For better or worse, it is increasingly accepted that it is no longer the ideal to conduct research which extends the boundaries of knowledge merely for its own sake; which supports, builds upon or refutes the work of others, but which ultimately reflects back upon an enclosed and self-sustaining world of scholarship and discourse. Researchers … Read more
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 … Read more
I have recently attended a number of events on the role(s) of Public engagement in the Arts and Humanities. As a result I thought it might be useful to document some of the key issues that arose from these events, and some of the actions institutions and departments have been taking to deal with these … Read more
Over 2000 recordings by British and Irish Muscians have been digitised and made available online in a project by Kings College, London. The Musicains of Britain and Ireland 1900-1950 project is allowing listeners and researchers to rediscover leading musicians who were once household names. Most of the recordings are making their first public appearance since … Read more
Having recently issued our Funding Call on impact & embedding of digitised resources now seems an appropriate point at which to reflect on some of the work JISC has done to investigate and facilitate the impact and usage of digital resources. The Oxford Internet Institute (OII) recently submitted their Final Report on a workshop they … Read more
The AHRC funded project Jane Austen’s fiction manuscripts represent the first significant body of holograph evidence surviving for any British novelist. They represent every stage of her writing career and a variety of physical states: working drafts, fair copies, and handwritten publications for private circulation. Digitization enables their virtual reunification and will provides scholars with … Read more
I recently blogged about the launch of the University of Exeter’s Digital Collections Online. Some of the amazing images that were digitised and added to the repository demand to be highlighted in more depth. With all the hype about Tim Burton’s new Alice in Wonderland film, it seems appropriate to highlight the amazing collection of … Read more
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. … Read more
One of the key problems in getting widespread acceptance of digital resources has been the lack of a review process, as would happen to an article or a monograph. Thus it’s heartening to note the Institute for Historical Research is specifically undertaking more reviews of digital resources on its webpages. Three of the JISC projects … Read more
The National e-Science Centre (NeSC) has announced a new 5 day workshop on The Influence and Impact of Web 2.0 on e-research infrastructure, applications and users. The event is open to all and will be held between 23 March – 27 March at the e-Science Institute, 15 South College Street, Edinburgh. Aimed at the e-research … Read more
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 … Read more
JISC, along with publishers ProQuest, Cengage and Adam Matthews Digital, were involved in a couple of round table sessions at the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference at Oxford University. The sessions were designed to get feedback from the scholarly community on resources such as ECCOand the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera The presentation … Read more
Members of the JISC team attended a conference to launch the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (ncse): a free, online edition of six nineteenth-century periodicals and newspapers. The conference was interesting for a number of reasons, not least because it is in a excellent model for getting groups of end-users involved in discussing and using such resources … Read more