Conference 2007: Newsflash: Carwyn Jones promoted

Newsflash: shortly after speaking to us at the conference, Carwyn Jones, Minister for Education, Culture and the Welsh Language at the Welsh Assembly Government was promoted to Leader of the House. Congratulations!

Conference 2007: Q+A with Mike Keller, Richard Ovenden, Malcolm Read, Chris Batt and Matthew Steggle

David Pearson: It seems to me that Google had the big idea that the libraries failed to have about 10 years ago about the way the world was going to be in the information age. Google saw it and took it forward in ways that the publicly funded library sector are catching up with rather slowly. Should we have any concerns?

RO: to some extent Google are a bunch of pussy cats. When you go to their campus you double the average age just by being there. They are Gap-wearing skateboarders. They are very clever but not evil geniuses waiting to enslave us all. They have some big ideas and lots of money so can put some into practice. We’re worried to the extent that we will make out own arrangements for the long term preservation of the stuff we’re digitising with them. We will take care of it in perpetuity.

MR: it’s not just a question of whether they are pussycats now but what they will be like in 50 years time. We just don’t know.

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Conference 2007: Richard Ovenden, Mike Keller: Research library roles and priorities

What are the roles and priorities for research libraries in the UK and US in the delivery of e-content?

Richard Ovenden, Keeper of Special Collections (Associate Director), Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
Michael Keller, University Librarian, Stanford University

We want to talk about the elephant in the room, the love that dare not speak its name…

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Conference 2007: Unlocking e-content: Matthew Steggle

Unlocking e-content and enhancing education and research opportunities - an academic perspective.
Matthew Steggle, Lecturer, Sheffield Hallam University

Hope to bring the user perspectives from a bigger picture. Will offer five principles about what academics do and don’t like about digitisation projects. I’m primarily a teacher and researcher and only secondarily involved in digitisation.

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Conference 2007: Chris Batt: How do we make a lot of stuff useful to a lot of people?

Mass digitisation and its impact on cultural heritage, education and research communities
OR
How do we make a lot of stuff useful to a lot of people?
Chris Batt, Chief Executive, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council

A lot of stuff is easy, a lot of people is possible but useful is a bit more tricky… What struck me from yesterday’s Symposium is that it was very much a discussion from the inside and there is a need to step back and look at the outside, the outer landscape of where we are now. Risk that if we don’t do that we are looking at the engine without knowing what the car is doing.

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Conference 2007: JISC and mass digitisation: Malcolm Read

JISC Strategy and mass digitisation: Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary, JISC

Would like to present the wider context. Digitisation is just one of many things we find and do not fund it in isolation. We have two digitisation programmes running. We spent £10 million on the first round. To get the money you have to make a case about 18 months before it comes in. At that time transatlantic network connectivity was enormously expensive and great cause of concern. I argued that we need the money for that. By the time the money arrived, the cost of that was virtually nothing. At the end of the request I had said that if there was any spare money then digitisation was a good thing to do. There turned out to be £10m of spare money!

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Conference 2007: Welcome to Wired Wales by Carwyn Jones

Carwyn Jones, Minister for Education, Culture and the Welsh Language

On behalf of the Welsh assembly it is a great pleasure to welcome you all now. I know that it’s an important conference - it’s important to stay in the forefront of learning, sharing experiences and learning from elsewhere.

I was a student at Aber, left in 1988, and was blessed that on my doorstep was the National Library of Wales. But you had to be at least a third year student to enter it, you were led into a back room, would make a request to see certain documents and in time they would be provided… to access medieval documents was almost impossible. And with good reason - they are fragile and wouldn’t be given to those who would not treat them with respect.

But now many of those documents are now online and we are witnessing a democratisation of research. Many more documents will be available in the future than in the past. These are exciting times we live in.

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Conference 2007: Press release

Around 130 leading figures from education, research, cultural heritage, public broadcasting and industry in the UK and beyond are gathering in Cardiff for two days for a conference on digitisation which will showcase national and international digitisation initiatives - including JISC’s £22m digitisation programme - and explore the potential for cross-sectoral cooperation in this area.

The two-day conference opens this morning with a speech from Carwyn Jones, Minister for Education, Culture and the Welsh Language in the Welsh Assembly Government. With Wales having established an international reputation for the digitisation of online materials for educational and cultural use, the location of the conference and the presence of the minister will, say organisers, support the conference’s stated aim to showcase the best in international digitisation initiatives.

Read the full press release…