In message <[log in to unmask]>, Roger Fern
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>I'm forwarding this, as it requests.  It's intended for librarians,
>but I think people on these lists will also be interested to see its
>contents.
>
>Roger Fern.
>
>========== Included message ==========
>
>Date:          Fri, 13 Dec 2002 11:42:13 +0000
>Reply-to:      EDINA Support <[log in to unmask]>
>From:          EDINA Support <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:       JISC Digitisation Project
>To:            [log in to unmask]
>
>*forwarded on behalf of JISC, please distribute to colleagues locally
>and/or other email lists*
>
>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
>
>----------------------
> JISC Collections Helpdesk
> JISC Office
> King's College London
> Strand Bridge House, 3rd Floor
> 138-142 The Strand
> London
> WC2R 1HH
> tel: +44 (0)20 7848 2938
> fax: +44 (0)20 7848 2939
> [log in to unmask]
> http://www.jisc.ac.uk/dner/
>
>
>1. Early English Books Online (EEBO)
>
>EEBO is an existing and successful product, but has the capability to
>search only catalogue records for English language texts from 1475 to
>1700; many institutions have expressed the desire to search the texts
>themselves. For example, this would enable researchers to search
>thousands of text for references to Shakespeare by his contemporaries;
>geographic place names; cures for the plague (use at your own risk) or
>conceptions of dragons. Digitising such documents requires close
>scholarly supervision, as Optical Character recognition (OCR) software
>does not always recognise the early English characters, but
>digitisation of 25,000 texts is envisaged over a 5-year period.
>
>2. The British Librarys Collection of British Newspapers 18001930
>
>This collection would be of interest to students of history, politics,
>military history, social, legal and shipping history, foreign affairs,
>sport, history of advertising, the development of illustration in the
>mass media and numerous other fields. It is proposed to select a
>mixture of national and local newspaper titles which reflect the
>social and political developments of the times in which they were
>published. Up to 2 million pages of newspapers would be available,
>fully indexed and searchable.
>
>3. A Selection of National Sound Archive (NSA) Recordings
>
>Includes oral history, literature and material from independent radio
>stations, as well as various types of music  classical, jazz , African
>and popular music  based on the NSAs close association with the Royal
>Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music and the music departments
>of universities across the UK. The emphasis of the oral history sector
>is on architecture, architectural history, design history, craft
>history and contextual studies relating to architecture, design and
>craft practice. Literature would include the acclaimed African Writers
>Club collection. In all some 12,000 items totalling 3900 hours of
>segmented recordings would become available.
>
>4. 19th- and Early 20th-Century Census Data
>
>Censuses from 1971 onwards are already available online; this
>collection would cover the years 18011961 and provide: page images of
>the original documents, capturing their look and feel and setting the
>data in their typographical context with surrounding explanatory notes
>and footnotes (for censuses up to 1901 only); machine-readable
>versions of the statistical tables suitable for use in spreadsheets,
>databases and statistical packages; and machine-readable versions of
>the surrounding explanatory text and footnotes. The Census of
>Production, the Census of Agriculture and the Reports of the Registrar
>General would also be included.
>
>5. History of Art Slide Collection
>
>ArtSTOR, a not-for-profit organisation founded in 2001, is making
>available digital images and related scholarly materials for the study
>of art, architecture and other fields in the humanities. ArtSTOR works
>with charitable foundations and museums across the world to digitise
>high-resolution images accompanied by appropriate text and flexible
>search mechanisms, from the design collection of the Museum of Modern
>Art in New York to images associated with Buddhist cave grottoes in
>Dunhuang, China.
>
>6. Back Numbers of a Selection of British Journals
>
>This project would be based on institutional demand for back numbers
>of key British journals, many of which date back to the 19th century
>and earlier. It would ensure that there was no overlap with work
>already being undertaken by JSTOR and other commercial ventures in the
>areas of arts and sciences. Initial suggestions for journals to be
>digitised are welcome.
>
>7. A Selection of EC Journals and Series
>
>This project would be based on institutional demand for back numbers
>of key EC Journals and Series. It would ensure that there was no
