Digitisation of collections

Liz Selby and Helena LiszkaJewish Museum London

AEJM 2011

Why digitise?• Bring your collections

out of the dark• Preventative

conservation• Bring your collections to

new audiences• People expect digital

content to be available and will do so increasingly in the future

• Use your content in creative and innovative ways – either online or in collaboration with others. Don’t get left behind!

Ways to use your digital content

• Online databases

• Online exhibitions

• Apps for smart phones and ipads

• Virtual tours

Digitisation at the Jewish Museum London

Over 15,000 items (of 28,000 in the collection) are currently digitised and searchable online: http://www.jewishmuseum.org.uk/search-our-collections-new and

www.Europeana.eu

Collections digitised through grant funded projects such as:• DCF/DDF (1999 onwards) – Judaica collection• Moving Here (New Opportunities fund, c.2004) - Social history collections• Judaica Europeana (2010-11) – Prints, posters, documents and oral histories

Ultimate aim: digitise and upload entire collection– but dependant on receiving grants

Europeana

Europe’s digital libraries, archives and museums online

http://www.europeana.eu/portal/

• Common point of access to millions of digital objects housed in Europe’s museums, libraries and archives

• Multilingual search engine

• Type of content includes documents, manuscripts, periodicals, audio recordings, pictures, photographs, posters and postcards

• 1500 institutions contributing access to their collections

• Access to 20 million objects online by 2013

•

Judaica Europeana: Jewish content online

• Brings together content under the EUROPEANA theme of cities, demonstrating specifically the Jewish contribution to Europe’s cities

• Makes digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable by digitising available collections

• Identifying Jewish content in collections that reflect the activities, creativity and self expression of Jews in European cities

• Digitising and aggregating this content into a coherent thematic collection in order to open up access

The networkJudaica Europeana is a network of

leading institutions which joined forces to promote Jewish cultural heritage:

• European Association of Jewish Culture, London

• Judaica Sammlung der Universitätsbibliothek der Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main

• Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris• Amitié, Centre for Research and

Innovation, Bologna• British Library, London• Hungarian Jewish Archives,

Budapest• Jewish Historical Institute,

Warsaw• Jewish Museum of Greece,

Athens• Jewish Museum London• Ministry of Cultural Heritage and

Activity (MiBAC), Rome

• Associate Partners• Ben Uri Gallery – The London Jewish

Museum of Art• Biblioteca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam• Center for Jewish History, New York• Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam• Jewish Museum Berlin • Jewish Museum, Frankfurt/Main• National Library of Israel, Jerusalem• Paris Yiddish Center—Medem Library• Sephardi Museum, Toledo• Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem• Ministerio de Cultura, Madrid• Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute,

Duisberg Museum, Frankfurt/Main

Our contribution to Judaica Europeana

• Digitising images, texts and oral history interviews

• Producing two online exhibitions: Yiddish Theatre in London and Jewish Britain: A history in

objects

• Working with schools and universities

Travelling trunk brought by a German refugee family to England in May 1939, The Jewish Museum London 

JML collections on Europeana

Reach unexpected audiences

Digital resources for Jewish history

European Holocaust Archives Projecthttp://www.ehri-project.eu/

Digital Yiddish Library: http://www.archive.org/details/nationalyiddishbookcenter

Sponsored by Stephen Spielberg

Digital Dead Sea Scrollshttp://dss.collections.imj.org.il/

Reconstructing past climate change through crowd sourcing

Apps – Museum of London street view

Hold your mobile up to a street scene and see the same location in an archive photograph from the Museum of London collection

Google art project

Digitising our collections

Practical considerations

• Who will fund your project?

• Do you have space for large 3D photography?

• Do you have the right equipment?

• Do you have staff hours and skills?

• How will you use the digitised resources?

3D object photography

Using the Digistore

Working with 2D material

Using volunteers• Using still life

photography students from Farnborough college at the Jewish Museum

• Using interns at the British Museum for the West Africa digitisation project

Planning, processing, guidelines

• Overview of work load• In-house photography or outsourcing• Selecting material• Copyright checking• Sorting material by size and type; creating batch lists

accordingly; deciding location• Processing and re-sizing• Uploading to collections management system (Adlib) and

web • Guidelines:www.minervaeurope.org/interoperability/technicalguidelines.htm

Technical considerations

– Need for a digital master

• Best possible reproduction

• Create jpegs for online use, sending by email etc

– Naming the files

– Digital storage

Documenting your collection

• Good documentation standards increase access to collections

• Creation of a common language for the semantic Web using controlled terminologies eg. Creating terms on Adlib using other thesauri as reference point eg.Getty

• Applying established vocabularies created by generations of librarians and scholars to the web

Poster for 'The Daughter of Zion' at St Luke's Hall in London, 1944

Coffee set from Aden, brought by an Adeni family to the UK

Interview with Minnie Levy about her WW2 service, recorded in 1991 on cassette tape

Please discuss in groups

• What are the advantages of digitising these items?

• How would you approach digitisation for each object?

• Which would be your priority and why?

• What problems might you encounter? (technical, legal and practical)

• How would you use the digitised record?

Talking points

• How to select what to digitise? What about those collections not digitised – ignored? Not used?

• Will smaller museums with smaller budgets be left behind if they can’t digitise their collections?

• Will digital objects take precedence over the real thing?

• How will the increase of historical content online impact upon academic research?