Yorkshire Industrial Heritage On Line (YIHO) is a new web based resource for recording people’s knowledge and photographs of Heritage Sites within Yorkshire and communication this to as wide an audience as possible.

Originally conceived by a small team from the Industrial History Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society the project has now grown to become a Yorkshire-wide collaboration involving some ten Industrial and Local History Societies. The database now contains over 2,500 entries covering sites from the pre-Roman period to the 1960s. Although the primary focus is on recording industrial sites we have adopted a very flexible definition of industry which encompass, mining and quarrying, agriculture, and domestic manufacturing as well as the more mainstream and traditional factory based systems.

The collaboration is always actively seeking new members who have knowledge or research material on Yorkshire’s Industries that they would be willing to contribute to the database. The group is also keen to hear from people, who whilst not having personal knowledge of Yorkshire Industries, are able to assist in adding information from existing records to the database. One of the collaboration’s partner groups has already found YIHO to be an invaluable tool and is actively using the web site to collate information on industries in their area to provide information in support of a HLF bid. It is hoped that this collaborative approach can be developed further and that in time YIHO will become an invaluable resource for anyone researching Yorkshire’s industrial heritage.

The objective of the meeting is to provide possible contributors and users with a detailed introduction to the YIHO website and to outline how people can become involved with what is an innovative and possibly unique project. As such our aim is to make the meeting relevant to anyone with an interest in recording and communicating knowledge of the Industrial Heritage Sites within the Huddersfield area. In addition to presenting the web site there will be also be opportunity to discuss how YIHO could be integrated with other existing web sites. There are no costs involved in joining the project and members do not need detailed knowledge of computers.