CONSERVATIONISTS at Oxford University are urging people to pass on their First World War memorabilia before it is thrown away.
Academics at the university are leading a nationwide fundraising campaign to help preserve historic memories of the conflict from 1914 to 1918.
They say astonishing items can sometimes turn up – including a postcard signed by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
The Lest We Forget initiative aims to train local communities to run digital collection days.
Project leader Dr Stuart Lee, of Oxford University’s English Faculty, said: "Almost everyone was impacted by the First World War.
"We must not forget the sacrifice that generation made. Every day the stories and memories of that generation are being lost. We want to make sure that those boxes of memories and memorabilia kept in our attics and passed down through the generations are not thrown away."
The Lest We Forget initiative will now help communities run digitisation days to capture memories of the First World War that have been passed down through families, as well as photographs, diaries, letters and mementos that tell the story of a generation at war.
Once the stories have been collected they will be made available to the public through a free-to-use online database, which will be launched in November 2018 to complement projects and events nationwide commemorating 100 years since the end of the war.
The database and its contents will be free to reuse.
To train local digital archivists who can capture memories and objects, the Lest We Forget project aims to raise at least £80,000 through a fundraising campaign hosted on OxReach, the university’s crowdfunding platform.
Dr Lee, also the university's deputy chief information officer, added: "This website will be one of the most important resources for people teaching, studying or with an interest in the First World War."
