resource enhancement: reaching your target audience the first world war poetry digital archive

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

Resource enhancement: Reaching your target audience

The First World War Poetry Digital Archive

Kate Lindsay, Project ManagerOxford University


Overview

• Background

• The Goals of the First World War Poetry Digital Archive

• The Collections

• User Engagement - from start to finish

• Site Demo


Background

• 1996: JISC funded the Virtual Seminars Project

• Drew together primary materials on Wilfred Owen

scattered across a range of archives and an array of

contextual resources (WOMDA)

• Web based tutorials to advance the possibilities of

traditional teaching

• One of the first multimedia collections designed

specifically as a teaching resource -more than 1 million

hits.


Goals of the First World War Poetry Digital Archive

1. To make primary source material available to researchers

and students which would otherwise be difficult to access

2. To place the material in context thus widening the site’s

appeal to include history, military history, women studies,

and media studies

3. To add value by providing tools for research and education

4. Proof of concept: The Great War Archive


The Archive Collections• c. 4000 digital images of primary source material (manuscripts, letters,

service records) from Edward Thomas, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg,

Vera Brittain and Roland Leighton on launch.

• Online corpora of the full-texts of

the poems.

• c. 500 Multimedia objects (photographs,

audio and video) from the IWM.

• Publications of War (recruitment

posters, trench papers etc.)

• c. 7000 items submitted by the general

public of items originating from the

Great War.


User EngagementWhat we needed to know

• Who would be the archive’s key users?

• What are the requirements of a web archive for these user groups?

• How are the users likely to find out about the archive?


User EngagementDefining User Groups

Researchers

HE Lecturers

Teachers

The General PublicUG Students

(Who have stuff from WW1!!!)

Military Historians

School Students

Parents

Family Historians


User EngagementBuilding up dissemination networks

• Enlisted ‘Friends of the Project’ who would disseminate our work

• To raise public awareness produced podcasts with key experts and

public figures on the First World War and released these into itunes.

• Discussion groups, Facebook, mailing lists set up early on

• Spam wikipedia!


User EngagementThe Steering Group

• Formed a steering group made up of researchers, lecturers and

teachers, and technical experts.

• We gained an in depth knowledge of current research processes for

the subject area.

• Act as brokers and champions for the target user groups


User EngagementTeaching WW1 Literature Workshop

• Run in November 2007, before development had commenced on

the web interface or the production of educational resources.

• Focus was on literature not technology

• Collected scenarios of how First World War Literature is currently

taught and from this emerged the foundations for the design of the

archive and the types of resources that were to be developed.

• A user group we could maintain contact with


User EngagementUser Testing

• Two extensive phases of user testing conducted throughout the

development period

• Phase 1: Focused on researchers and looked at the more advanced

search and viewing functionalities

• Implications for metadata

• Implications for system development

• Phase 2: Focused on teachers and students and looked at the

browsing functionality and educational materials

• Implications for web site design and structure

• Implications for content, especially educational resources


User EngagementUser Testing: Methodology

• Scenario-based online survey (in surveymonkey.com) guiding

participants through a series of tasks in the archive.

• Participants went through the survey with two researchers and

encouraged to ‘talk-aloud’

• Additional notes taken by the researcher

• Screen capture using Adobe Captivate

• All data collected and the resulting actions documented in a public

wiki

http://wiki.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg-public/WW1projectUserFeedback



Reaching the target audiencesThe Great War Archive

• Specific targets: military enthusiasts and collectors, genealogists, the elderly

• Staged marketing campaign

• Propaganda sent to all city and county

libraries

• Newspaper and radio coverage

• Camps set up at strategic locations

through voluntary enlistment - each

camp responsible for local operations.

Troops sent to camps to run recruitment

events.

• Online targeting - Flickr, ebay, forums


User EngagementOutcomes and Lessons

• Users played a valuable part in the design of the archive’s interface.

• We didn’t know enough about how the subject is taught in schools

and at university.

• Staff need knowledge of the subject area

• Many users do not know how a technology can benefit them until

they can see its possibilities firsthand (e.g. Web 2.0).

• A post-dissemination plan was needed

• They wanted more poets!


Continuing User EngagementEnriching the First World War Poetry Digital Archive

• Two workshops with teachers and lecturers in 2009

• Alternative visualisations of metadata in the archive via the use of

Web 2.0 technologies• Google maps

• Timelines

• VUE

• Flickr

• ‘Ask an expert’ facility

• Make the Great War Archive Submission Interface and the Path

Creation Tool available as open source.

• Digitise Sassoon

Further Information

• Kate Lindsay, Project Manager

[email protected]

• http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

• http://wiki.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg-public/WW1projectUserFeedback









resource enhancement: reaching your target audience the first world war poetry digital archive

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