QueenSpark Books Archives Alive - Consultancy

QueenSpark Books is Brighton & Hove's community publisher with an extensive archive of local history records and a catalogue of 110+ books published since 1972. In an effort to make these books more accessible and reach new audiences, we developed a series of local history walks where people can read and listen to book passages on their mobile phone while walking through the streets of Brighton & Hove. 
The project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, developed a unique workflow training and involving QueenSpark volunteers at every stage in the creation of these walks. This included selecting and geo-referencing interesting book passages, recording audio clips with local voices and creating waypoint pages for each location on customised a blogging system. 
The waypoint pages are combined into walks through an interactive map, which displays the route and location markers while also showing the user's location and direction of travel. Map links were dynamically inserted into waypoint pages to allow for seamless navigation between map and content. 
The system is based on open web technologies and runs on all modern mobile phones without the need to install an application. For people who prefer exploring their local history from home, the walks can also be explored with a desktop browser.