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.
According to Robert Miller (Director of Books at the Internet Archive), the entire web can be stored in a 4m x 3m x 3m shipping container. Photographic evidence of this phenomenon was just one small part of the wide-ranging and entertaining second plenary session, which looked at what makes a good library, the Internet Archive, and some of its current projects.
Watch the speaker on video. __(‘Read the rest of this entry »’)
The first talk in the Managing Content strand investigated the real costs of digitisation projects and the hidden costs they often contain, as well as effective ways for publishers and private bodies (generally publishers) to work together to create digital resources. Moderated by Grant Young, a Digitisation and Digital Preservation Specialist at Cambridge University Library, the session included talks by David Tomkins, from the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; Peter White, from ProQuest; Bill Pidduck, the Chairman ofAdam Matthews Publications; and Simon Tanner from King’s Digital Consultancy Services, King’s College London.
What is the impact of user generated content on research and scholarship?
All three speakers made it clear that the impact can be massive – but only when the user generated content is sourced and employed intelligently, imaginatively and respectfully.
Key points made in the session:
Interactivity was the name of the game in more ways than one in the first User Engagement session. Around 30 people joined Alastair Dunning and Brian Kelly to discuss interfaces to digital content, and how cultural institutions can make use of web 2.0. But it wasn’t all one-way – this interactive session also saw the audience split into groups to look at social networking environments, innovative technologies and embedding usability.
__(‘Read the rest of this entry »’)
It’s not enough to create exciting digital resources, says Kevin Burden, you have to be proactive in engaging the community. That was the starting point for a session which split the audience by suggesting a radical approach to engaging users: it is less important to highlight the content of a resource than how it is going to be used. The content v pedagogical approach took in three key areas: