Author: Paola Marchionni

The University of Sheffield is undertaking research with the intention of improving search within the humanities. The AHRC-funded project called ‘Participating in Search Design: A Study of George Thomason’s English Newsbooks‘ is a collaboration between the Humanities Research Institute and the departments of History (Professor Mike Braddick, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Arts and Humanities), English (Dr […]

Great War Collections (which now includes the JISC-funded Great War Archive and Europeana 1914-1918) has been entered for the EngageU Award, a European Competition for Best Innovations in University Outreach and Public Engagement. The public can vote for this project until 19 April. The Great War Collections started as a JISC-funded project, the Great War […]

The Digital Humanities Congress is a new conference which will be held in Sheffield every two years. Its purpose is to promote the sharing of knowledge, ideas and techniques within the digital humanities. Digital humanities is understood by Sheffield to mean the use of technology within arts, heritage and humanities research as both a method […]

User engagement, both online and offline, is an important process for any project delivering successful web-based resources. Web usability is arguably part of that process, and we were keen to expose projects within the current JISC Content programme to the principles of user centred design early on in the planning of their online resources. Many […]

Last week, we asked for feedback on your experience of OCRing tabular data. Christy Henshaw, working on the JISC funded digitisation of the Medical Officers of Health reports, has summarised the responses received so far: I recently posted a request to digital library mailing lists, asking the community to share their experiences and knowledge about […]

If you have experience in dealing with OCR and tabular data, one of the current JISC-funded mass digitisation projects, the Medical Officer of Health reports, led by the Wellcome Library, would like to hear from you. Christy Henshaw, from the Wellcome Digital Library: For our Medical Officer of Health project, we will be digitising health […]

An excellent short video from Europeana on what linked open data is and why it is a good thing both for users and content providers. For more information on Europeana’s work on open data see their press release of 17 February.

JISC is advertising for a post of Programme Manager – e-Content: Digitisation. The post holder will be responsible for managing a range of different types of e-content projects taking place in universities and other organisations that are either digitising content or developing existing digital collections to make them more accessible, relevant and discoverable on the […]

JISC has issued 5 Invitations to Tender for Digital Infrastructure Reports. Bidders must have knowledge of the topic area and must be experienced in producing high quality reports. These are open Invitations to Tender and anyone may bid. 5 Invitations to Tender for Reports on: • Advantages of APIs • Embedded Licences: What, Why and […]

You can now keep up with the progress of the projects funded as part of the JISC Content programme 2011-2013 on the programme’s new Netvibes pages. Netvibes syndicates content from the projects’ blogs and brings them all in one place, so it makes it easier to have a general overview of activities. My top picks: […]

This week saw the launch of the JISC-funded 3D Sheffield metalwork collection. This rapid digitisation project was a partnership between Sheffield Hallam University, which brought their expertise in innovative 3D digitisation, and Museums Sheffield, which is delivering the 3D objects on their website. Highlights of the web site incude: – 200 beautiful 3D objects, browsable […]

Two projects within the current JISC Content programme 2011-2013 have been recently picked up by BBC News. Observing the 1980s, based at the University of Sussex, will make available as Open Educational Resources (OER) written and oral testimonies from people from a range of backgrounds on what it was like to live in 1980s Britain. […]

JISC is delighted to announce that King’s College London has been awarded funding for a project on “WW1 Discovery: Content Prioritisation” This work will undertake essential primary research that will guide and underpin the wider JISC WW1 Discovery programme which aims to aggregate and deliver WW1 content by building an aggregation, API and discovery layer […]

The OER projects in the JISC Content programme 2011-13 recently attended a workshop on “Introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER)”, organised by the Open Unviersity’s SCORE team. All projects focus on the digitization of primary material from special collections covering a variety of subjects, from fashion design to architectural drawings and microscopic rock slides. Each […]

The European Commission has just adopted a Recommendation on Digitisation and Digital Preservation, asking Member States to step up their efforts, pool their resources and involve private actors in digitising cultural material and making it available through Europeana. In particular, the Recommendation invites Member States to: – put in place solid plans for their investments […]

JISC invites institutions to submit funding proposals for a project to create innovative Open Educational Resources (OERs) around the theme of World War One. The deadline for receipt of proposals in response to this call is 12:00 noon UK time on 5th December 2011. Funding of £80,000 is available for a single project starting from […]

One of the main issues with crowdsourcing is the reliability of the information provided by an often anonymous public. This is particularly the case when dealing with medical and health related information. Patient Participate!, one of the JISC-funded community collections projects, tackled this problem and brought together the British Library, UKOLN and the Association of […]

Some of the projects in the recent JISC Community Collections programme and Strand B of the eContent programme 2011 have looked at digital content as an opportunity for higher education institutions to engage more creatively and effectively with schools and employers. Interacting with digital content can provide imaginative ways of filling the gap in resources […]

If you are planning to submit a proposal to the current JISC eContent Capital programme 06/11, please note the following guidance updates: – Appendices: as stated in the funding call in paragraph 128, no extra appendices are allowed to be included in addition to the ones requested by the Call for proposals (FOI tick list […]

Whether it’s about “solid” working outfits or “dainty” ladies’ clothes, the changes in fashion and lifestyle over the past century have been reflected in the images from the Worcester-based Kays & Co mail order catalogue, which are being digitised by the JISC-funded World of Kays project. Every day this week Project Manager Jennifer Waugh talks […]