This last session in the ‘Looking into the future’ strand was a mix of three very different approaches to delivering and accessing digital content.
David Flanders’ talk was a glimpse into the world of efficient technology design and implementation. Matthew White talked about his experience in marketing, and Shelley Hales and Nic Earle spoke of their success with Second Life.
In a global academic culture of sharing resources and expertise, collaboration is an essential part of many higher education projects.
Each of the 3 speakers had vastly different experiences, but there were a few common threads that ran through all the talks:
In a session in which approximately 70% of delegates were librarians (according to a quick show of hands) we discussed the role and nature of libraries in the future, and watched a fascinating video produced by JISC (available to view below).
Key points raised in the session:
Three speakers outlined their programs to help those running digital preservation projects and raised some thorny questions relating to the potential problems that can arise from public private partnerships. They were William Kilbride from the Digital Preservation Coalition, Sarah Higgins from the Digital Curation Centre and Richard Davies from the British Library who has been working on the Life Project.
This session focused on ways in which data can be mined and used more effectively. Innovations discussed included annotation of content, free-tagging, geo-parsing, and the need to focus on content and taking technical debates into the realm of content provision where necessary.
This was a session based around questions of how universities develop strategies for creating and sharing digital resources drawing on the experience of three experts in the field. They were: Christine Fowler, Head of Electronic Library Services, University of Southampton; Dr Jessica Gardner, Head of Special Collections, University of Exeter; Simon Bains, Head of Digital Library, University of Edinburgh. The main points raised were that digitisation projects need to be incorporated into coherent, sustainable inter-departmental strategies rather than just carried out on an ad hoc project by project basis, and that serious thought has to be given to the resolution of the individual scans and how much detail is required by end users.
This discussion focused on issues of intellectual property law, managing rights and licensing. Tom Morgan of the National Portrait Gallery began by talking about his experience of best practice within the heritage sector; Liam Earney of JISC Collections spoke about CASPER’s involvement with the RePRODUCE programme, and universities’ perceptions and problems with the idea of licensing; Sarah Fahmy of the Strategic Content Alliance discussed the SCA/Collections Trust initiative to assess the impact of orphan works on the delivery of services to the public; and Prodromos Tsiavos closed by explaining the SCA’s research on managing cultural content in the public sector.
Nick Poole is the CEO of Collections Trust, and has been involved in many issues to do with digitisation, including advising on digital strategy.
He began by setting context, beginning with the manifesto Building Britain’s Future and various political issues – a new European Commission; a weak pound against the euro; a recessionary economy; a reduction in public expenditure; an increased emphasis on a “Digital Economy” and an increased pressure on HE/FE and the heritage community to generate value.