Press Release

From Gorbachev to global warming: education experts choose images for JISC
Collections archive

Education experts have taken the first steps towards building a JISC
Collections archive containing over 500 hours of film and 56,000 photos
documenting modern history.

An expert panel consisting of e-learning advisors, librarians, academics and
image specialists, who collectively represent over a hundred years of
experience of working with digital images in education, have chosen 11
collections from ten suppliers to form an archive for students and academics
which will be available from next July.

Following £2.5 million in funding from JISC and a competitive procurement
process, JISC Collections has licensed the collections for at least 25 years
as part of the Digital Images for Education initiative
(www.imagesforeducation.org.uk).

The images are copyright-cleared for use in education so they can be
reproduced in course packs, virtual learning environments, e-portfolios and
other multimedia works.

The selected images bring to life our shared history from a local, UK and
international perspectives to support teaching and lifelong learning.

Film clips will be available – from Gorbachev's accession to power in the
Soviet Union in 1985 to the financial crisis of 2009, and including powerful
raw footage of the 9/11 attacks as well as coverage of key issues such as
deforestation and global warming.

Photographs range from nineteenth-century life in the Scottish Highlands to
contemporary youth culture.

Noel Williams, professor of communication at Sheffield Hallam University,
commented: "JISC has created what is pretty much a unique resource, exciting
in its scope and potential. It touches on the interests of a wide range of
subject areas, and contains images which will be of value to both teachers
and researchers, and useful in all educational contexts – from colleges
through to the highest levels of HE."

The collection will include materials from academic and not-for-profit
organisations such as the Royal Geographic Society and the University of
Brighton, alongside commercial agencies such as Associated Press, ITN Source
and Getty Images.

Lorraine Estelle, CEO of JISC Collections, says: "The new images purchased
as part of the Digital Images for Education initiative bring to life our
history and capture, in particular, the key events of the past 25 years –
from the death of Princess Diana to the election of Barack Obama.

"The images will complement our existing and highly popular collections –
Newsfilm Online, Film and Sound Online and the Education Image Gallery – to
provide the UK education community with a world class library of still and
moving images covering the last 150 years."

Between now and February 2010, around a terabyte of data will be delivered
each month from the content suppliers, which converted to paper would mean
the use of 500,000 trees.

Each of the images has to be checked for quality, and extensive metadata
tagging is required to optimise searching and browsing facilities. New
features will also be built into the destination collections to ensure the
tags are helpful for both curators and users of the archive.

Ends

For further information, please contact Michael Upshall, Project Manager of
Digital Images for Education on 01865 453410 or [log in to unmask] or
visit the website at www.imagesforeducation.org.uk.

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