Changing Light: a plethora of digital tools as slides gasp their last?

The title 'Changing Light' reflects the enormous changeover from analogue slides to digital images, both a cultural shift and a physical shift down to the change in light from the smoky beams of dual slide projectors piercing the dark of a classroom, to the bright white classrooms of the digital age. The evidence for the 'death of slides' has been mounting for a number of years and reported by visual resources curators in the US and the UK. In 2005 JISC funded AHDS Visual Arts to report on 'the effects of the digital image revolution on the UK arts education community'; the Association of Curators of Art and Design Images (ACADI), the Association of Art Historians (AAH), and the Art Libraries Society (ARLIS/UK & Ireland) contributed significantly to the Digital Picture initiative. However some of the issues highlighted by the final report are yet to be addressed such as provision of copyright-cleared digital images for use in education. This paper considers what arts education stands to lose from the 'death of slides' in the context of digital images and the plethora of digital presentation tools. As well as a change in light, there is a change from the physical tangible slide technology to the virtual digital image and computing in the cloud

Locating image presentation technology within pedagogic practice

This article presents data gathered through a University for the Creative Arts Learning and Teaching Research Grant (2009-2010); including a study of existing image presentation tools, both digital and non-digital; and analysis of data from four interviews and an online questionnaire. The aim of the research was to look afresh at available technology from the point of view of a lecturer in the visual arts, and to use the information gathered to look more critically at the available technology

Kultivating Kultur: increasing arts research deposit

This paper presents research undertaken as part of the JISC-funded Kultivate project and discusses how it is encouraging arts research deposit in UK institutional repositories. It presents an overview of the current arts research repository landscape in the UK at time of writing (September 2011). Through community engagement with the Kultur II Group and technical enhancements to EPrints, Kultivate is sharing and supporting the application of best practice in the development of institutional repositories that are appropriate to the specific needs and behaviours of creative and visual arts researchers. The Kultur II Group is open to all specialist creative arts institutions, departments within larger multidisciplinary institutions, and researchers in the UK; members include repository managers and administrators, researchers, librarians, technical staff, academics, and research office staff

Cross-departmental initiative to produce an online Image Library for staff at the National Gallery, London

The Image Gallery project ran from June 2007 and was launched via a tab in the staff Intranet in April 2008. It was a collaboration between the Photographic Department and the Libraries and Archive Department, but also engaged image users across the Gallery. The aim of the Image Gallery was to provide photographs taken of Gallery activities and events, images from the Photographic Archive, and works of art from other museums and galleries, not the works of art in the National Gallery's collection. This paper discusses project management standards, data standards, creation of a subject index, design of the interface, and user testing

The art of presentation: teaching with images

'The Art of Presentation: teaching with images' was held at HEFCE, Centre Point, London on Tuesday 10th May. This workshop, aimed primarily at teaching staff, investigated digital presentation tools within arts education. Attendees were drawn from the Kensington and Chelsea College of Further Education, Middlesex University, Northbrook College Sussex, Southampton Solent University, University for the Creative Arts (four Colleges were represented), University of Brighton, University of the Arts London, and the University of Warwick. In addition to two hands-on workshops (one involving laptops and the other involving knitting yarn and Blu-Tack®) presentations were given using Prezi, PowerPoint, using a handling collection, and by flip chart. The plenary session was chaired by Hilaire Graham, Dean of Learning and Teaching, University for the Creative Arts

KAPTUR: exploring the nature of visual arts research data and its effective management.

KAPTUR (2011-2013), funded by JISC and led by the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS), is a highly collaborative project involving four institutional partners: the Glasgow School of Arts; Goldsmiths, University of London; University for the Creative Arts; and the University of the Arts London. The preservation and publication of research data is seen as positive and all UK Research Councils now require it as a condition of funding (RCUK 2012). As a result a network of data repositories are emerging (DataCite 2012a), some funded by Research Councils, others by institutions themselves. However, research data management practice within the visual arts appears ad hoc. None of the specialist arts institutions within the UK has implemented research data management policies (DCC 2011a), nor established research data management systems. KAPTUR seeks to investigate the nature of visual arts research data, making recommendations for its effective management; develop a model of best practice applicable to both specialist arts institutions and arts departments in multidisciplinary institutions; and apply, test and refine the model with the four institutional partners. This paper will explore the nature of visual arts research data and how effective data management can ensure its long term usage, curation and preservation

KAPTUR: technical analysis report

Led by the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) and funded by the JISC Managing Research Data programme (2011-13) KAPTUR will discover, create and pilot a sectoral model of best practice in the management of research data in the visual arts in collaboration with four institutional partners: Glasgow School of Art; Goldsmiths, University of London; University for the Creative Arts; and University of the Arts London. This report is framed around the research question: which technical system is most suitable for managing visual arts research data? The first stage involved a literature review including information gathered through attendance at meetings and events, and Internet research, as well as information on projects from the previous round of JISCMRD funding (2009-11). During February and March 2012, the Technical Manager carried out interviews with the four KAPTUR Project Officers and also met with IT staff at each institution. This led to the creation of a user requirement document (Appendix A), which was then circulated to the project team for additional comments and feedback. The Technical Manager selected 17 systems to compare with the user requirement document (Appendix B). Five of the systems had similar scores so these were short-listed. The Technical Manager created an online form into which the Project Officers entered priority scores for each of the user requirements in order to calculate a more accurate score for each of the five short-listed systems (Appendix C) and this resulted in the choice of EPrints as the software for the KAPTUR project

Uncovering hidden treasures in silver trunks: the Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection

Hidden away in silver trunks at the Zandra Rhodes Studio are over 5,000 dresses spanning fifty years of British Fashion and including designs worn by clients such as Elizabeth Taylor, Freddie Mercury, and Diana, Princess of Wales. The Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection, with an accompanying Open Education Resource (OER), will provide unique online access to images of 500 of the designer’s most iconic garments, for use in study and research by the next generation of fashion and textile designers, and fashion historians

Kultivating Kultur: institutional repositories and the arts

This paper was presented at the CAiRO Summer School, University of Bristol, 29th June 2011. Short abstract: This presentation will give an overview of institutional repositories setting them in the context of arts research and address the following questions: What is working for arts researchers, and what are the issues? How are repositories being enhanced now, and in the future, to bring benefits to researchers and their institutions

eNova project: Jisc final report

In order to present an online C.V. of their research outputs, researchers may have to produce the same information for multiple access points (such as institutional web pages, staff research profiles, and personal websites) thereby duplicating effort and leading to issues with out-of-date content. The MePrints extension generates personal research pages and provides a personalised working area that is integrated into the EPrints repository service. When a research output is uploaded by a researcher it automatically appears on their research profile page; researchers save time and effort and the pages are kept up-to-date. The University of the Arts London (UAL) and the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) both use EPrints repository software and have worked together through the JISC-funded Kultur (2007-09) and Kultivate (2010-2011) projects, and the Kultur II Group (2009- ), in order to encourage arts researchers to deposit their research outputs in institutional repositories. According to the vision of JISC Repositories: take-up and embedding (JISCRTE), eNova takes-up the existing MePrints extension and the concept of 'kulturisation' from the Kultur project and fuses these together to provide an enhanced research profile tool suitable for the specific needs and behaviours of creative and visual arts researchers. By engaging users and working across institutional departments the embedding of the institutional research repository is facilitated and encouraged