Transcript NLW Research Programme in Digital Collections

Digital Pathways:
Digital humanities and the interface between
scholarly community and libraries
Lorna Hughes
University of Wales Chair in Digital
Collections, National Library of Wales
July 2nd 2013
Digital Collections and the National Library of Wales
• Access to Welsh and Celtic
materials by global audience
• Preservation
• Collections enhancement
• Transformation of scholarship
• Community engagement
• A cohesive, national collection
• Underlying principle: free
access to digital content
Welsh Journals Online/Cylchgronau Cymru
www.welshjournals.llgc.org.uk
Welsh Newspapers Online/Papurau Newydd Cymru Arlein
www.welshnewspapers.llgc.org.uk
…now, thanks to JISC funding for digitisation:
Welsh Experience of the First World War/Rhyfel Byd a’r
profiad Cymreig /Welsh experience of World War
One….
Rhyfel Byd a’r profiad Cymreig /Welsh experience of World War One
Cymruww1.llgc.org.uk
Rhyfel Byd a’r profiad Cymreig /Welsh experience of World War One
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New mass digitisation project starting Feb 2012
£500,000 Funding from JISC
Supported by institutional contributions by partners,
especially NLW
All Wales Collaboration through Welsh Higher Education
Libraries Forum (WHELF)
Partners: National Library of Wales (lead); Aberystwyth
University; Bangor University; Trinity St David’s; Swansea
University; Cardiff University; Archives of BBC Cymru Wales;
archives and local records offices in ARCW (Archives and
Records Council, Wales), The People’s Collection, Wales.
Will produce unified, cohesive digital archive of text, image,
audio and film
Developed in consultation with many stakeholders: will have
major impact on research, teaching and commemoration
…What do we do with all this digital
stuff?
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Use it
Share it
Engage with it
Enrich it
Sustain it
…be an advocate for it!
Exploring these issues through NLW
research programme in digital
collections
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Use it…for digitally enabled scholarship
• Digital Content
– Digital collections and project with digital outputs
– Researchers demand high-quality digital content
• Methods
– “scholarly primitives” to gain new knowledge:
discovering, annotating, comparing, referring,
sampling, illustrating, and representing digital content
• Tools
– Software to gather, analyze and/or process data
– To enable existing (i.e. analogue) research processes to be conducted better
and/or faster
– To enable researchers to ask, and answer, completely new research questions
www.nedimah.edu
Share it…through aggregation and linking
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New international contexts and research questions
Exposure of Welsh language
Exposure of Welsh ideas / thinking / history
Recognition of LLGC / NLW identity
Potential to work with others to enrich the data
Within a European context a critical a mass of data to help reach education,
creative industries, tourism, research
LIPARM (Linking Parliamentary Records Through Metadata)
• Methodology for federated searching and browsing of
UK and Ireland Parliamentary papers
• Developing a unified metadata strategy for historical
and contemporary parliamentary digitisation projects
• Defining a generic XML schema for parliamentary
metadata
• Defining controlled vocabularies for key components of
this metadata
• Producing a platform for a union catalogue of these
materials based on the records created.
• Key parliamentary collections will be enhanced to allow
their content to be accessed via the catalogue
Partners: Centre for e-Research, King's College London;
National Library of Wales; Institute of Historical
Research, University of London; Centre for Data
Digitisation and Analysis, Queen's University Belfast;
History of Parliament Trust; Northern Ireland
Assembly
Engage with it….
www.cymru1900wales.org: Crowdsourcing Welsh place names, working with
Galaxy Zoo to build an online gazetteer from OS 6 inch maps
Crowdsourcing: sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a
group of people or community (crowd) through an open call: e.g., to help capture,
systematize or analyse large amounts of data (“citizen science”)
Enrich it…New technologies and collaborations to enhance existing
digital content
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Welsh Wills Online: developing
transcriptions and user search interface
for Welsh wills at NLW
Investigating crowdsourcing for
transcription and semantic tagging of
content for representation and analysis
Applying for funding for research and
community transcription project
Sustain it….born digital content: Brith Gof performance archive at NLW
Sustain it…through a conservation and preservation Centre for
Wales at NLW
• Traditional conservation practice alongside digital
• Building expertise in creation and management and sustainability of digital
content
• Developing a national digital preservation strategy
• A focus of training, research, and knowledge exchange in Wales and
beyond
• Responding to concerns about survival of our digital histories: personal
and national
• Basis for large HLF bid in 2013
Advocate for it…
• Need to protect freely available digital content
• Move beyond “project-itis”
• Take on the lessons learned of the digital projects at National Libraries as we
move into a more uncertain economic future
• Share findings from digitization projects and e-Content programmes on key
issues
• National libraries have to manage and preserve complex digital data and there
are important capacity issues
• We spend far too much time and research on digital infrastructure and
cyberinfrastructure: we need to better understand use of digital content
• We need to create the enabling tools to unlock and add value to digital content
• NLW Research programme in digital collections can contribute to this research
agenda
• Accessible digital content is at the heart of a digital public space for us all…thanks
to JISC for much of it!
Digital Collections as the core of a digital public space for Wales
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Freely accessible digital content is at the heart of a digital public space for Wales
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This content tells our national story - a 'canon' of accessible material that can be used
and re-used for multiple purposes (research, education, public engagement)
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Accessible to many audiences (scholars, students, the public, the Welsh diaspora,
government, media, businesses, communities…)
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Content exposed through partnerships with Hwb, JISC, JORUM, TEL, Europeana…
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NLW collaborative research programme in digital collections:
• Building sustainable digital resources
• Strategic digitization initiatives addressing specific needs
• Increasing value and impact of digital collections through interoperability and re-use
• Collaborative research projects with partners in Wales and internationally
• Knowledge exchange : digitisaton, digital asset management, use of digital content
• Research on digital collections development, preservation, use and discovery