Skip to main content

History “Pins” for Lake Country

“Historypin is a way for millions of people to come together, from across different generations, cultures and places, to share small glimpses of the past and to build up the huge story of human history.1

One of this summer’s projects at Lake Country Museum & Archives was to start a Historypin page where we could upload pictures from our archives to share with the world. Historypin is different from our other platforms that share photos, such as Facebook, because this website is focused on creating interaction with, and conversation about, history through media such as photos, videos, and audio. By creating this global community, we are attempting to bridge the gap between the older and newer generations by making history accessible to a large number of people, while also making it possible to create and showcase personal experiences of history, culture, and society.

Historypin requires all “pinned” (or uploaded) photos to note the date of the photo and its location. The pinned photographs then appear on a global map just like locations appear in Google Maps. One can add a short description of the photograph which adds some background information and highlights the importance of the photo. Then viewers can explore the world map just like they use Google Maps to see photos that have been pinned by different people in particular areas. The other neat thing about Historypin is that viewers can add comments to the photos on the website. If someone, for example, sees a photo of the Rainbow Ranche and they have a story to share about it, they can post it and start a dialogue with us and anyone else who views the photo.

This has been a really exciting project for me2 because I’ve been able to learn so much about Lake Country through these snapshots while also being able to share that knowledge with people all over the world. In fact, yesterday our aerial photograph of Okanagan Lake when it froze in 1948 was featured as the “Pin of the Day. 25-07-2014” on the home page of Historypin! You can follow the links below to peruse Historypin and see what we’ve been up to.

Pin of the Day

Historypin Homepage: http://www.historypin.com

Lake Country Museum and Archives’ Historypin page: http://www.historypin.com/channels/view/44917#!photos/list

“Everyone has history to share: whether it’s sitting in yellowed albums in the attic, collected in piles of crackly tapes, conserved in the 1000s of archives all over the world or passed down in memories and old stories.

Each of these pieces of history finds a home on Historypin, where everyone has the chance to see it, add to it, learn from it, debate it and use it to build up a more complete understanding of the world.”4

1 Historypin Homepage.

2 Gill, Mark. Assistant Curator at the Lake Country Museum & Archives.

3 Gill, Mark.

4 Historypin Homepage

1 Comment

  • Congratulations. A worthy project.

Leave a Reply

*