@SimonTanner

Democratisation of Collections through Digitisation

Simon Tanner

Department of Digital Humanities,

King’s College London

Twitter: @SimonTanner

05/02/2015 01:25 ENC Public Talk 19 February 2013 1

Digital Humanities:

the application of digital technology to humanities disciplines

reflection upon the impact of digital media upon humanity

> 50 academics & researchers

~ £2.5 million research income per annum

>5 million digital objects, 130+projects

200+million hits over 5 years: 2009-2013

www.kcl.ac.uk/ddh/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp4y-_VoXdA

Digital Humanities methods for historical analysis of

Irish Immigrants in 19th Century London, England

@SimonTanner@SimonTanner

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/us-art.html

Charging Models & Rights Strategy for Images in Museums

@SimonTanner@SimonTanner

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

Inspiring Research, Inspiring Scholarship

@SimonTanner@SimonTanner

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/impact.html

The Balanced Value Impact Model

The purpose of digitisation:

to educate, enlighten & entertain

Memory organisations are where a

community nourishes its

memory, imagination & creativity.

Where it connects with the past

& invents its future.

“Old Bailey Online reaches out to communities, such as family

historians, who are keen to find a personal history, reflected in a

national story... Digital resources both create a new audience, and

reconfigure our analysis to favour the individual.”

Professor Tim Hitchcock, University of Hertfordshire

“Digitised resources allow me to discover the hidden lives of

disabled people, who have not traditionally left records of their

lives. I have found disability was discussed by many writers in the

Eighteenth Century and that disabled men and women played

an important role in the social life of the time.”

Dr David Turner, Swansea University

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

New areas of research enabled

Effective, efficient and world leading

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

Bringing

collections out

of the dark

f. 23 detail

Digitising the Dead Sea Scrolls

Spectral Classification

Use of complete spectrum separates

ink, parchment, backing and background

Bestowing economic & community benefits

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

In 2008 National Museums Liverpool did a full economic impact assessment.

They found that: "during the Capital of Culture period, 25% of all visitors to Liverpool

visited the Walker Art Gallery, 24% visited the Merseyside Maritime Museum and 15%

visited World Museum, while about 5% of visitors only visited a National Museums

Liverpool venue and no other attraction during their visit.

In total, National Museums Liverpool is reliably estimated to be worth

£115 million to the economy of the Liverpool city region, a spend that supports 2,274

full-time jobs“

www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/about/corporate/reports/EIS_summary_2008.pdf

“The Freeze Frame archive is

invaluable in charting changes

in the polar regions. Making the

material available to all will help

with further research into

scientific studies around

global warming and

climate change”

Pen Hadow,

Polar Explorer

Interdisciplinary & collaborative

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

http://simon-tanner.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/when-crowdsourcing-was-called.html

Telecrofting - a tale of PuffinsShetland Isles Museum and Archives

http://photos.shetland-museum.org.uk/

@SimonTanner@SimonTanner

“You want a massive digital collection: SCAN THE STACKS!... You agonize over digital metadata and the purity thereof...

And you offer crap access.

If I ask you to talk about your collections, I know that you will glow as you describe the amazing treasures

you have. When you go for money for digitization projects, you talk up the incredible cultural value...

But then if I look at the results of those digitization projects, I find the shittiest websites on the planet.

It’s like a gallery spent all its money buying art and then just stuck the paintings in supermarket bags and leaned them against the wall.”

Nat Torkington (@gnat) http://bit.ly/rNHMVr“Libraries: Where It All Went Wrong” 2011

On the other hand...

@SimonTanner@SimonTanner

“Michelle Pickover, curator of manuscripts at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa,

argues that ‘Cyberspace is not an uncontested domain. The digital medium contains an ideological base – it is a site of struggle.’

The real challenges in collection digitisation in national memory institutions, she argues, are not technological or technical

but social and political. Librarians and archivists are ‘agents of social change’ who,

through their appraisal, selection, arrangement and retention of material, are able to become active participants in the production of social memory,

and who, by the nature of their work, cannot help but ‘privilege certain narratives and silence or marginalise others’

Kahn, R and Tanner, S (2014) Building Futures: The Role of Digital Collections in Shaping National Identity in Africa (chapter in African Studies in the Digital Age)

Contested Spaces

Discovering

Annotating

Comparing

Referring

Sampling

Illustrating

Representing

Scholarship

From John Unsworth’s Scholarly Primitives

Reason 1: digital humanities digital research resources are recognised

Reason 2: digital humanities enhances the research environment

Reason 3: digital humanities has impact

3 Reasons to say YES to DH

http://simon-tanner.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/3-reasons-ref2014-was-good-for-digital.html

@SimonTanner

Democratisation of Collections through Digitisation

Simon Tanner

Department of Digital Humanities,

King’s College London

Twitter: @SimonTanner

05/02/2015 01:25 ENC Public Talk 19 February 2013 22