PTFS Europe Limited

Archive for the ‘Digitisation’ Category

Over 2000 recordings by British and Irish Muscians have been digitised and made available online in a project by Kings College, London.

The Musicains of Britain and Ireland 1900-1950 project is allowing listeners and researchers to rediscover leading musicians who were once household names.

Most of the recordings are making their first public appearance since they came out on shellac over 60 years ago and are linked to a range of research resources about the history of recording to help people make the most of the collection.

The discs were selected specifically to highlight world-class British and Irish performers recorded between 1900 and 1950, especially artists neglected by the newly-formed EMI after the merger of the Gramophone Co and Columbia in 1931.

For more information about this project and to listen to some samples,visit the JISC webpages

All the tracks and many more are all available on the CHARM website.

The first of this year’s releases of the John Johnson Collection: An Archive of Printed Ephemera has just been announced.

The publication is a series of fourteen specially commissioned essays that respond to a diverse selection of items from the John Johnson Collection.

These concise and illuminating studies – which have been contributed by Rob Banham, Troy Bickham, Robert Colls, Simon Eliot, D. J. Taylor, Michael Twyman and Mariana Warner – are available in the John Johnson Collection alongside digital facsimile images of the items to which they relate.

The complete list of essays is accessible via a link on the John Johnson Collection home page or by clicking the Responses link in the toolbar that appears at the top of every screen in the John Johnson Collection.

Link to Web Site

The inclusion of another 1m pages on the BL Historic Newspapers website takes the total number of pages of 19th Century Newspapers available online to over 3 million22 new titles cover a range of both regional and metropolitan publications including the Cheshire Observer, the Royal Cornwall Gazette, the Isle of Man Times and the Nottinghamshire Guardian

Full Article

JISC recently issues a call for studies to analyse the benefit and impact of digital resources.

Simon Tanner (King’s Digital Consultancy Services, King’s College London) and Pete Dalton (Evidence Base, University of Central Birmingham) have won the call, and are now starting the four month project, sifting through a mess of extant evidence and also working with funders, programmes, projects and other relevant stakeholders to build their argument.

The study will concentrate on four main areas:

• Meeting and advancing research needs
• Bringing collections out of the dark
• Stimulating the economy, underpinning competitiveness and developing skills
• Reaching out and building communities

The final report and related outputs are scheduled to be released in July 2010. More information is available from the webpage on the JISC website.

In 2008, the Library of Virginia (LVA) selected the digital asset management system DigiTool to host a centralized collection of digital state government publications. The Virginia state digital repository targets three primary user groups: state agencies, depository libraries and the general public. DigiTool’s ability to create depositor profiles for individual agencies to submit their publications, its integration with the Aleph ILS, and product support by ExLibris were primary factors in its selection. As a smaller institution, however, LVA lacked the internal resources to take full advantage of DigiTool’s full set of features. The process of cataloging a heterogenous collection of state documents also proved to be a challenge within DigiTool. This article takes a retrospective look at what worked, what did not, and what could have been done to improve the experience.

Link to Full Article

22 March – The Prime Minister announced today that The National Archives will lead a programme to create an online Digital Domesday book, which will list non-personal and re-usable central government datasets, by autumn this year. The plan formed part of an announcement on Building Britain’s Digital Future.

Link to Article

Tuesday 16th March saw the launch of Exeter University’s Digital Collections Online.

Delivering images and digital objects from Exeter’s most prestigious research collections, including over 2000 images showcasing Victorian culture, openly available for teaching and research.

The website includes e-learning packages to help embed the collections use within the university’s teaching, learning and research.

Highlights of the collection include historic popular culture images from Queen Victoria  to Alice in Wonderland.

The Launch was preceeded by a workshop on the Digital Futures of Special Collections.

Full Article

20 July 2010, 10am-4pm
British Library Conference Centre, Euston Road, London

• Explore the impact of the large scale digitisation of newspapers
• Consider the effect that this has had on research and researchers
• Question the implied changes to research methodologies

Not only has the digitisation of historical newspapers made it easier to discover information about events from the past, but the way in which they have been digitised makes it possible to discover how those events were represented, debated and sold as news. This conference will debate current limitations of this digitisation as well as opportunities for future development.

The conference is being organised jointly by the British Library and JISC. Speakers will include Professor Laurel Brake, Professor Tim Hitchcock, Professor Robert Shoemaker, Professor Miles Taylor and Dr James Mussell.

For more information and to book tickets visit the Institute of Historical Research’s website. Many thanks to the Institute for hosting the online registration form.

£35.00 for full registration
£25.00 student concession

The European Community recently held a meeting in Luxembourg to inform potential applicants about their the ICT Policy Support Programme.

30 million Euros have been allocated to the digital libraries strand which aims to improve accessibility, use and preservation of Europe’s rich and diverse cultural and scientific heritage.

More Information can be found here

JorumOpen is the result of a JISC funded project under their Digitisation programme. You can even follow the YouTube video and take the tour.

JorumOpen will allow lecturers and teachers  to share materials under the Creative Commons licence framework.  This will allow for easier sharing, grants users greater rights for use and re-use of online content and is easier to understand.