The 20th century is the period in which advances in medicine and public health led to a much improved life span for the populations of developed nations. The 19th century, on the other hand, is seen as time when only the wealthy could benefit from medicine. This is perhaps an unfair assertion. To be able […]
The upcoming RLUK Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities #DCDC14 will explore the area of discoverability of digital collections and the potential to engage with different types of communities. As part of the conference, on Thursday October 30th, Karen Colbron and Neil Grindley will be presenting a workshop entitled “Finding and Using Digital Collections: Do we need […]
As part of the Digital Humanities Congress 2014, Paola Marchionni presented the session “If I can’t find it, I can’t use it.” Some practical solutions to ensure your digital resources are easy to discover. The session described the initial outcomes of the Spotlight on the Digital project and the key recommendations for consideration in phase […]
The conference will take place from 4 – 6 September 2014. The organisers, the HRI, are delighted to present a programme comprising 18 sessions and 54 speakers. Abstracts for all the papers being presented can now be viewed via the conference website. The papers cover a wide ranges of topics including: advances in the creation […]
Here are the final outputs of the Spotlight on the Digital project: 1) Online guide Make your digital resources easier to discover: a web-based resource for creators and managers of digitsed and digital resources packed with practical tips on how to improve the discoverability of their collections, arranged under broader categories such as “Make Google […]
Over the last 10 months Martin Poulter, Jisc’s Wikimedian Ambassador, has been exploring, in some detail, how Wikimedia platforms can be employed to openly disseminate academic information, help develop students’ digital literacy and allow collaboration. To this end Martin has run a number of editathons such as the Ada Lovelace Day at the University of […]
As part of the Jisc Digital Festival in Birmingham the Spotlight team will be holding the workshop Top tips on how to improve the discoverability of your digitised collections on Tue 11 March 2.30-3.30pm (Hall 11b). The session will focus on practical advice and guidance on what creators and managers of digitised collections can do […]
These slides describe a range of above campus or national “solutions” that have been identified by the Spotlight on the Digital project and that could support the discoverability of digitised and digital collections. As illustrated on the slides, the project identified 7 priority solutions that emerged from a number of research and consultation activities over […]
Independent consultant David Ball was asked to chair the consultation with library directors as part of the Spotlight on the Digital project. Here he reports on his key take-aways. As part of the continuing consultation on Spotlight on the Digital, two focus groups for library directors or their nominees were held at the end of […]
Martin Poulter, Jisc Wikimedia Ambassador, took part in one of the Spotlight on the Digital focus groups looking at what content creators can do to increase the discoverability of their digitised collections. Here he discusses some ideas on how best to engage with the Wikimedia family. The Wikimedia family of projects have a unique role […]
The Content Programme 2011-13’s call for proposals strongly advocated that projects should take account of the Discovery Task Force’s Open Metadata Principles. The programme commissioned a report to evaluate to what extent projects were able to implement these principles in the context of specific strands of programme work: creating OERs with digitised materials, mass digitisation and […]
[Owen Stephens provides a progress update on the Spotlight on the Digital work.] In our investigation of digitised collections on the web as part of the Spotlight on the Digital project we’ve been looking at how both collections and individual items within collections are presented on the web, and how ‘discoverable’ they are using Google. […]
As part of the ongoing reseach the Spotlight project is doing on how to improve discoverability of digitised collections, a couple of weeks ago we blogged asking for suggestions of recent studies on online user behaviour in resource discovery and add them to a Google document we set up. After all suggestions were received (thank […]
This is a presentation I gave to students from the Pratt Institute NY and the University of Tennessee Knoxville as part of King’s College’s Strand Symposium on Digital Scholarship and ePublishing in June 2013. It focuses on the challenges of sustaining digitised resources including discovery, revenue generation and impact assessment. It draws on real examples […]
As part of the Spotlight on the Digital project, which aims to provide practical solutions on how creators and managers of digitised collections can make it easier for people to find (discover) their collections, our Expert group suggested we look into the role social media might play in this. We would like to investigate whether […]
Spotlight on the Digital is a co-design project which is exploring barriers to the discovery of digitised resources. The starting point is an assessment of a wide range of resources through a Discoverability Diagnosis but equally we need to identify the changing needs of teachers, learners and researchers in relation to their online behaviour in […]
Some of the initial findings of the web-based assessment of the discoverability of digitised collections are now available, as part of the Spotlight project. The Discoverability Diagnosis, which we mentioned in the previous blog post, is one of the key activities the Spotlight project is undertaking. It consists of an assessment of about 150 collections […]
Over the past few months we’ve been busy setting up Spotlight on the Digital, an eight-month project (Jun 2013-Jan 2014) which Jisc is running in collaboration with RLUK (Research Libraries UK) and SCONUL (Society of College, National and University Libraries) as part of the Jisc co-design programme. This is a pilot programme including six projects […]
As Jisc’s current content programme is reaching its conclusion, it has become increasingly apparent to me that, if we are to innovate we have to take risks, we have to experiment and test new ideas and we have to make mistakes. It is a preposterous idea that we can create a new environment for digital […]
The Jisc Content programme is nearing its completion. At the final programme meeting we held early in July we asked projects to reflect back on the last 18 months of work and in particular on “unexpected” events such as problems, successes, unforeseen occurrences… both positive and negative. FRIENDS By far the majority of comments revolved […]
