Lives of the First World War

[kiterunner]

The Imperial War Museum recently launched a site called Lives of the First World War. Probably lots of our members have seen it already, but we haven't had a thread about it yet:

https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/dashboard

I have looked at it a few times but I still haven't really got to grips with it. I got an email offering me a 3 day free trial (of the premium content) so I really need to explore it before my 3 days expire. (Parts of the site are free to everyone and other parts you have to pay for. If you have an annual sub to Findmypast you should get a free membership of Lives of the First World War but you may need to contact FMP to get it.)

As far as I can see from looking through the lists of premium records, military and civilian, they are databases that are available on Findmypast, and the free records are available free elsewhere. If you don't have an FMP sub and you are thinking of subscribing to Lives of the First World War, at a cost of £6 per month or £50 per year, make sure to compare with the cost of a "Britain" subscription to FMP, bearing in mind that FMP also has many databases that are not available on Lives of the First World War.

I will admit that I have not read all the information about how to use the site etc yet but every time I look at it I am confused by the phrase "Life Stories" which seems to be the main purpose of the site. It seems to me that the idea is that you find the medal index card or army service papers for your relative and then connect it to other records such as BMD index entries, censuses, and add anything else that you have, and that is called a Life Story.

But it worries me that people could quite easily attach records or information to the wrong medal index card, especially if the service papers aren't available or if they don't want to pay to view the service papers. When you have found a medal index card and click to add information to the "Life Story", it comes up with a list of possible records similar to ancestry's hints, so it looks to me as though you could easily pick the wrong one and add it. The site says the idea is to create a "permanent memorial" so I hope they have some people checking the accuracy of the "Life Stories"!

It says on the site that "Every man and woman from across Britain and the Commonwealth who made a contribution during the First World War will have their own Life Story page." So I do hope this means that Merchant Navy seamen will be included, but they don't seem to be on there yet.

What do other people think of the site so far, and do you have any tips?