The Great War Archive A Community Collection Alun Edwards University of Oxford

The Great War ArchiveA Community Collection

Alun EdwardsUniversity of Oxford

http://runcoco.oucs.ox.ac.uk/

This item is from The Great War Archive, University of Oxford (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa); © MAUREEN ROGERS

• 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

• 2007-9 JISC Digitisation Programme– The First World War Poetry Digital Archive http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit

• Manuscripts of major war poets

• The Great War Archive project – public collection initiative

• Enriching the First World War Poetry Digital Archive project

– Enhance collections using Web 2.0 technologies

– Digitise manuscripts by more poets e.g. Siegfried Sassoon

• 2010-11 JISC e-Content Programme– RunCoCo project starts January 2010 funded under the Institutional Skills and

Strategy (Strand A) Programme

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


The Great War Archive Initiative

• Ran from March to June 2008

• A ‘Community Collection’ – to harvest digital versions of items

originating from the First World War

held by members of the general

public

• Innovative approach – collection strategies

– digitisation

– cataloguing

• Public involvement in major

research projects

• Exploiting the rise of digital

photography and home

Internet access, the project

attracted thousands of

volunteers


The Great War Archive Initiative:

Submission Website

The Great War Archive: Submission Days

TechnicalitiesPoetry Digital Archive• Primary source material dispersed

amongst libraries and archives in the UK, USA and Canada

• Digitisation performed by holding institutions according to project benchmarks

• Images digitised as High Quality TIFFs and delivered as ‘good enough quality’ JPGs, Audio as MP3, Video as MPEG 4

• Catalogued by trained cataloguers• Quality Assured twice, including

by a key expert in the field– Dates, location, provenance, physicality

etc.

• Images digitally watermarked using DigiMark

The Great War Archive• Primary source material held by

individuals in the UK and abroad

• Digitisation performed by the public using scanner/digital camera or by the project team at submission days

• Digitisation guidelines provided– Not mandatory

• All files types accepted

• Initially catalogued by the public• Quality Assured and metadata

expanded upon by the project team

– Dates, location, provenance, physicality etc.

This item is from The Great War Archive, University of Oxford (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa); © Janet Mercer


Histories which may have been lost…

• 42 unique unpublished diaries by soldiers from a range of

battlefields

• 63 memoirs

• 255 unpublished letters

• Over 700 photographs, pamphlets, local recruiting posters,

images of rare objects (such as the original designs for the

tomb of the unknown soldier)

• Even material saved from the skip!

This item is from The Great War Archive, University of Oxford (www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa); © S.Blore

The Great War Archive Initiative: The Aftermath

• Over 6,500 items collected– A Flickr group continues to collect

items (over 2,050 to date)

– Used in research

– Used extensively by the public

– Used in teaching

• Highly commended for

Times Higher Ed. award and

UCISA Award for Excellence

• CoCoCo submission software

released as open source

• RunCoCo project starts

http://www.flickr.com/photos/allilinin/63081204/

• There are many pitfalls and bullet holes associated with community collections such as The Great War Archive

– Quality of material – Quality and validity of metadata – Less resource intensive to

digitise BUT more resource intensive in terms of marketing and engagement

– Building a community requires long-term support

• This is not necessarily supported by current funding models

The Great War Archive: Lessons Learned

The Great War Archive: Outcomes

• But there are also many advantages:– Engaging the general public in University projects– Releasing unseen material, providing new avenues

for research and teaching

– Preserving histories that may have been lost

– Economies of Scale: £3.50 v £40.00 per image

– Communities can become self-serving

http://runcoco.oucs.ox.ac.uk/

• The Great War Archive shows how community collections can work and bring great benefits, most notably reduced costs

• And that this is possibly a model we should be pursuing in the future alongside traditional high-quality digitisation

– Moreover, that academia should try to engage the public in its research and recognise that the public not only may hold material, but also is willing to engage in these activities

... leading to the RunCoCo project

[email protected]://runcoco.oucs.ox.ac.uk/

Future…• In 2010 RunCoCo will:

• Disseminate key software tools, methodologies, and work-flows developed under The Great War Archive• Online documentation e.g. a communication strategy

• Training work-shops

• Online help-desk and FAQs

• An open source system (called CoCoCo) to collect digital objects

• Run an exemplar community collection in a teaching and learning context • To mobilize the public and academics to contribute material

they hold relating to the Anglo-Saxon period of British history (450AD-1066AD)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29007475@N08/3043989309/

The Great War Archive A Community Collection Alun Edwards University of Oxford

Documents

Transcript of The Great War Archive A Community Collection Alun Edwards University of Oxford