JISC Digitisation Programme

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.

With somewhat less fanfare than its original launch, when thousands of budding Europeans scrambled online to enter the search time “Mona Lisa”, the European cultural heritage portal Europeana has gone online.

The portal and design seems quite impressive, and technically, there appear to be few glitches. However, the level of metadata is quite disappointing – type in Mozart or Freud and, while you get some interesting photographs or musical scores, their lineage is not immediately apparent. There are only four or five metadata fields, and nothing on the genesis of the items digitised, i.e. who took the photo of Freud.

However, this is only after a very quick play. Other items may have more extensive information. Time will tell whether this is something the general public will want to use.

Colleagues at UKOLN have been writing some interesting critiques of Europeana. Paul Walk points to a lack of clear sightedness in creating the Europeana technical infrastrutcure while Brian Kelly has looked at the German use of Wikipedia as a host for cultural heritage.

The European Union’s Europeana portal project was launched yesterday, offering user access to a wealth of cultural heritage content, harvested from the continent’s museums, archives and libraries.

There has been some scepticism about the long-term success of the project, especially in regards to its sustainability model and it’s ability to deflect users away from Google – a problem for any budding portal.

However, two recent events might changes the sceptics’ views.

Firstly, is the overwhelming popularity of the site on its first day – 10m hits, according to the website, with the unpleasant side effect that the site will be down until mid-December.

Recent comments from Google suggest they might be interested on working with Europeana, a partnership that would definelty add to the portal’s impact. It will be interesting to see how this develops.