and international newspaper archives to ascertain what was important to the people of 20th Century Limerick. Using the basic measuring tool of the most controversial because it brought international attention to the city I search global archives to find the hundreds of stories featured as they happened on our Archive page and in every issue of my books.
The combination of images and text inLIMERICK HISTORY GAZETTE ARCHIVE and in each edition of LIMERICK GAZETTE BOOKS will permit us to see and experience 20th Century Limerick in a way which, up until the current digital era, has never allowed before.
All the profits from the sale of my books are used to support the project and help pay for day to day expenses involved in maintenance, technical costs, research, and development. But the books, as yet, sell at a low rate (Averaging 5 a month) but I have no doubt that when the project is completed these books will be in more demand.
Until then I try to fund the project from my own income which amounts to €150.00 per week Enterprise Allowance Scheme. As a non-drinker, non-smoker, this is more than enough to keep body and soul together but certainly not enough to sustain additional costs to pay for associated fees and charges in relation to my project. This is why I have decided to reach out to my members for financial assistance. As they say in Ireland, “A quiet priest never got a Parish.”
If you think what I am trying to achieve is worthy of financial support and you can donate without hurting yourself financially I appeal to you to consider contributing to the project. All monies donated are used to pay my day to day running costs, research fees, necessary monthly bills, software fees and other bills that will keep the wolves from my door until the project is complete.
Thank You for reading this and for considering my project.
Gerry Hannan.