Life matters

Going Beyond Digitisation in the Heritage Sector

Charlotte Atkinson MA

Project Undaunted Digitisation Project Co-ordinator

Heritage and Education Centre

Lloyd’s Register Foundation

17th May 2016@LR_InfoCentre

Aims for today:

1) Learn about Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s Project Undaunted

2) Understand what is meant by digitisation in historic collections

3) Explore the potential innovations and trends that may be seen in the future of

heritage based digitisation

What does LR’s Heritage and Education Centre have?

• Who are we?

• What are our collections? 1764- Present

• Ship Annals, Wreck Reports and Plans

and Survey Reports (1834-1960)

• Register Books

• Wreck Books

• Committee Books

• Presentation Books

• LR Documents

• Staff Bibles

• Liverpool Underwriters

• British Corporation

• Photographs

• Born Digital

• Library

• Models

• Ship Bells

• Artwork

• Other 3D Objects

Anatomy of a Survey Report

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The Foundation’s charitable aims

• We support engineering-related research,

training and education for public benefit

worldwide

• We are focussed on risk and safety concerned

with the critical infrastructure on which modern

society relies

• Such infrastructure is often hazardous and

capitally intensive

• We are driven by impact and excellence. We

want to become the best charity of our type in

the UK and recognised internationally

• We connect science, safety and society

The Current Situation

• Poorly stored

• Indexed but not fully catalogued

• In need of conservation

• Unknown to all but a select few

• Underused

• Not fulfilling its educational potential

“A collection of global importance stuck in a localised format.”

What is digitisation?

Paper

based

asset

Conservation

Cataloguing

Imaging

Metadata

creation

Digital Asset

Digital

Preservation

DAMS

Use

Analogue Digital

Long term

access and

preservation

Analogue Digital

Heritage Collections

Project Undaunted

First and Famous Pilot Project

Internal DiscoveryStorage of

Physical

AssetsPreservation

External

Discovery

Educational

Initiatives

Accessibility

Objective

10% of

collection

c. 126,000

items

Day 1: Meet the Experts

Day 2: Practical Workshop

@LR_InfoCentre

DA

Y

1

Main trends in heritage digitisation

• “If it’s not online it is most likely to be perceived as if it does not exist”

~ Ray Siemans, University of Victoria

• Volume of material that needs to be digitised

• Accessibility and discoverability of information

• “Just because objects are online doesn’t make them interesting”

~ James Morley, Europeana

Digitise content that is valued and useful to audiences

Make sure it is discoverable

Provide the tools for it to be used

• Digital collections as storytelling

• Collaboration

• Learning from mistakes

• The power of crowds

Main Barriers to Digitisation

• Funding

• “Later” mentality

• Digital version doesn’t reflect the physical institution

Main Barriers to Digitisation

• Funding

• “Later” mentality

• Digital version doesn’t reflect the physical institution

• Opportunities for community openness and cohesion

• Rights ownership

• Technical knowledge

• Institutional buy in

• The Unknown

Day 2: Thinking about the future

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6DSu3IfRlo

Future Innovations

• Difficult to predict

• Digitisation will continue and increase, as will

expectations that material is available online

• The pervasiveness of social media will influence

outcomes

• Shift to personalisation of the web

Some workshop suggestions

Brainstorming uses for digitised material with the only limit being imagination, unfettered by

practical considerations or monetary constraints

Some of the suggestions:

• crowdsourcing digitisation using smart phones

• the use of social history stories from within the collection using social media

• the gamification of histories

• using interactive displays and online portals to show the changing nature of maritime

history through the objects

• holograms

• geo-tagging

• creating interactive maps

• developing an app that displays photos and archival documents of ships

• plotting objects onto a timeline

Lessons Learnt

• Be ready to do more with their digital assets than just create them

• Be responsive to the needs of their desired audiences and their potential uses of

the material

• Be open to collaborations with other institutions

• Be mindful of the pitfalls of the digital medium and mitigate them as much as

possible

• Be considerate of the future

Be Undaunted

Villains or superheroes? The choice is ours …

Lloyd’s Register and variants of it are trading names of Lloyd’s Register Group Limited, its subsidiaries and affiliates.

Copyright © Lloyd’s Register [Entity]. 2013. A member of the Lloyd’s Register group.

Marine Training Services Lloyd’s Register71 Fenchurch StreetLondonEC3M 4BS, UK

T +44 (0)20 7423 2417F +44 (0)20 7648 0788E marine-training@lr.org

Working togetherfor a safer world

Heritage and Education Centre

Lloyd's Register Foundation

71 Fenchurch Street

London, EC3M 4BS

T +44 (0)20 7423 2907

F +44 (0)20 7423 2039

E charlotte.atkinson@lr.org

Follow us on Twitter @LR_InfoCentre

Visit the Heritage and Education Centre website at www.lrfoundation.org.uk/public_education