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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 2 nd 2013

Digital Pathways: Digital humanities and the interface between scholarly community and libraries Lorna Hughes University of Wales Chair in Digital Collections,

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Digital Pathways:Digital humanities and the interface between

scholarly community and libraries

Lorna HughesUniversity 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 Arleinwww.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 OneCymruww1.llgc.org.uk

Rhyfel Byd a’r profiad Cymreig /Welsh experience of World War One

• 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

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…What do we do with all this digital stuff?

- 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

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

• 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

• 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

• Freely accessible digital content is at the heart of a digital public space for Wales • 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) • Accessible to many audiences (scholars, students, the public, the Welsh diaspora,

government, media, businesses, communities…) • Content exposed through partnerships with Hwb, JISC, JORUM, TEL, Europeana…• 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