Phot. Algis Jankūnas. Photography critic A. Baranauskaitė and photographer V. Bubelytė. Plateliai, 1985

Virtual storytelling platform “My story and our history”

The personal story of each of us is intertwined with the events of our family, community, country, and the whole world, creating a collective history and memory, which determines our identity and values, allows us to better understand the past and present, and to look to the future with greater confidence.

With this in mind, we created a virtual storytelling platform called “My story and our history”. This is a website for everyone interested in their own history, the history of the family, community, region and state. Here, every user will not only find abundant material stored in memory institutions, grouped into various themes about important and significant events or phenomena in our and our state’s life, but will also be able to share their own personal stories, upload photographs, video and audio material, comments and texts from their archives and this way add their own personal stories to the collective history.

The platform “My story and our history” was created within the framework of the project “Virtual Museum” for the development, modernisation and new e-services of the Lithuanian Integral Museum Information System. The platform was developed by a joint team of the LIMIS Centre of the Lithuanian National Museum of Art and the Photography Museum, a branch of Šiauliai Aušra Museum.

MY STORY AND OUR HISTORY

HOW TO UPLOAD YOUR STORY TO THE PLATFORM “MY STORY AND OUR HISTORY”?

We invite you to become active creators of Our History, share your memories, tell stories. The user guide for the platform “My story and our history” will help you understand the simple, intuitive process of self-administration of your personal account. If you have any difficulties or questions when uploading stories to the website, please do not hesitate to contact our colleague Valdas by phone +370 41 524396 or by e-mail .

Brief introduction

FACEBOOK GROUP “MY STORY AND OUR HISTORY”

The Facebook group “My story and our history” is a virtual space accompanying the platform, intended for storytelling, sharing, and dissemination. Here, stories that have already been publicised meet readers in order to spread to an even wider circle of interested people, to be commented on, supplemented, revised, or discussed. New stories are born here as an extension of old ones or as the beginning of a new memory, thought, or hint, which is immediately captured, recorded, fulfilled, and released to go on its individual journey.

Join us!

The platform “My story and our history” is competing in a global competition for digital solutions “World Summit Awards” (WSA)!

Through a network of national experts, the competition seeks solutions distinguishing themselves by outstanding social value such as improvement of health protection, mitigating the effects of climate change, promoting sustainable consumption and fostering citizenship.

At the final event of the “World Summit Awards” (WSA) national selection competition “Skaitmeninis knygnešys” (“Digital Book smuggler”) held on June 20, 2024, the project “My story and our history” won in the category “Culture and Heritage”, gaining the opportunity to compete against nominees in this category from all over the world.

The nominated solutions will be assessed by international experts in several stages, and the winners will be invited to the WSA Alumni Network and the Awards Ceremony, which will be held in Hyderabad, India, in March 2025.

Presentation of the project for the competition

In 2018-2022, Šiauliai Aušra Museum participated as a partner in the implementation of the project “Virtual Museum” for the development, modernisation and new e-services of the Lithuanian Integral Museum Information System (LIMIS), which was implemented by the Lithuanian National Museum of Art together with other partners.

After the project was implemented, the Lithuanian Integral Museum Information System LIMIS (public access www.limis.lt), which collects and publishes data on all digitised exhibits of Lithuanian museums, was modernised. The system was supplemented with new exhibits and new electronic services that meet the needs of modern users, new and improved already operating integrations of LIMIS with other information systems were created.

In the project, Šiauliai Aušra Museum focused on the development of the virtual storytelling platform “My story and our history”, which was initiated by the museum.

The project also included the creation of an audio guide of the exposition of the Museum of Photography, a virtual tour of the divisions of Šiauliai Aušra Museum and separately of Chaimas Frenkelis’ Villa-Museum. 25 000 exhibits of Šiauliai Aušra Museum were additionally digitised and publicised on the LIMIS portal, and Šiauliai Region Museum Valuables ​​Digitisation Centre operating in the museum was replenished with new equipment, which will enable an even more efficient digitisation of museum valuables ​​and dissemination of the digitised content.

More about the project