The 2023 season opens on Easter Sunday, 9th April with an exciting new exhibition featuring a stunning range of photos from the Cromarty Image Library.
In 2003, local web development company, Plexus Media established a digital collection of photographs to show how the streets and buildings of the town have changed over the years. It was given the name The Cromarty Image Library and was open for contributions and comment from local people.
All sections of the community raked through the biscuit tins in their attics to rediscover photos they thought would be of interest to others. It was a surprise to Plexus Media that most of the photos submitted were of people, family and events, rather than buildings.
The site fuelled enthusiasm – remember this was before the days of Facebook and Instagram! It captured imaginations and became a huge talking point around the town. Users worked together to put names to faces, bringing long-forgotten characters back to life.
The site developed further when expat “Croms” started emailing their own photos from further afield. This enabled friends who had lost contact to get back in touch again, as well as allowing people to discover new family members to add to their family trees. This was an important and emotional experience for many people.
The site, now renamed Cromarty Archive, has been running successfully for 20 years and our exhibition is a celebration of its achievement. Photographs are an important visual record of our history; they tell us stories about places and people. The website continues to be a stimulating resource and a historical and social record for the future. The site has been renamed Cromarty Archive
Postscript:
Over the years improvements have been made to the system which runs the site, adding larger versions of some images, audio and video clips, downloadable documents and zoomable pictures. There are facilities to categorise photos by year, album or group, and to view all pictures by a particular contributor.
Now in 2023, the site has gathered 3,200 pictures and 7,500 comments. The pictures which have attracted the most comments are surprisingly not directly about Cromarty at all. A picture of the HMS Natal, which sank in the firth in 1915, has collected the most comments (203) from relatives of sailors who were on board. 156 comments have been recorded of an image of Jemimaville village, which has become a focal point for fans of the author Jane Duncan, who used to live there. A McLeman family photo is running third in the ranking (146 comments) encouraging lots of family tree comments from across the globe.
Following the success of this site, Plexus Media have been asked to create a number of other Image Libraries using the same system. The company hopes to keep the site going and engage new generations in using it – although that seems harder nowadays when everyone is uploading hundreds of photos to social media all the time. Fingers crossed that in another 20 years the Cromarty Archive will still be going.
