aqoHISTORY
A Question of History
From forgotten artefacts, we unlock hidden insights, use AI to uncover new connections, and tell the stories they reveal — differently.
Historic documents and wartime correspondence
Hosted on aqo.ai

aqoHISTORY Experiment

Live Item Viewer

The working view of the aqoHISTORY collection database. Every item — a letter, a cover, a register page — is recorded with each of its sides and pages, its images at every resolution, and how far it has been through the digitisation process: read, checked by a person, described. Try the demo below, then sign in to browse the live database.

  1. 1FindSearch the collection by item code, title or tag, and see every match at a glance.
  2. 2InspectOpen an item to see each side and page, and every image from small preview to full-resolution scan.
  3. 3TraceSee what has been done to each page: automated readings, checked reference text and catalogue description.

Experiment ID: aqoh-exp7

Status: proof of concept

Feature: read-only viewer over the live collection database and image store, with a public demo

Try the demo

A sample of a few items, served entirely from this page. The live viewer works the same way across the whole collection.

View the live database

Browse every item in the collection

The live viewer reads directly from the aqoHISTORY database and image store, so it always shows the collection as it stands today — including items still being digitised.

  • Every item and every side and page, searchable by code, title and tag
  • Full-resolution access images and original scans
  • Digitisation status for each page: readings, checked text, descriptions
  • Read-only: nothing in the collection can be changed from the viewer
Log in Request access

Access is by invitation. Sign-in is handled securely by Cloudflare.

From the archive to the database

Every original that enters the aqoHISTORY collection becomes a record: an item with a permanent code, each of its sides and pages captured as images, and every stage of its digitisation logged against it. The Live Item Viewer is the window onto those records.

Items and their pages

An item is the original object — a letter with its envelope, a postcard, a register page. Each side or page is recorded separately, with its own code such as AAAAA-E001, so that a postmark on the back of an envelope or the third page of a letter can be referred to precisely.

One image, several sizes

Every page is kept as the original scan and as a set of working copies: a high-resolution access image for close reading, a web image for display, a greyscale copy for difficult handwriting, and small previews for browsing. The demo shows the web image and previews; the live viewer opens all of them.

What the badges mean

DI01 automated readings of the page · REF pages whose text has been checked by a person · D5 a catalogue description has been written · T tags · N research notes.