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Digitisation priorities e-content Libraries Publisher relations

New approaches to digital archival collections [report]

On the same day that Paola Marchionni and I speak at this year’s UKSG conference on the subject of digital archival collections (‘DACs’), we are pleased to make available a new report summarising the series of roundtable talks, described in a previous post on this blog, in which representatives of libraries and publishers came together […]

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Digitisation priorities

What are the barriers to collaborative digitisation of collections in the UK?

Some members of the HE content team have been discussing issues about the collaborative digitisation of collections. We know, from conversations with our Digital Archival Collections advisory group, that there is a thirst for institutions to work together to make their collections available. We were wondering about the barriers to making this happen. Institutions are […]

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Digitisation priorities Funding UK Medical Heritage Library workshops

Developing new approaches to digitising special collections

We recently ran a workshop after a long period of consultation about out future approach to digisation. The resulting workshop report: Summary Report: New Business Models for Digitisation sets out a direction of travel for us and our key partners and stakeholders. Jisc has a long history of undertaking digitisation initiatives. Back in 1993 the Joint […]

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Collaboration Community Content Digitisation priorities e-content e-learning Standards Usability Users

Continued thinking about using archives for teaching, learning and research

When I was fortunate to be invited by, Anthony Mandal, Professor in Print and Digital Cultures,  to deliver the keynote at the recent GW4 Remediating the Archive workshop at the University of Cardiff, Wales, I decided to set out the current state of digitisation and its focus upon actual use of digital content by providing […]

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#UKMHL Digitisation priorities UK Medical Heritage Library

Collaborating in medical history at DCDC15

Last month Paola Marchionni and Alex Thomas presented at DCDC15 at the Lowry in Salford. This now landmark conference in the area of digital culture and heritage this year included themes around digital collaboration and digital engagement. We were delighted to be able to share our work with the Wellcome Trust and RLUK on the UK […]

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Digitisation priorities Europe

Digitisation in Europe – The New Renaissance

The European Union’s Comite’ des Sages recently published The New Renaissance, a proud call-to-arms for the digitisation of Europe’s cultural heritage. There are plenty of questions it raises and some of the recommendations will be very difficult to put into practice. But as a lofty statement of intent it’s a powerful document and very welcome, […]

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Digitisation priorities events

“New Strategies for Digital Content”, 18 March 2011 – Registration open

This one-day conference focuses on some of the key strategic issues faced by content creators and publishers today and which were addressed by the JISC eContent programme 2009-2011, in particular: – the need for institutions to develop the necessary skills and strategies to embed digitisation within institutional strategies and practices as well as devise effective […]

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Digitisation priorities e-content events workshops

Mathematic Content in Electronic Media

A recent workshop held on the 9th September 2009 at the Open University discussed the issues that surround mathematical content in digital form. Bringing together leading mathematicians and practitioners involved in the digitisation of mathematical content, the workshop addressed areas such as: collaboration, standards, improving practice,  and reuse of software, in relation to mathematic content […]

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Digitisation priorities events

Digitisation Workshops

JISC has recently funded a number of workshops to investigate and explore the challenges and achievements in digitisation and e-content. The workshops will be looking at a broad range of areas associated with Digitisation, including: Optical Character recognition (OCR), Collaboartive editing, Large scale digitisation, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and  Digitising and Mathematics. A list of […]

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Digitisation priorities Europe Publicity and promotion Usability Users

Europeana asks for Feedback

Europeana, the portal for the cultural collections of Europe, is now fully functioning and looking for feedback. The ups and downs of Europeana have been followed by this blog in a number of past posts, so it is good to see it in full working order, and looking to improve the user experience. Tell us […]

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Digitisation priorities Funding

Special collections aren’t just curios

There’s an interesting and well-illustrated (in the print version at least) article on the variety and strength on special collections in UK universities in the 7 May version of the Times Higher. However, in focussing on the special collections as single curios, the article rather downplays the Importance that such collections can have within education. […]

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Digitisation priorities events

Digital Lives Research Conference: Personal Digital Archives for the 21st Century

Not much time is left to register for the Digital Lives Research Project  conference on 9-11 February 2009 at the British Library in St Pancras, London. It is the first Digital Lives Research Conference on Personal Digital Archives in the 21st Century.  The conference is free, although only a limited number of places are available […]

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Digitisation priorities Users

Librarians, Archivists, Collection Managers: we need you! What collections would you digitise?

In a previous post (What’s your priority for digitisation? ), we mentioned the JISC-funded DiSCmap project, Digitisation in special collections: mapping, assessment, prioritisation, which aims to produce, among other things, a “top priority” list of special collections held within the UK Higher Education sector (including libraries, archives, and museums) for potential future digitisation, based primarily […]

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Digitisation priorities Users

What’s your priority for digitisation?

A new online discussion forum has recently launched in order to gather people’s feedback on digitisation priorities for special collections. Current debates raise issues such as what defines a special collection, how to determine digitisation priorities, user needs in research & teaching, and a provocative “Devil’s advocate” thread to provide a platform to air “contrary […]