JISC Digitisation Project

JISC has been allocated non-recurrent funding for the acquisition and
digitisation of electronic materials to help meet the growing demand for
online information. The scale of the funding presents an opportunity to
enhance the core resource of digitised material available to HE and will
allow the development of a programme of large-scale activity, the results of
which will provide a comprehensive resource and add significant value to
research, learning and teaching (especially support for distance learning)
and the e-University. The programme will allow the digitisation of a wide
range of formats (including text, geospatial data, images, moving images and
sound) which will be of great value to the community. Digitisation of such
resources will provide on-line access to previously unobtainable materials,
supporting a variety of subject interest and distance access to key
resources.

Both JISC and its Committee for Content Services have considered guidelines
for utilising this funding and identified the following criteria: the
materials should be of broad disciplinary interest and should form a
coherent theme or themes; a small number of large-scale projects should be
funded that would not be possible without an investment of this size; the
materials would need to be fully compatible with the common information
environment being developed by JISC, the British Library, Resource and
others; the materials would need to meet rigorous quality-assurance
standards and be of value to the wider post-16 education community.

A Working Group was established to consider, among other issues, how the
materials to be digitised should be selected. The Group agreed to seek
advice from the learning and teaching and resource communities as
recommended in the HE Content Policy Group report. The purposes of this
document is to invite the community to comment on a series of collections
proposed for digitisation and suggest any additional collections that would
fit the criteria for inclusion in this programme outlined above. The time
period is short and only already known and identified projects can be
considered.

The Group has identified twelve collections that they feel fit these
criteria and these are outlined below (in no particular order). Because the
scientific and engineering communities are already well provided with this
sort of material, the focus of this programme is on the fields of the
humanities, social sciences and medicine. You are invited to indicate the
degree of your interest by numbering the collections to which you might
subscribe in order of preference. i.e. put a figure 1 in the box beside the
collection you are most likely to acquire, a 2 in your next choice etc. If
you are not interested in a particular collection, leave the box blank.

Please return the attached form to Sarah Sherman, Collections Access Support
at the address above or fax it to 020 7848 2939 by 10th January 2003.
Alternatively, you may respond online by visiting
www.jisc.ac.uk/dner/collections/digitisationproject.htm.

There is space at the end of the form for you to suggest any other
collection you would like us to consider or to make any further comments on
the collections proposed.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Bailey
Chair of the JISC Advisory Committee for Content and Services




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