Heritage Images content partner - The North East Midland Photographic Record

’Picture the Past‘, or to use its more formal name The North East Midland Photographic Record, is a not-for-profit project that makes historic images from the library and museum collections across the whole of Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, freely available via a website.

The project began when staff from the four library authorities put their heads together to come up with ways of making the collections more easily accessible to everyone, while protecting the images, many of which are fragile and irreplaceable, from wear and tear. A grant of £370,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, backed up with funding from the four councils involved, enabled the creation of an on-line database allowing people all over the world to log on and see the collections, while ensuring that the originals are properly conserved for future generations.

By mid 2008 over 70,000 photographs, postcards, engravings and paintings had been added to the website showing how life has changed in the region over the last few hundred years and gives a fascinating insight into the work and lives of the people who lived there.