Website construction

From the outset I envisaged a website that would reflect the project’s progress, and a conversation with Melanie Philpot from the University’s iSolutions IT support team opened my eyes as to how ambitious this could be.  Much of this week has been taken up with work unrelated to Fairey, plus a very pleasant day with sport historian Dil Porter and his family in Bosham, the tiny West Sussex harbour famed for its association with King Canute (his daughter is buried in the church, and the village competes with Southampton as to the spot where he made his point to fawning courtiers about the limits of [tidal] power).  However, I have spent some considerable time completing the framework for ‘Biography of Sir Richard Fairey, aviation pioneer and industrialist’, on the basis of which Melanie and her colleagues will build the website.  A combination of the nature of the content (all those images of aircraft!) and the potential for what can be done technically means that the final outcome should look pretty good.  The home page will lead to four galleries, each of which will have sub-sections: Work in Progress and Contacts; Document Gallery; Photo Gallery; Sources.  I’ve already fed in initial material, and am in discussions with Barbara Gilbert at the Fleet Air Arm Museum, and Karen Robson who heads the Hartley Library’s Special Collections, re creating a virtual gallery of still and moving photographic images as shot by CRF and a virtual library of key documents related to his life.  There are issues of copyright and cost which need sorting out, and I don’t underestimate the problems in securing open access for this material, but at least the process is under way.  This is a wholly new experience for me in that previously I have just got on with researching and writing – turning my [professional] life into literally an open book necessitates major changes to my working practices – there’s no place to hide!