JiscMail Logo
Email discussion lists for the UK Education and Research communities

Help for MCG Archives


MCG Archives

MCG Archives


MCG@JISCMAIL.AC.UK


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Proportional Font

LISTSERV Archives

LISTSERV Archives

MCG Home

MCG Home

MCG  May 2008

MCG May 2008

Options

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password

Subject:

Re: 21st Century digital curation

From:

"Lowy, Stephen" <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Museums Computer Group <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Thu, 1 May 2008 13:51:17 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (64 lines)

Colleagues

As an attendee of the last night's seminar and a member of a NOF project back in the "early naughties" I feel Carole and Roy's guarded comments about mass digitisation were understandable.  

The failure of some NOF projects and that includes the one I was involved with (East of England Sense of Place) was that it geared to doing mass digitisation, which it did very well, but little or no thought was given to making it accessible or, and this is the killer, sustainable.

There's no point in digitisation tens of thousands of objects or archives if no one can access them.  It would be interesting to see how many digital images saved on CDs or DVDs from NOF projects have now been lost due to physical deterioration, a significant portion I bet (that's part of the sustainability issue), let alone readable images residing on moribund websites.

I suppose we were a bit lucky 10 years ago when mass digitisation was fine for funders, 10 years earlier mass documentation was a sure fire winner to get funds, and before that the Manpower's scheme was responsible for kick starting a lot of museums with grants, all good stuff but regrettably history now.

As for HLF If you work with them for a length of time it becomes clear that the amount of funds they give is linked to the usage of the heritage being funded. E.g. HLF won't give you £1M if you only expect to have 10,000 extra users/participants a year, that's true for a new visitor centre, digital archive or community history project.  They may give you £50,000 but in these Olympically stringent times that's all they can afford.  I am afraid its down to footfall or clicks, they won't say that but that's the yardstick.

Putting this into context MLA is in a general mood of retrenchment (as is HLF), which is not good, especially if you are small organisation that doesn't have a national profile, smaller local grants have been axed, and the long heralded announcement of £1M grants scheme pa, is actually rather small for England, and I am not sure how a national body like MLA in Brum will be able to get these funds to innovative small organisations, it was hard enough when there were regional MLAs!

Regrettably the talk, which incidentally was titled Curation in the C21th, did not really discuss these matters and was frankly a little disappointing bar some good questions at the end, mind the wine and company afterwards was excellent!

Must dash I've got some collections to catalogue and digitise.

Stephen Lowy
Deputy Head of Collections & 
Principal Community Curator
Hampshire Museums & Archives Service
Chilcomb House, Winchester 
Hampshire, SO23 8RD
[log in to unmask]
Tel: 01962 826717
HSPN: (8)327 6717

Explore Hampshire Museums In May..
www.museummayhem.co.uk/





-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bridget McKenzie
Sent: 01 May 2008 13:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: 21st Century digital curation

I just posted this on my blog. Any advances on my suggestions about what such lead bodies should be doing to invest in 21st century digital curation?

"I went to a seminar at UCL last night, to hear Roy Clare, CEO of the MLA and Carole Souter, CEO of HLF talking about the future, the funding context and how their respective bodies will contribute to curation in the 21st Century. I'm not going to supply a full transcript of the event, but have picked up a key issue about digital strategy.

Carole Souter insisted that the HLF would not fund digitisation (only 'real people doing real things'). She conceded that there could be some catchy, engaging digital culture projects, for example the Tate's campaign inviting the public to buy a brushstroke of a painting. A questioner asked 'Call me naive, but surely if digitisation is what we are crying out for, why do you make these restrictions?' The response was 'We're getting tough with people. You have to look at the breadth of our aims. We're an additional funder, not a funder of core activities. 
If you tell us that 200,000 more people are going to look at your website because of it, well, so what? How do you know they have really been engaged?' So, her suggestion was that if you are going to include digitisation into an HLF bid, it would have to involve people in specific thematic projects of local interest.

Roy Clare highlighted the NOF Digitise project as an example of where we went wrong in assuming that mass digitisation and online publishing of collections would be engaging. He said that when he (when at the National Maritime Museum) and partners were planning Port Cities
http://www.portcities.org.uk/: 'Did we think about how anybody would ever find it? How they would engage with it?' His response seemed to suggest that we shouldn't do digitisation because these projects were difficult to market.

However, my argument would be that the NOF projects are an example of the limited thematic trap that the HLF approach to digital culture encourages. The Port Cities project may not be as successful as it could have been precisely because they made too much effort to define a theme, to define a collaboration between several museums, to focus on particular markets and so on.

What is needed is a flexible approach to digitisation that enables collection items to be presented in multiple thematic, social, institutional and technological contexts and to be interpreted in multiple ways and combined with other collections in multiple ways. 
Investment in a) the continuation of mass digitisation and b) in incubating approaches to tagging, indexing, syndicating etc are what we need now, and we should see this being championed as the core of 21st Century Curation by bodies such as MLA and HLF."

**************************************************
For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
**************************************************

**************************************************
For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
**************************************************

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

JiscMail Tools


RSS Feeds and Sharing


Advanced Options


Archives

April 2024
March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998


JiscMail is a Jisc service.

View our service policies at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ and Jisc's privacy policy at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/website/privacy-notice

For help and support help@jisc.ac.uk

Secured by F-Secure Anti-Virus CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager