Languages
Pages
Legal
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 [email protected]
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
Follow us on Twitter @LR_InfoCentre
Visit the Heritage and Education Centre website at www.lrfoundation.org.uk/public_education
Top Related