“

Blood, dirt and sucked sugar stick

” The First World War Poetry Digital Archive

Electric Connections Conference, Edinburgh, 11th March 2008 Kate Lindsay, Project Manager Oxford University http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

Overview

• Background • The Goals of the First World War Digital Poetry Archive • The Collections • Added Value for Education and Research • Public Involvement “The Great War Archive” http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

Background

• 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 http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/ • One of the first multimedia collections designed specifically as a teaching resource -more than 1 million hits.

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

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Goals of the First World War Poetry Digital Archive

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To make primary source material available to researchers and students which would otherwise be difficult to access To place the material in context thus widening the site’s appeal to include history, military history, women studies, and media studies To add value by providing tools for research and education http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

The Archive Collections

• • • • 2000+ digital images of primary source material (manuscripts, letters, service records) from Edward Thomas, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg, Vera Brittain and Roland Leighton.

Online corpora of the full-texts of the poems Multimedia objects (photographs, audio and video) from the IWM.

Publications of War (recruitment posters, trench papers etc.) http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

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http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

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Added Value: Research

Delivery system will allow browsing, advanced searching, comparison, zooming and export of items.

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

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Added Value: Education

Workshops and events held with teachers and lecturers to guide development of educational tools and resources http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/education • • • Podcasts and audio tours Online tutorials and resource packs Discussion boards Path creation scheme for teachers to build their own online tutorials and resource packs Explore the use Web 2.0 to deliver these resources more widely?

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

Public Involvement: The Great War Archive

www.thegreatwararchive.org

• • • What have you got in your attic?

Tap into the Internet’s potential for amateur digitization Alternative literatures and silent voices of the First World War Scribal, oral, pictorial histories http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

Further Information

• Kate Lindsay, Project Manager [email protected]

• • http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit http://www.thegreatwararchive.org