Irish Script on Screen: the Growth and Development of a Manuscript Digitisation Project

Irish Script on Screen (ISOS), a project of the School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, was initiated in 1998, with the stated aim of the high-resolution digitisation of entire Gaelic manuscripts and of making the digital images freely available on the World Wide Web (www.isos.dias.ie). The growth and development of ISOS has therefore paralleled, and in some cases informed, the evolution of awareness of digital matters in Ireland over the last ten years. This paper describes the history and structure of ISOS, its public reception, its impact on research, and the varying uses that are made of the site. The questions of further potential and future direction are also addressed

Cultural Heritage Information: Artefacts and Digitization Technologies

Since the 1970s, the gallery, library, archive, and museum sector has promoted and encouraged digitization - the conversion of analog into digital information - to increase access to cultural heritage material through various incarnations of digital media. Indeed, it is now expected by both users and professionals that institutions should be undertaking digitization programs, and best practices in this area are now well documented and understood. This chapter scopes out the background to the current digitization environment, giving an overview of the methods and approaches involved. It points to current developments, highlighting the use of both two and three dimensional capture methods for the creation of digital surrogates of objects and artefacts, indicating the potential for further development in the sector, whilst drawing attention to current issues faced when digitizing objects and artefacts including cost, sustainability, impact evaluation, and expectation management in the changing information environment. The affordances of previously prohibitively expensive techniques – such as multi-spectral imaging and 3D scanning – are now available at relatively inexpensive rates, which also raises questions about digital literacy and our understanding of what it means, for both the end user and information professional, to create digital versions of our cultural inheritance

The Wiltshire Wills Feasibility Study

The Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office has nearly ninety thousand wills in its care. These records are neither adequately catalogued nor secured against loss by facsimile microfilm copies. With support from the Heritage Lottery Fund the Record Office has begun to produce suitable finding aids for the material. Beginning with this feasibility study the Record Office is developing a strategy to ensure the that facsimiles to protect the collection against risk of loss or damage and to improve public access are created.<p></p> This feasibility study explores the different methodologies that can be used to assist the preservation and conservation of the collection and improve public access to it. The study aims to produce a strategy that will enable the Record Office to create digital facsimiles of the Wills in its care for access purposes and to also create preservation quality microfilms. The strategy aims to seek the most cost effective and time efficient approach to the problem and identifies ways to optimise the processes by drawing on the experience of other similar projects. This report provides a set of guidelines and recommendations to ensure the best use of the resources available for to provide the most robust preservation strategy and to ensure that future access to the Wills as an information resource can be flexible, both local and remote, and sustainable

Introduction

This book brings together for the first time the collected wisdom of international leaders in the theory and practice in the emerging field of cultural heritage crowdsourcing. It features eight accessible case studies of groundbreaking projects from leading cultural heritage and academic institutions, and four thought-­‐provoking essays that reflect on the wider implications of this engagement for participants and on the institutions themselves

Digitised content in the UK research library and archives sector

In August 2004, the JISC and CURL Digital Content Creation & Curation Task Force issued an invitation to tender for a study of the current provision of digitised collections for researchers in the UK higher education sector. The objectives of this study were to: 1) Produce a high level survey of digitised material, both already available and in the process of being created, held in UK research collections across all disciplines 2) Survey demand for digitised material and identify gaps in existing provision 3) Develop a mechanism for identifying future digitisation priorities 4) Review funding structures and opportunities and assess possible ways of funding priority areas 5) Recommend standards and formats for future digitisation projects 6) Provide an outline action plan for a national digitisation strategy for the UK research community. JISC and CURL commissioned a team of researchers from the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University to carry out this survey. The study was carried out between 1 November 2004 and 7 March 2005

Digitised content in the UK research library and archives sector

A study of the current provision of digitised collections for researchers in the UK higher education sector was carried out through desk research, a Webbased questionnaire of research libraries and interviews. The study identified a great deal of digitised material in the sector and there has been considerable expenditure of UK public funds in the creation of digital material in the last ten years. However, funding of digitisation been piecemeal and uncoordinated. It is clear that there is a need for coordination, but no agreement on how it should be implemented. Any future national approach would have to be a co-ordinated and distributed, rather than centralised, one

Harnessing the cognitive surplus of the nation: new opportunities for libraries in a time of change. The 2012 Jean Arnot Memorial Fellowship Essay.

