The photographic album titled Miasto i gmina Wysokie Litewskie. Album z fotografiami dotyczący życia i pracy mieszkańców, (The City and Commune of Wysokie Litewskie, subtitled Photo album about the life and work of residents is dated 1934.

This album was located by A. S. in the Muzeum Józefa Piłsudskiego w Belwederze (Museum of Józef Piłsudski in the Belvedere) accessible through the Polish Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (National Digital Archive), which generously grants free use of this archival material. Direct link to this album in the archive.

Based on a preliminary understanding, this album was made in honor of the revered Polish leader Józef Piłsudski. The authors used existing photos of town landscapes and events. Generally, this album may be seen as product of a surge in Polish national pride following the return to Poland of formerly Polish lands in the general area of Belarus following the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921.

Scattered through the album: signatures of Wysokie residents. We know that the two largest ethnic/religious groups in Wysokie at this time were Poles and Jews. Inferring by surnames –a very approximate method– these signatures confirm the presence of Poles and Jews, with smaller numbers of Russians, Ukrainians, and members of other groups.

We reproduce the original photo album from the Polish National Digital Archive, page by page, and offer you an opportunity to contribute.We especially need help from Polish native-speakers to read the Polish script in the textual material.

Use standard web-map navigation to survey the page, zoom in and out, and click on a feature which you would like to annotate. You'll see an alert box –a new, small window– that gives pseudo-geographic coordinates for that item.

On Page 5 (opened in a new window) the title of the first signatory is evident: burmistrz (mayor). To annotate this, click a little to the left of the first letter of this title and observe something like this:

Obtaining the coordinates for an item for annotation

Copy the coordinates –-you can use the usual text copy and paste commands-- in this example

     2278.5999755859375, 1132.5333251953125

and send your comments/translations/annotations for that feature along with the web page address (URL) to the webmaster using this contact form. Note that zooming or repositioning don't affect the coordinates.

Please specify if you would like credit for your contribution; if so, specify in what form.

This is an experimental method of gathering contributions from you. Most people are familiar with navigating geographic web-maps. We are using this methodology, applying it to individual pages of material. Despite possible glitches due to applying a geographic method to a paper page, this seems to be a practical and direct method by which you can precisely specify a point on the album page and provide some information about it.

Once sufficient data is gathered, we plan present the text and data in the album conventionally, as a series of photos and texts, with our joint annotations.