JISC today announced the successful bids in a further £12m investment in the digitisation of major resources of national importance. Following the enormous interest in last year’s call for proposals and the high quality of the many bids received, the extra investment has been made by HEFCE to support the wider availability of national, scholarly resources.
The 16 winning bids represent a wide range of rich and vivid perspectives on the history, culture and landscape of the UK and beyond. The successful consortia include nearly 60 organisations from education and other sectors, including the British Film Institute, The National Archive, the BBC, ITN, the British Library, the National Library of Wales and the Bodleian Library,
alongside nearly 30 universities.
Projects will capture a wide variety of aspects of UK life, from Cabinet papers to First World War poetry, radio news to East End music hall, political cartoons to British borders, and in a wide range of media, including sound, film, images, journals, newspapers, maps, theses, pamphlets and cartoons.
The 16 projects will join six current projects funded since 2004 which have
begun to deliver resources of enormous value to education and research,
widening access to otherwise inaccessible and in some cases fragile and
unique resources.
The successful bids (with their lead institutions) are:
First World War Poetry Archive (University of Oxford) – Preserving and sharing memories of the Great War through the words of its poets
Voices – Moving Images in the Public Sphere (British Film Institute) – Watch the key social, political and economic issues of our time unfold
British Governance in the 20th Century, Cabinet papers 1914-1975 (The National Archive) – The British Government at peace and war
Historic Boundaries of Britain (University of Portsmouth) – Mapping the past – a digital library of Britain’s borders
British Cartoon Archive Digitisation Project (University of Kent) –Browse the largest online archive of cartoons in the UK
Modern Welsh Journals Online (National Library of Wales) – Free, online searchable access to the best Welsh periodicals – past, present and future
Electronic ephemera (Bodleian Library) – Discover hidden treasures of everyday life from the 16th to the 20th centuries
19th Century Pamphlets Online – Polemical voices from the past on the great debates of the 19th century
Discovering the Poles – Historic Polar Images 1845-1960 (Scott Polar Research Institute) – Making historic Polar resources accessible to all
A Digital Library of Core e-Resources on Ireland (Queen’s University Belfast) – Visit a one-stop shop for Irish studies e-resources
Archival Sound Recordings 2 (British Library) – A critical mass of rich audio materials from all over the world, at your fingertips
UK Theses Digitisation Project (British Library) – Opening access to over 5,000 of the most popular British research theses
British Newspapers 1620-1900 (British Library) – Read the first three centuries of newspapers from all regions of the British Isles
Digitisation of the LBC radio archive (University of Bournemouth) – From apartheid to Blair – hear history being made with the UK’s largest commercial radio news collection
Pre-Raphaelite Resource Site (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery) – Trace a movement that changed the face of English art
The East London Theatre Archive (University of East London) – Putting the spotlight on East End music hall heritage
Professor David Eastwood, CEO of HEFCE, welcomed the announcement, saying:
‘The JISC Digitisation programme has been leading the way in making
more widely available resources which are either inaccessible or hard to
access, something that is quietly but rapidly transforming education and
research in this country. I look forward to seeing the results of these
projects in the coming years and the uses to which these important resources
will be put.’’
Professor Sir Ron Cooke, Chair of JISC, said: ‘The success of JISC’s
current digitisation projects, which have already made available sound
resources, population data and medical journals and will soon deliver further
important resources, has been crucial in raising the profile of digitised
resources and attracting this further investment. JISC is delighted that this
success has been recognised and that the programme will continue its
important work.’
For further information, please go to: www.jisc.ac.uk/digitisation_home.html