On “Good Terms”
Next week (6 December) will see the launch of the beta version of Electronic Ephemera: Digitised Selections from the John Johnson Collection at Online Information 2007, London.
This new e-resource is part of the JISC Phase Two Digitisation Programme and features selections from the Bodleian Library’s John Johnson Collection, one of the most important collections of printed ephemera in the world spanning the entire range of printing and social history between 1508-1939.
Delivered through an innovative public-private collaboration between the Bodleian Library and ProQuest CSA, the project is an example of a variety of business models that feature in the JISC Digitisation Programme. The event will also provide some background on the working of successful partnerships and the benefits to the wider academic community that such collaborations can bring.
Evaluation, Evaluation, Evaluation
Evaluation is often a neglected area within a digitisation project’s life cycle, as most of a team’s energies and resources get absorbed by the complex task of setting up the right infrastructure to carry out the actual digitisation of material. At times subsumed within the more technical Quality Assurance process, at best it’s the kind of activity that comes as an after-thought towards the end of a project.
Within the current JISC digitisation programme, and at the request of many of the 16 projects taking part, we’ve tackled the issue of evaluation from very early on.
Last September JISC ran an evaluation workshop for all projects which provided guidance on a methodological framework for evaluation based on the booklet Six Steps to Effective Evaluation: A Handbook for Programme and Project Managers, developed for JISC by Glenaffric Ltd, who also led the workshop.
Deadline for JISC / NEH applications
As previously announced, the JISC is running a short digitisation initiative with the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Funding is available for:
- New digitisation projects and pilot projects
- Addition of important material to existing digitisation projects
- Development of infrastructure to support US-English digitisation work
The closing date for applications is 29th November 2007
Details of the call are available from the JISC website for English applicants and from the NEH website for US applicants.
In the news: Guardian launches digital archive
More than 150 years of Guardian and Observer back copies have been made available online with the launch of the paper’s digital archive.
The archive allows users to search for free the full text of the newspaper from 1821 to 1975 and the Observer from 1900 to 1975 (a second phase early next year will see the addition of the Observer from 1791 to 1899 and both papers from 1976 to 2003). There is a fee for viewing articles in full and downloading.
The Guardian marks the occasion with a special supplement which details the process of bringing the newspapers from Stockwell Deep Level Shelter to screen and explains its choice of the company Olive Software in Tel Aviv to do the digitisation: ”Olive Software’s secret ingredient is its system of ‘componentisation’ - a set of mathematical algorithms that allow its computers to learn how to make sense of the cacophony and thus, in effect, to learn how to read a newspaper”.
It also invites novelist AS Byatt, director Richard Eyre and journalist Katharine Whitehorn to delve into the archive and share their impressions. They approve.
Until November 30, the paper is offering 24 hour free introductory access to the archive.