Island residents will be able to get a better view of the nation’s history and historical collections with Manx National Heritage’s new upgraded online iMuseum.
Online audiences will be able to see more detail on historical images with a new zoom-in feature and share their findings on social media.
Another new feature coming soon to the online museum will give users the opportunity to post comments and have conversations with others about anything they find in the iMuseum.
The facility contains a wide selection of content that is on display at the 11 Manx National Heritage sites across the island as well as thousands of items currently not on gallery display and available to view on request or in the Manx Museum Reading Room, including objects, documents, letters, paintings and images.
There are more than 58,000 objects and items, with over 25,000 photographs of the island’s people, places and events to search from the Isle of Man’s National Photographic Archive.
In addition, there are more than 2,000 artworks from the National Art Collection including the Manx Museum and National Trust’s entire oil painting collection and all of the Archibald Knox works and more than 32,000 items from the National Library.
Manx National Heritage director Edmund Southworth said: ‘iMuseum version 2 is an excellent opportunity for us to manage and make our extensive collections more accessible to the Manx public as well as an off island audience.
‘It extends the reach and potential audience for our collections and offers us a greater ability to effectively promote ourselves worldwide and create a platform for a greater understanding of the Island’s heritage and culture.’
However as part of the upgrade the iMuseum in the Manx Museum in Douglas is now no longer open daily to the public although visitors can still use the service in the Manx Museum Reading Room.
Mr Southworth said: ‘With the growth and development of technology to access content, it makes sense to focus our resources and budgets on developing our online service rather than operating a physical building for people to carry out online research.’
As well as the collections, the iMuseum is also the Isle of Man’s definitive online family history resource with free access to fully-searchable names transcribed from original archives.
There are almost 370,000 named individuals from census’ between 1841 and 1911, approximately 200,000 baptisms, over 110,000 marriage entries and almost 180,000 burials recorded in the Parish Registers as well as files detailing over 73,000 named parties on Registered Deeds.
For individuals and organisations looking to research the island’s war history, the records include details of more than 12,000 First World War internees and 11,615 named individuals recorded on the Isle of Man’s war memorials.
Manx National Heritage has also started a year-long project to publish Manx archives to the online Archives Hub which showcases over 220 archives from across the UK making the island’s history more accessible to a worldwide audience.
To start exploring the iMuseum visit www.imuseum.im