JISC plans for further international funding
Readers will recall that the JISC and the US National Endowment for the Humanities funded five transatlantic projects which were digitising material (such as the Shakespeare Quartos project) and creating tools for improving access to the digital material, like the Concordia project on ancient stone inscriptions. These are due to finish in March 2009.
JISC and NEH are currently considering how best to take this forward and are currently scoping a second phase of the projects. Whilst these plans are not finalised, JISC and NEH are considering funding two or three more transatlantic projects to start in Summer 2009, with a call likely to be made in December 2008.
These projects are likely to be larger in size than the original projects, with each partner receiving £100k - £150k ($150k - $225k).
Details all of all future JISC calls (until March 2009) are available on the JISC Road Map
More details will be posed on this blog and on the website as they are finalised.
Issac Newton Podcasts and other new digitisation projects
JISC has just selected 25 diverse projects at UK universities that are going to receive £1.8m of funding in the ‘Enrich Digital Resources’ programme. The support has been allocated to projects designed to benefit both researchers and learners, to improve existing digital content and to digitise new materials for sustainable access in the future.
The projects will use innovative technologies to create vibrant learning and research resources which serve to enhance or revitalise Britain’s scholarly and cultural heritage. They are broad reaching in scope, varying from using podcasts to improve access to Newton’s influential scientific texts to creating a digital archive to reflect the social change in East London arising from hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012.
’Enrich Digital Resources’ will run from October 2008 until 2009, after which all the enhanced or completely new digitised content will be freely available via the Internet, in efforts to be as useful as possible to international research and learning communities.
The full list is available from the JISC website.
There is also a Google Map of the projects and their lead institutions.
Wellcome Trust Digitisation - Request for Suppliers
The Wellcome Library – part of the Wellcome Trust – is currently developing a new strategy which will include a programme to digitise the Library’s unique and significant, out-of-copyright, holdings.
Given the scale of the task – preliminary projections suggest that the size of the collection (excluding the in-copyright material) is around 45 million pages – it is envisaged that the Library will seek an external supplier (or a consortium of suppliers) to undertake and manage a large element of this programme.
The Library invites Suppliers, who are potentially interested in helping the Library plan its digitisation programme, to respond to a Request-for-Information document which sets out the current boundaries of this project.
This document can be accessed at http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/node350.html
Extra Funding - Enriching Digital Resources
The JISC is making up to £2m funding available for digitisation-related work under the following three headings. More information is available from the circular (Word document)
1. Pilot and small-scale digitisation. Proposals may focus on undertaking pilot digitisation, small-scale digitisation or a smaller feasibility study prior to larger scale activity. Alternatively, proposals may focus on completing or adding to a digital resource where there are some gaps in the content or room for expansion.
Data capture would be expected to be reasonably straightforward, and it would be presumed that the lead institution would already have some facilities and basic metadata in place so to allow for immediate commencement of the project. When undertaking digitisation, there should be no significant IPR issues to tackle.
2. Enhancement of existing collections. Funding under this heading would be targeted to help promote and further develop collections that have already been digitised but are currently underused or could benefit from extra development. The funds could be used to enhance the quality of the interface or metadata, for example, and to raise its profile among researchers and teachers who might not otherwise be aware of it.
3. Developing Clusters of Content. Proposals under this heading will focus on bringing together related digital resources. This may involve merging the metadata or technical infrastructure for related resources; developing cross-search functionality; exploiting Web2.0 methodologies such as data mash-ups to ‘cross-fertilise’ the content in existing resources.
Alternatively, proposals may concentrate on creating thematic clusters of digital resources and promoting their use (e.g. around broad themes such as nineteenth-century Britain or the environment); or may undertake feasibility studies to tackle the larger intellectual, strategic and technical issues of facilitating cross-search functionality over numerous resources in related disciplines
JISC Programme Managers Paola Marchionni (0203 006 6064) and Alastair Dunning (0203 006 6065) are happy to discuss proposals with applicants
Prioritising Digitisation
One of the most difficult aspects of developing a digitisation strategy is deciding how you will prioritise your digitisation work
Fragile manuscripts, fading newspapers, valuable coins, hidden audio recordings, historical texts and the like all clamour for the right to be digitised first.
The JISC Digitisation Programme recognises this is a difficulty and therefore issued an ITT, along with the Research Information Network, to look into the matter: PRIORITISING DIGITISATION: ESTABLISHING USERS’ NEEDS FOR DIGITISED CONTENT IN UK HE INSTITUTIONS.
Invitations are now invited for proposals.
The aims of the study are
- identify priority collections for potential digitisation housed within UK HE’s libraries, archives, museums as well as faculties and departments
- assess users’ needs and demand for special collections to be digitised across all disciplines, including the life and physical sciences as well as the arts, humanities and social sciences
- produce a synthesis of available knowledge about users’ needs with regard to usability and format of digitised resources
- provide recommendations for a strategic approach to digitisation within the wider context and activity of leading players both in the public and commercial sector
JISC/NEH transatlantic collaboration grants announced
Five digitisation projects are to be awarded funding of around £600,000 ($1,150,000) under a transatlantic collaboration between JISC and the US National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).A call for proposals issued last November invited scholars in England and the USA to collaborate on digitisation, the aim of the £600,000 ($1,150,000) programme being to unite scholarly collections split between the two countries, explore innovative approaches to digitisation and match expertise in one country with collections to be digitised in the other.
The funded projects are:
- The St Kitts-Nevis Digital Archaeology Initiative (Southampton University / Thomas Jefferson Foundation)
- The World Wide Web of Humanities (Oxford Internet Institute / Internet Archive)
- Shakespeare Quartos Archive (Oxford University / Folger Shakespeare Library)
- PhiloGrid (Imperial College / Tufts University)
- Concordia (King’s College London / New York University)
Read on to find out more about the projects
You can also listen to a podcast from the JISC/NEH launch event at King’s College London about issues in international digitisation, including interviews with key figures in the collaboration.
Podcast: Why is Google showing us the way forward in digitisation? asks senior UK librarian
The recent LIBER-EBLIDA workshop on digitisation of library material in Europe explored some important challenges facing national and university libraries across the continent as they attempt to join together to deliver a “European Digital Library”.
In this podcast interview Paul Ayris, librarian at University College London and a senior figure in these European developments, depicts a fragmented European digitisation landscape and calls for more strategic pan-European vision and leadership. He asks a number of challenging questions of the library community, including how the role of libraries has to be re-thought not just as custodians of collections but also as learning and social spaces.
Ayris points out how Google has changed the way people think of, access and use resources, and libraries can learn from more direct and innovative models of introducing change.
In the UK, JISC is providing an infrastructure and leadership in funding digitisation projects and encouraging collaborations.
A look through the currently funded JISC digitisation projects will reveal how these collections differ from the type of digitisation Google is doing, by focusing on special collections with a variety of different formats and types of material, spanning centuries, and with a high degree of curatorial input.
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.
