Whilst this personal project started simply as an experiment to explore the local legacy of the First World War, but at a global scale, it has struck me that it is much more than that. At the heart of it is the legacy of those who died in the conflict, and especially the scale of the imapct that that would have had on their local communities, it would also never have been possible without the significant legacy created by those who remained, from the families who sent in photographs of their loved ones and which formed the Imperial War Museum's founding Bond of Sacrifice Collection, through the people who diligently compiled official records in the early 1920s and which formed the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's records, right up to the modern-day professionals, volounteers and individuals who have shaped these records, shared them, and also significantly increased and enriched them, especially under the guise of First World War Centenary projects like Lives of the First World War
This project currently contains records for over one million men and women who died whilst serving in the First World War, with over 600,000 locations worldwide, tens of thousands of images, cemeteries, war memorials and much more. It simply wouldn't exist without the core assets that it draws on, enriched by additional information from and links to countless further sources.
With specific regards to the portrait images, these are primarliy, but not exclusively, from one of three sources - the incredible Bond of Sacrifice Collection, the Women's War Work Collection (both Imperial War Museums), or uploaded by volunteers and individuals to the Lives of the First World War site (which itself is run by IWM). I am grateful to them for making all these available under a non-commercial license. As an example of an additional image source, the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum has provided over 2,000 portraits under an open license.
Additional information and statistics on the depth and breadth of sources
The data currently presented has all been extracted from official records or from user contributions to the Lives of the First World War site. I would strongly encourage anyone who wants to add further details to find the Life Story of the person and add details there, which can then in future be added to this site
The inherrent nature of historic records and using modern automated tools to extract information means there are bound to be issues. I will shortly be adding a 'report error' link to each record that can be used to flag an issue and will be queued up ready to be investigated and fixed. I'm afraid as this is a personal project created in my own time, I cannot respond to individual requests right now.
For information, questions and bug reports please contact James Morley @astreetnearyou | [email protected]
Note that all submissions must include a link to a public web page. This is because A Street Near You aggregates and makes discoverable hundreds of thousands of online resources relating to those who died in the First World War, but as a personal project with no funding it cannot provide facilities for the upload of images or additional contributions. If the information you want to include is not currently online you can use external services like Medium, Flickr, Twitter etc. Alternatively contact somewhere like a local history society or set up a Wordpress blog