Categories
flickr flickr images images Jisc digitisation programmes london Projects 2006-2009 theatre

Using Flickr for digital resources

The East London Theatre Archive is creating an invaluable database of performing arts resources, from playbills and programmes to press cuttings and photographs. It will consist of around 15,000 digital objects, taken from East London theatres. As an extra part of their work, they have commissioned photography of some of the theatres themselves, such as […]

Categories
Funding

Wellcome Trust Digitisation – Request for Suppliers

The Wellcome Library – part of the Wellcome Trust – is currently developing a new strategy which will include a programme to digitise the Library’s unique and significant, out-of-copyright, holdings. Given the scale of the task – preliminary projections suggest that the size of the collection (excluding the in-copyright material) is around 45 million pages […]

Categories
Jisc digitisation programmes Podcasts Projects 2006-2009 Users Web2.0

Communities and online collections

The Great War Archive web site, part of the JISC-funded First World War Poetry Digital Archive project, is a powerful example of how communities can be galvanised in the creation of a unique and poignant online resource for the benefit of the wider public. An article on the Times Higher Education Supplement “From no man’s […]

Categories
Jisc digitisation programmes Projects 2006-2009 Users Web2.0

Is academia ready for Web 2.0?

As part of its development, the Pre-Raphaelite Resource digitisation project recently commissioned an audience research study to consult users about whether the inclusion of Web 2.0 features on a resource of this type would be useful or important to the education community. The report indicated that: “there is some readiness among the education community for […]

Categories
Funding Jisc digitisation programmes

Extra Funding – Enriching Digital Resources

The JISC is making up to £2m funding available for digitisation-related work under the following three headings. More information is available from the circular (Word document) 1. Pilot and small-scale digitisation. Proposals may focus on undertaking pilot digitisation, small-scale digitisation or a smaller feasibility study prior to larger scale activity. Alternatively, proposals may focus on […]

Categories
Funding Jisc digitisation programmes Users

Prioritising Digitisation

One of the most difficult aspects of developing a digitisation strategy is deciding how you will prioritise your digitisation work Fragile manuscripts, fading newspapers, valuable coins, hidden audio recordings, historical texts and the like all clamour for the right to be digitised first. The JISC Digitisation Programme recognises this is a difficulty and therefore issued […]

Categories
e-learning Jisc digitisation programmes Projects 2006-2009 Users

“Did Bob’s Pills cure gout?”

If we make it, they might come… but it is a fact that any newly launched digital collection has to compete for attention with a huge amount of material already available on the web. Resource creators, therefore, have the challenging task of devising ways in which to interest and engage potential users. Projects within the […]

Categories
Jisc digitisation programmes Projects 2006-2009

The Murder of Jean Alexander (Kilmarnock, 1807)

One of the great things about digitising multiple collections is it allows you to build connections between different resources. Here’s a straightforward example The John Johnson Collection of Electronic Ephemera has a news-sheet (dated 14 Nov 1807) recounting the murder of two women in the town of Kilmarnock, on the west coast of Scotland. It […]

Categories
Collaboration Jisc digitisation programmes Projects 2006-2009

Public-private partnership delivers thousands of images for free

Thanks to a public-private partnership between the Bodleian Library and ProQuest, thousands of images from one of the world’s most important collections of printed ephemera are being made freely available to all UK universities, further education institutions, schools and public libraries. The John Johnson Collection: An Archive of Printed Ephemera, part of the JISC Phase […]

Categories
Jisc digitisation programmes Projects 2003-2007 Projects 2006-2009

Open up as many channels as possible for resource discovery

There’s a lot of digital content out there, and so the battle to get your particular project noticed and used is a tough one. One particular project that has dealt with this is the Nineteenth-Century Pamphlets project, a multi-partner project led by the University of Southampton. The resource will not just have its own website […]

Categories
Impact assessment Jisc digitisation programmes Projects 2003-2007 Users

Usage and impact of digital resources

The JISC invites tenders to conduct a study on the usage and impact of a selection of online digital resources which were produced as part of the JISC Phase One Digitisation Programme, 2003-2007. The digital collections created as part of the programme are aimed at enhancing the provision of e-content for teaching, learning and research […]

Categories
Jisc digitisation programmes Libraries Projects 2003-2007

Freeing up library space

One of the unexpected benefits of mass digitisation is that it frees up library shelf space; being able to access primary materials and journals online means that librarians no longer need to dedicate precious space to often bulky or fragile objects. Recent JISC-funded digitisation, for example, has allowed many universities around the UK to either […]

Categories
Jisc digitisation programmes Podcasts Projects 2006-2009

Podcast: How digitisation can bring a nation’s heritage to the desktops of all

One of the projects in JISC’s digitisation programme, Welsh Journals Online, led by the National Library of Wales, will be adding to a growing body of online materials dedicated to Welsh culture, history and language. In this podcast, director of the project Arwel Jones talks about how digitisation can promote wider efforts to make a […]

Categories
Jisc digitisation programmes Projects 2006-2009

Contribute your digital memories of WW1

As part of the JISC funded First World War Poetry Digital Archive project, the University of Oxford has launched a web site to allow members of the public to submit digital photographs or transcripts of items they personally hold which are related to the First World War. The ‘Great War Archive’ site will run for […]

Categories
Jisc digitisation programmes Usability

Web usability tested

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 […]

Categories
Digitisation conference 2007

Five Key Issues in Digitisation – JISC Digitisation Conference, 2007

The JISC Digitisation Conference was held at the St David’s Hotel and Conference Centre in Cardiff on 20/21 July 2007. It gathered together some of the leading digitisation projects, funding-bodies, publishers, archives, libraries and many of the key thinkers in the area. There was an international delegate list, drawing in representatives from the UK, France, […]

Categories
Audio-Visual e-learning Jisc digitisation programmes programme management Projects 2003-2007 Projects 2006-2009

Using Sound in Education – Sound Archives User Panel

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 […]

Categories
Audio-Visual Jisc digitisation programmes Projects 2003-2007

The scale of digitisation

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 […]

Categories
Data capture Jisc digitisation programmes OCR Projects 2006-2009

The challenges of “useful” OCR

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 […]

Categories
Jisc digitisation programmes Metadata

Reports from JISC Metadata Consultancy

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. […]