JISC Digitisation Programme

Some innovative projects have started introducing games to their digital resources in order to enhance their metadata

The Galaxy Zoo astronomy site has just launch a new game which allows users to help suggest how galaxy collision and mergers took place.

Google Image Labeller has been around for a few years; you are randomly paired with another user, and you then work as a team to try and come up with words to decribe images that Google has harvested.

More recently, the Brooklyn Musuem expanded on their Web2 features by coming up with the Tag! You’re It! and the Freeze Tag games, giving people a fun way to interactive with their collections online

Precise and trusted metadata is time consuming and often a little boring to create. Any process, as typified by these games here, that can reduce the cost and the boredom should be explored a little more.

In the most recent edition of Ariadne magazine, JISC Programme Manager Paola Marchionni has reviewed how some of the ways that JISC-funded digitisation projects have engaged their audiences, showing how digitisation projects have developed new ideas and learnt from previous mistakes to ensure that their digital resource is seen and used by a wide range of users.

There is a list of ten issues in particular which she feels have been addressed, including

• Knowing What to Do with Users’ Feedback
• Galvanising Users as Project Advocates
• Getting Users to Create Content
• ‘Listen to your users, but don’t be bullied by them’

The British Cartoon Archive recently ran a workshop which aimed at allowing this important resource to increase both its functionality and embed the resource further within teaching and research.

The final report from the workshop is now available.

Further information about the workshop and the Cartoon archive can be found on the Workshop Website

‘The Cultural Heritage of Historic European Cities and Public Participatory Geographic Information Systems (GIS)’ was the title of a recent workshop held at the University of York.

The workshop explored the potential for GIS to deliver greatly improved access to urban heritage resources of all kinds to the general public and to the academy.

The workshop aimed to address a number of themes which surround the use of Public Participatory GIS, including:

• The lack of guidance on creating such an interdisciplinary public resource;
• a lack of standards;
• the legal issues related to accessing and disseminating data.

More information about this workshop can be found on the seminar webpages.

Further information about all the recent JISC funded workshops can be found on the digitisation webpages.

A recent JISC funded Digitisation workshop, held at the Birmingham City University explored the subject of High Volume Digitisation and some of the trends, issues and robot technology that are involved in such undertakings.

Leading speakers and demonstrators from across the UK and Europe contributed to a comprehensive programme of events, open sessions and demonstrations.

The workshop helped demystified the terms ‘high volume, industrial scale and mass digitisation’ through a very practical demonstration of the step by step process with digital scanners and integrated software for OCR and metadata creation, aimed at practitioners and colleagues across the HE and FE community interested in large scale digitisation initiatives (LSDIs).

Common themes that emerged included:

• the importance for preparation and planning,
• measuring impact and feasibility studies,
• setting realistic scalable goals and solutions,
• deciding on in-house or outsourcing, and;
• digital access v digital preservation

Presentations and notes form the workshop are available from the Birmingham City University website.

The report from the workshop is also available from the JISC website.

Don’t procrastinate! Submit your nominations now for the Learning Impact Awards and Recognition Program. Nominations for the 2010 Global Competition are due by 31 December 2009.

It’s easy to submit your nominations, just fill out the nomination form online.

The Learning Impact Awards (aka LIAs) recognize the use of technology to support and enhance learning, featuring the highest levels of innovation, adoption, and learning impact.

The LIA awards are unique in that they recognize the use of technology in context. Nominations include not only information about the technology, but how it is used by an implementing organization.

To find out more about the Learning Impact Awards and see previous winners visit the website.

Don’t forget to save the date for the Learning Impact Conference!

Join Us in Long Beach, California for Learning Impact 2010 and The Summit on Global Learning Challenges the 17-20 May 2010 at the Long Beach Hilton.

This 8th annual event again brings together the world’s leading architects, influencers, and users of learning technology to participate in program tracks focused on ascertaining the state of and trends in learning, technology, and standards.

The format will be a highly engaging combination of the Learning Impact Awards showcase and associated program tracks, executive keynotes and panels providing insights into the perspectives of key industry leaders, and workshops featuring demonstrations of the latest use of IMS standards.

Find out more at the Learning Impact Website.

“The further back you look the further forward you see” – Winston Churchill

As part of JISC’s recently funded Digitisation Workshops series, climate scientists and researchers from across the world gathered at Met Office to discuss visualising climate data.

Led by the international research initiative ACRE (Atmospheric Clirculation Reconstructions over the Earth) the workshop was able to discuss future work on areas such as:

• recovery of historical data;
• the weather reconstruction/reanalysis itself, and:
• the use of the reanalysis outputs for climate science, applications and impacts studies and as a wider educational tool.

The ACRE workshop builds on other Climate Research projects funded by JISC including the Historic Navy Log Books project (CORRAL) that is attempting to use 18th Century Navy logbooks to map historic climate patterns to help inform current climate research.

The workshop has produced a Report and further information and slides from the workshop can be found at the ACRE website.