Update from the Digital Manager: Any Old Book Lists!

Since my last update, new 3D model collections and virtual tours have continued to be added to the website, including St Margaret of Antioch Church at St Margaret’s at Cliffe; St Nicholas Church, Pluckley; updated work at St Mary Magdalene Church, Cobham; and the V-1 ‘Flying-Bomb’ crater excavations at Benenden, see:

www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/models

These join the Society’s growing body of digital recording projects, ranging from parish churches and monumental interiors to artefacts and excavation evidence, and continue to show how the website can bring together research, interpretation and public access in new ways.

We have also been making our first explorations into providing 3D virtual games, allowing users to explore churches, castles and other sites while seeking out architectural features, objects and points of interest. This opens up another way of engaging with heritage material on the website, particularly for younger audiences and for those coming to these places remotely for the first time. More on this will follow in the next update and at the KAS AGM.

[fg]png|Virtual 3D model of the exceptional Romanesque tympanum at St Margaret of Antioch Church at St Margaret’s-at-Cliffe, see: www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/models/st-margaret-of-antioch-church-st-margarets-at-cliff.|Image[/fg]

[pg19]I’m also very pleased to report the continued growth in the reach of the Society website. By the time you will be reading this, we will have welcomed our 500,000th visitor the site. Traffic to the website has been growing almost exponentially and we are now receiving visitors at a rate of close to a million each year, with readers and researchers accessing KAS resources from across the world. That audience includes local historians, archaeologists, students, family historians, church and museum volunteers, and many others who come to the site in search of information on Kent’s past. It is a reminder that the material built up by the Society over many decades is not only of local importance, but of international interest too.

Over the next few weeks, a major further addition will be made to the site as the Society’s legacy library and archive catalogue is transferred to the KAS website. This will bring a large body of references and records into the same digital space as the Society’s existing publications, articles, images, and other resources, making them easier to search, browse and connect.

Alongside this, the Kentish Bibliography - which has been compiled over the past twenty years by a dedicated team of volunteers, is continuing to expand. That work is now being extended to include earlier years and the publications held in the KAS Library. The result is that the website is steadily becoming not only a publishing platform for new research, but also a comprehensive bibliography and finding aid for the history and archaeology of Kent.

[fg]png|Early development of a 3D virtual game interface on the website, allowing users to explore St Nicholas Church, Pluckley and discover architectural features and points of interest interactively.|Image[/fg]

[pg20]This is an exciting development because bibliographies, catalogues and reading lists are often among the most useful but least visible research tools. They help people discover older scholarship, trace obscure references, identify what has and has not been written on a subject, and connect publications, archives and objects that might otherwise remain scattered. For county history and archaeology especially, such lists are invaluable. A journal article, parish pamphlet, excavation report, local history society booklet, museum handlist, sales catalogue, church guide, typescript index or old reading list may each contain the clue that leads a researcher to something much larger.

The ambition is for the KAS website to become a central online resource for Kent studies: a place where published research, legacy references, library holdings, archive catalogues and other research aids can be brought together and made more visible for everyone. In that sense, it is not simply a website for publishing new material, but a platform for discovery - helping connect people with the very wide range of resources that already exist.

With that in mind, this is also an appeal. If you know of any bibliographies, book lists, reading lists, catalogues, indexes or other reference resources relating to Kent history and archaeology, we would be very pleased to hear about them. These might relate to a parish, town, church, building, museum collection, archaeological site, subject area, or the publications of a local society or trust. They may be old or new, formal or informal, printed or typed, and they do not need to be polished to be useful. In many cases, the most valuable lists are the ones compiled quietly by volunteers, librarians, curators and researchers over many years.

If you have such material, or know of someone who does, do get in touch. With your help, we can continue building the KAS website into a genuinely comprehensive guide to the sources for Kent’s history and archaeology and make those resources more accessible to readers both in the county and around the world.

jacob.scott@kentarchaeology.org.uk

[fg]png|Visits to the website by country over two years. The top 5 are UK - 217,631 (49.7%); China - 95,655 (21.8%); United States - 51,520 (11.8%); Australia 10,561 (2.41%); Germany - 7,990 (1.82%).|Image[/fg]

[fg]jpg|Visits to the website since launch in April of 2024.|Image[/fg]

All images courtesy of the Kent Archaeological Society, 2026.