Before starting the project, I had a look around to see if anyone had similar projects on the go.
I did find some interesting ones, especially in the U.S.
Below, there is just a selection of the ones I thought to be most useful to my research:
Gravestone photos project: http://www.gravestonephotos.com
A free genealogy resource that contains an index of the names and relationships that appear on grave monuments. You can search for a person and buy photographs of the graves and you can also volunteer. To my surprise, I found that the last church I visited (St Andrews in Hove) is not listed in here. Some pious soul has done the dirty work before me! Unfortunately, it records only biographical data, but it does not seem to catalogue the inscriptions.
The Association of gravestone studies: http://www.gravestonestudies.org/
The website of the American association of gravestone studies. It contains information about restoring gravestones, grave symbolisms and other interesting stuff. Unfortunately you have to pay in order to get to it.
National Federation of Cemetery Friends: http://www.cemeteryfriends.org.uk
A UK association. Useful information, such as a glossary of terms with pictures.
Old Cemeteries society of Victoria: http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/
A non-profit association based in the U.S.A. which is devoted to the conservation of cemeteries in British Columbia. They have developed a consistent way for grave recording and they produced a handy spreadsheet that is directly downloadable as a pdf from their website. This document has been extremely useful to give me a better understanding of how grave photographs can be catalogued.