This essay is the winner of the 2012 Jean Arnot Memorial Fellowship. The essay draws on Rose Holley's experience of managing innovative library services that engage crowds such as The Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program and Trove, and her ongoing research into library, archive and museum crowdsourcing projects. This experience and knowledge has been put into the context of Jean Arnot’s values and visions for Australian libraries. Jean Arnot, the distinguished Australian librarian, described her vision for an innovative library service over sixty years ago. Rose suggests how some of her goals are now being achieved through use of the internet and digital technologies, and how we can build on these to ensure that libraries remain valued and relevant by harnessing the cognitive surplus of the nation they serve, and by crowdsourcing

Inspiring research, inspiring scholarship: the value and benefit of digital resources for learning, teaching, research and enjoyment

This report is the product of a JISC funded project to investigate the values, benefits and impacts of digitised resources. It performs the task of synthesising information relating to the benefits of digitisation and helps to provide a compelling argument for future digitisation work.The opportunity to engage actively with British content that is educational, entertaining and deeply enlightening is here. Technology exists to drive forward a vision of intelligent environments that supply the right information to the right person at the right time. Paradoxically, what is missing is the depth of digitised content to make such technical developments more significant than mere playthings. To achieve a Digital Britain that is educated and ready to exploit these new technologies, the treasure house of British content has to be digitised much more comprehensively.For the intelligent Digital Britain we need beautiful information, authentic data, validated content and a critical mass that will drive economic impact, research innovation and social benefits

Reconfiguring experimental archaeology using 3D reconstruction

Experimental archaeology has long yielded valuable insights into the tools and techniques that featured in past peoples’ relationship with the material world around them. We can determine, for example, how many trees would need to be felled to construct a large round-house of the southern British Iron Age (over one hundred), infer the exact angle needed to strike a flint core in order to knap an arrowhead in the manner of a Neolithic hunter-gatherer, or recreate the precise environmental conditions needed to store grain in underground silos over the winter months, with only the technologies and materials available to Romano-Briton villagers (see Coles 1973; Reynolds 1993). However, experimental archaeology has, hitherto, confined itself to rather rigid, empirical and quantitative questions such as those posed in these examples. This is quite understandable, and in line with good scientific practice, which stipulates that any ‘experiment’ must be based on replicable data, and be reproducible. Despite their potential in this area however, it is notable that digital reconstruction technologies have yet to play a significant role in experimental archaeology. Whilst many excellent examples of digital 3D reconstruction of heritage sites exist (for example the Digital Roman Forum project: http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Forum) most, if not all, of these are characterized by a drive to establish a photorealistic re-creation of physical features. This paper will discuss possibilities that lie beyond straightforward positivist re-creation of heritage sites, in the experimental reconstruction of intangible heritage. Between 2010 and 2012, the authors led the Motion in Place Platform project (MiPP: http://www.motioninplace.org/), a capital grant under the AHRC's DEDEFI scheme developing motion capture and analysis tools for exploring how people move through spaces. In the course of MiPP, a series of experiments were conducted using motion capture hardware and software at the Silchester Roman town archaeological excavation in Hampshire, and at the Butser Ancient Farm facility, where Romano-British and Iron Age dwellings have been constructed according to the best experimental practice. As well as reconstructing such Roman and early British dwellings in 3D, the authors were able to use motion capture to reconstruct the kind of activities that – according to the material evidence – are likely to have been carried out by the occupants who used them. Bespoke motion capture suits developed for the project were employed, and the traces captured and rendered with a combination of Autodesk and Unity3D software. This sheds new light on how the reconstructed spaces - and, by inference, their ancient counterparts - were most likely to have been used. In particular the exercises allowed the evaluation and visualisation of changes in behaviour which occur as a result of familiarity with an environment and the acquisition of expertise over time; and to assess how interaction between different actors affects how everyday tasks are carried out