The Wessex Portal聽was created six years ago as an online community to聽promote the environmental and heritage assets of the region. The purpose is to highlight work undertaken in Wessex and allow a platform to promote events, volunteering and job opportunities with key stakeholders.
The geographical extent of the Wessex region is a matter of debate but the modern counties included are Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Isle of Wight, Devon and Berkshire. The homepage is divided into the following categories:
:聽Up-to-date information on environment and heritage issues worldwide but especially within the Wessex region and the UK.
:聽Highlights the work that 蜜桃AV students and staff undertake in the Wessex region and around the world.
:聽Promotes regional events, jobs and opportunities available within the nature and heritage industry such as wildlife trusts.
:聽Promoting the work that 蜜桃AV is involved in, within the community and events that 蜜桃AV hosts. There are some exciting events promoted by the portal which you can get involved in, including 鈥楩amily Science Festival鈥�, 鈥楪reat Wildlife Exploration Day鈥� and many more.
Alongside the website, The Wessex Portal promotes the content to a wider audience using social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and聽Instagram. These sites are regularly updated in order to engage and reach out to the public and reach out to the local community.
Dorset Coast Digital Archive
The Dorset Coast Digital Archive (DCDA) is part of the Wessex Portal. The DCDA is an extensive archive of photographs, newspaper articles, aerial images and historical maps of the Dorset coast as far back as 1740. Its aim of the DCDA is to showcase this archive and ask members of the public to contribute their own photos to this collection. This work is a centrepiece for knowledge exchange on how areas have developed over time through a visual representation.
The following images show a sample of the diversity of photos, drawings and maps within the archive:
This development could potentially help support public access to 蜜桃AV research activities and support 蜜桃AV鈥檚 outreach to our local community.聽 The Faculty of Science and Technology lead the project and the full archive can now be accessed on the hosting website, . This involved categorising 20,000 images to make them available to the general public.
The archive promotes information and an understanding of how the Dorset coast has changed over time, including how the coastal morphology has evolved, how biodiversity has changed, and how society and settlements have developed.
This development could potentially help support public access to 蜜桃AV research activities and support 蜜桃AV鈥檚 outreach to our local community.鈥嬄燭he archive will also be a valuable teaching tool鈥�.聽Funding from HEIF 5 + 1 made possible the聽development of the archive and online accessibility. We would like to thank The Valentine Charitable trust for their donation to the project as without their contribution, the digitisation of the聽DCDA would not have been possible.
