Addressing History – historical maps, enriched
AddressingHistory, a new website recently launched, is asking history enthusiasts to explore their ancestors and local historical connections by finding and placing historical Scottish Post Office Directory listings on the map.
Based at EDINA, University of Edinburgh, the AddressingHistory website combines the listings from the Directories, historical forerunners of Yellow Pages, with maps from the same years. The site, which is free to use, allows users to search for historical people, places and professions and presents results both on a map and as an editable listing that links to the full digitised Directory page.
You can use the AddressingHistory API to search AddressingHistory’s database of Post Office Directories
‘Welsh Voices’ on BBC web site
The JISC-funded Welsh Voices project has provided content for a new gallery of images on the BBC web site commemorating the 92nd anniversary of Armistice Day.
Welsh Voices is part of the JISC Developing community content programme which aims to establish partnerships between the Higher Education sector and community groups, organisations and the general public in order to curate or create new digital content for the benefit of all groups.
Gateways to content MediaHub / CultureGrid / Europeana
JISC is looking for digital content projects interested in having links to their resources from two gateways, MediaHub and CultureGrid (and by extension a third, Europeana)
- MediaHub (currently in development for 2011) will provide access to image, video and audio resources in Higher and Further Education. It evolves from the Vision and Sound Portal at EDINA at the University of Edinburgh.
- Not too differently from MediaHub, Culture Grid is harvesting metadata and then linking back to digitised content in museums, libraries, archives within the UK. Much content is already available for searching, including material uploaded by the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS). The site is run by the Collections Trust,
- Europeana has similar aims to Culture Grid, but works right across Europe. All content from CultureGrid is automatically harvested into Europeana.
I’ve already talked informally with some JISC–funded projects about this, and a few have taken things forward themselves. JISC has small amounts of funding for projects who wish to tailor and export their metadata to such portals. The portals will then incorporate the metadata and provides links back to the original resource.
Collections must be based on discrete digital objects (i.e. a single image, movie or sound file), and have a stable URL to point at. Content for CultureGrid needs to be open access, whilst it can be gated or open for MediaHub.
If you are interested in exposing your content to these sources, then get in touch with me (Alastair Dunning) and we will take things from there. We are primarily interested in content funded by JISC, but are happy to consider other resources.
Funding Call for an Islamic Studies Gateway
The JISC invites tenders for the creation of a gateway for searching catalogues and images of Islamic Studies manuscripts. The aim of the work is to create a tool for educational users to access collections of Islamic Studies manuscripts in the UK.
Total funding of up to £30,000 (including VAT, travel and subsistence) is available for this project.
The deadline for proposals is 12 noon UK time on Friday 7 January 2011. The successful bidder will be expected to start work on or around 1 March 2011 and complete by the end of July 2011.
A full version of the ITT can be found on the JISC website
The UK’s National Digital Library – A Digital Public Space
A Harvard professor, Robert Darnton, has recently made a plea to the American public for the creation of a National Digital Library, which is “a comprehensive library of digitized books that will be easily accessible to the general public.”
In the UK, the idea of such a library has been floating around for a while, but without ever gaining firm traction. However, recently, the BBC has initiated the idea of a Digital Public Space, and has been working hard with their partners, including JISC, on its development.
Like Darnton’s National Library, the Digital Public Space has at its heart the idea of publicly accessible cultural content. Darnton’s focus is books and has a scholarly tinge, presupposing a canon of material that would fit into the National Library; the DPS is much more catholic, drawing in sounds, movies, music, images, books, documents, texts, magazines, and having, one senses, a more fluid collections policy.
Moreover, the Digital Public Space will deal with the largest barrier to mass digitisation, that of copyright. The DPS would be constructed as a secure, trusted space for high-quality content. Copyright material would be made freely available to the public, but access would be via authentication and delivered via universities, libraries, schools etc. and, if federated infrastructure develops suitably, to individuals. At the same time, the DPS would offer costed access to commercial users wishing to exploit the goldmine of content. The costs would be used to pay back the rights holders and sustain the DPS.
It’s still early days for an ambitious concept. There is still much to be worked out – not least in terms of metadata, authentication, branding and the technical architecture. But there are a number of impressive organisations involved – beyond the BBC and JISC, the British Library, the British Film Institute, the National Archives are all engaged. As Lynne Brindley of British Library says in the recent Inspiring Research, Inspiring Scholarship report:
“We are sitting on a goldmine of content which should be within a coherent UK national digital strategy. To support Digital Britain we need to deliver a critical mass of digital content. Access… ought to be the right of every citizen, every household, every child, every school and public library, universities and business. That’s a vision worth delivering on.”