>overlap with work already being undertaken by Eurotext and other
>commercial ventures in this area. Initial suggestions for journals to
>be digitised are welcome.
>
>8. The British Librarys Illuminated Manuscripts Collection
>
>The British Librarys collection of manuscripts made before 1600 is one
>of the largest and finest in the world. The term illuminated
>manuscripts covers a broad range, including 85% of the British
>Librarys western medieval and renaissance MSS; Greek illuminated book;
>post-1600 MSS continuing traditions of illumination (e.g. by William
>Morris and Edward Johnston) and handmade facsimiles (e.g. transcripts
>of Anglo-Saxon mss by Elizabeth Elstob). These would be made available
>through descriptions, continuously updated bibliographies, digital
>images, virtual exhibitions and glossaries, providing a flexible tool
>for students, researchers and teachers of medieval and renaissance
>studies and the whole spectrum of historical humanities subjects,
>including literature, art, archaeology and the history of medicine and
>science.
>
>9. The British Librarys Collection of Photographically Illustrated
>Books
>
>The British Library has one of the worlds largest and most
>comprehensive collections of photographically illustrated books,
>dating from the 19th through to the early 20th century. These include
>examples of most of the early photographic processes by notable
>innovators and practitioners from every continent, and cover a wide
>range of disciplines from topography to technology and from
>portraiture to science. The current digitisation project would expand
>the range of books and images currently available with a view to
>broadening coverage of images from outside the UK and include material
>on fine art, European portraiture, science and technology and
>topography, including works by British photographers overseas.
>
>10. A Selection of Independent Television News Archive Material
>
>The ITN archive contains some 60,000 hours of news and feature
>material, ranging from 1896 to the present day. It covers the output
>of ITN itself (from 1955), Reuters Television library (to1959) and the
>Visnews news agency (1957-1992), as well as unissued material. Over
>six hours of material is added to the archive each day. The collection
>includes cinema newsreels as well as television news. The collection
>would enable subscribers to study newsfilm material as they can study
>newspapers, to broaden the scope and depth of their research; it would
>benefit students in disciplines as diverse as criminology (who could
>use the news to contextualise case law) to fashion (who could study
>street fashion at any given moment or at the time of any given event.)
>
>11. Geospatial Data, 18th Century to the Present Day
>
>Evidence on the Changing British Countryside, 1700 to the Present Day
>includes a mix of mapping and geospatial data for selected dates
>across the period, with modern mapping providing a context. Data
>include the agricultural revolutions (e.g. Enclosure Acts),
>progressive urbanisation and the growth of intervention by the
>emergent British state. A related project provides the equivalent
>information with regard to coastal mapping, being the 10km near-shore
>over the same historical period, with digitised Admiralty charts,
>material from the Hydrographic Office and some examples of
>geo-specific fishing and shipping data. This collection covers a
>number of projects  suggestions for which would be most useful are
>welcome.
>
>12. A Selection of British and American Medical Journals
>
>The collection, which covers a range of medical disciplines in easily
>searchable form, is based on the complete back files of several
>high-impact medical journals, including the Journal of the American
>Medical Association, Annals of Internal Medicine and British Journal
>of Psychiatry. Some of these contain material dating back over 100
>years. While the content of most significant medical journals from the
>late 1990s is available online, many years worth of issues remain
>accessible only through bound copies on library shelves. An online
>version would be of value not only to current biomedical researchers
>and practitioners but also to social, economic and medical historians.
>
>
>
>Other suggestions:
Roger - some further suggestions

1 - conversion of Rolls series eg Patent Rolls, Fine Rolls, Close Rolls
for which Calenders exist in book form - even just the calender would be
valued and could be scanned in relatively easily.

2 - War Diaries held by the PRO - we have accomplished this for the
Royal Berkshire Regiment for WW1 and WW2 but should be tackled for all
regiments.

regards

John Chapman
>
>
>========== End of included message ==========
>
>----------------------------------------------------------
>
>Roger Fern, Newcastle upon Tyne.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------

--
John M Chapman