Transcript The role of digital archives in teaching and learning The

The Great War Archive
A Community Collection
http://runcoco.oucs.ox.ac.uk/
Alun Edwards
University of Oxford
This item is from The Great War Archive, University of Oxford (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa); © MAUREEN ROGERS
This item is from The Great War Archive, University of Oxford (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa); © MAUREEN ROGERS
• 1996 JISC funded the Virtual Seminars Project
– Drew together primary materials on Wilfred Owen scattered across a
range of archives and an array of contextual resources (WOMDA)
– Web based tutorials to advance the possibilities of traditional teaching
– One of the first multimedia collections designed specifically as a teaching
resource -more than 1 million hits
• 2007-9 JISC Digitisation Programme
– The First World War Poetry Digital Archive
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit
• Manuscripts of major war poets
• The Great War Archive project – public collection initiative
• Enriching the First World War Poetry Digital Archive project
– Enhance collections using Web 2.0 technologies
– Digitise manuscripts by more poets e.g. Siegfried Sassoon
• 2010-11 JISC e-Content Programme
–
RunCoCo project starts January 2010 funded under the Institutional Skills
and Strategy (Strand A) Programme
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit
The Great War Archive
Initiative
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Ran from March to June 2008
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A ‘Community Collection’
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to harvest digital versions of items
originating from the First World War
held by members of the general
public
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Innovative approach
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collection strategies
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digitisation
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cataloguing
Public involvement in major
research projects
•
Exploiting the rise of digital
photography and home
Internet access, the project
attracted thousands of
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit
volunteers
The Great War Archive Initiative:
Submission Website
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit
The Great War Archive:
Submission Days
Technicalities
Poetry Digital Archive
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Primary source material dispersed
amongst libraries and archives in
the UK, USA and Canada
Digitisation performed by holding
institutions according to project
benchmarks
Images digitised as High Quality
TIFFs and delivered as ‘good
enough quality’ JPGs, Audio as
MP3, Video as
MPEG 4
Catalogued by trained cataloguers
Quality Assured twice, including
by a key expert in the field
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Dates, location, provenance, physicality
etc.
Images digitally watermarked
using DigiMark
The Great War Archive
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Primary source material held by
individuals in the UK and abroad
•
Digitisation performed by the
public using scanner/digital
camera or by the project team at
submission days
Digitisation guidelines provided
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Not mandatory
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All files types accepted
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Initially catalogued by the public
Quality Assured and metadata
expanded upon by the project
team
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Dates, location, provenance, physicality
etc.
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit
This item is from The Great War Archive, University of Oxford (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa); © Janet Mercer
Histories which may have been lost…
• 42 unique unpublished diaries by soldiers from a range of
battlefields
• 63 memoirs
• 255 unpublished letters
• Over 700 photographs, pamphlets, local recruiting posters,
images of rare objects (such as the original designs for the
tomb of the unknown soldier)
• Even material saved from the skip!
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit
This item is from The Great War Archive, University of Oxford (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa); © S.Blore
The Great War Archive Initiative: The Aftermath
• Over 6,500 items collected
– A Flickr group continues to collect
items (over 2,050 to date)
– Used in research
– Used extensively by the public
– Used in teaching
• Highly commended for
Times Higher Ed. award and
UCISA Award for Excellence
• CoCoCo submission software
released as open source
• RunCoCo project starts
http://www.flickr.com/photos/allilinin/63081204/
The Great War Archive: Lessons Learned
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There are many pitfalls and bullet holes
associated with community collections such
as The Great War Archive
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Quality of material
Quality and validity of metadata
Less resource intensive to
digitise BUT more resource
intensive in terms of
marketing and engagement
Building a community
requires long-term support
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This is not necessarily
supported by current funding
models
The Great War Archive: Outcomes
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But there are also many advantages:
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Engaging the general public in University projects
Releasing unseen material, providing new avenues
for research and
teaching
Preserving histories
that may have been
lost
Economies of Scale:
£3.50 v £40.00
per image
Communities can
become self-serving
• The Great War Archive shows how community
collections can work and bring great benefits, most
notably reduced costs
• And that this is possibly a model we should be pursuing
in the future alongside traditional high-quality
digitisation
– Moreover, that academia should try to engage
the public in its research and recognise that the
public not only may hold material, but also is
willing to engage in these activities
... leading to the RunCoCo project
http://runcoco.oucs.ox.ac.uk/
Future…
• In 2010 RunCoCo will:
• Disseminate key software tools, methodologies, and
work-flows developed under The Great War Archive
• Online documentation e.g. a communication strategy
• Training work-shops
• Online help-desk and FAQs
• An open source system (called CoCoCo) to collect digital
objects
• Run an exemplar community collection in a teaching
and learning context
• To mobilize the public and academics to contribute material
they hold relating to the Anglo-Saxon period of British
history (450AD-1066AD)
[email protected]
http://runcoco.oucs.ox.ac.uk/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/29007475@N08/3043989309/