In the development of a Web resource, ideally usability testing is an iterative process that is carried out throughout the development of a resource and can be conducted both internally (expert review) and with outside users (user testing). The second meeting of the JISC Digitisation programme partly focused on Web usability issues and user interaction […]
Category: Jisc digitisation programmes
The Archive Sound Recording Project is developing its user panel, and holding a related event on 11th March 2008. Details below The British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings (www.bl.uk/sounds) is a JISC funded project to make selected material from the Sound Archive available online to Higher and Further Education institutions. The project will be hosting a […]
The JISC’s Digitisation Advisory Group met at the British Film Institute (BFI) Archives in Berkhamsted, north of London. The BFI leads the JISC’s InView project, which is digitising 600 hours of unique moving image materials from their collection. However, as a tour organised by senior preservation manager Andrea Kalas demonstrated such digitisation is just scratching […]
The National Archive’s digitisation project, British Governance in the 20th century – Cabinet Papers, 1914-1975, has been grappling with issues of “useful” OCR. It might be stating the obvious, but accurate OCR is as useful as the search results it produces. If OCRd text consistently misspells particularly relevant key words for retrieving certain documents, than […]
As part of its Digitisation Programme, the JISC appointed consultant Hervé L’Hours to assist the 16 projects in defining their metadata requirements. In particular, Hervé looked at issues relating to technical / preservation metadata and how these were being built into project workflows. The bulk of this work took place between June and November 2007. […]
As well as digitising several thousand sound files, the British Library Archival Sound Recordings project has made multiple digital images of record and music players from its artefacts collections. This includes gramophones from the 1890s right up to Sony cassette decks from the 1970s. The players have been photographed from multiple angles, allowing for the […]
The JISC-funded 19th Century Newspapers digitisation project was highlighted in today’s Guardian as part of a growing number of online newspaper archives which constitute an invaluable resource for historians and researchers. Stephen Hoare commented: “The digitisation of the British Library’s 19th-century newspaper collection – the most comprehensive archive ever to go online – was launched […]
A project plan might not be the most exciting document to read, but it can reveal in depth details about how a digitisation project aims to proceed. Most of the sixteen projects in the programme have now published their plans on the JISC website. Click on the appropriate project name from the digitisation page on […]
A new report that evaluates the achievements of the first phase of the JISC digitisation is now available to download from the JISC website. The report, which was led by Evidence Base at the University of Central England in collaboration with Simon Tanner from Kings Digital Consultancy Services at Kings College, illustrates the value of […]
Lord Rix – the actor-manager Brian Rix of Whitehall farce fame – his wife Baroness Rix (the actress Elspet Gray) and Roland and Claire Muldoon, theatre pioneers with the New Variety group at the Hackney Empire, were among more than 100 guests from showbusiness and education at the launch of the East London Theatre archive […]
Listen to a podcast from the launch event at the House of Commons, in which project director Julian Ball explains more about the project, and Paul Seaward of the Historic Parliament Trust describes how the resource can be used by scholars.
A project which has applied 21st century technology to the digitisation of rare and delicate 18th century parliamentary papers was launched on Friday 23 March at an event at the House of Commons. The 18th century Parliamentary Papers project, funded by JISC and led by the University of Southampton, makes openly available for the first […]
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 […]
Launched today at the British Library, a massive digitisation programme by the British Library and JISC makes 3,900 hours of historic sound recordings available to students, researchers and academics. A major new online resource, available free to everyone in further and higher education, will provide easy access to thousands of hours of rare and historic […]