Nick's NOF-digi response, and Mike's subsequent points, bring up all sorts of memories for many of us on this list, I'm sure!

Whilst at 24 Hour Museum [in around, say 2002/3 onwards] I was interested in linking to, and perhaps re-presenting NOF-digi content in some form or another. There were [and still are] some really nice sites developed as part of the programme; and yet there was little sense that there had been an over-arching strategic publishing view of the resources proposed before things were commissioned. EnrichUK came along and seemed to me to be about simply indexing the sites, also that it was intended to 'top off' the whole project; a kind of final act. 

The 2009 JISC-inspired opportunity to re-animate the NOF-digi sites that Nick mentions came about because of my continuing interest in the lottery-funded content; Mike Ellis had just splashed on his great Hoard-It idea at MW2009 in Indianapolis [http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/abstracts/prg_335001935.html] which seemed like just the tech to use to go back and establish a consistent top-down audit or index of NOF-digi sites. 

My proposal, which I took to Leicester Uni as a partnership idea and to Collections Trust for support, was a two stage approach: firstly, to research the state of the content and see if it was feasible to work with, and secondly to produce some sort of scraped, indexed, taxonomically re-interpreted [curated, if you like] re-published version. 

As Nick said, the proposal didn't go forward; my own view is that our proposal didn't get the basics across in the way that we should have done, but there you go! It's important to record however, that our first stage would have been a Hoard-It [quite brutal] spidering of the inventory of sites, then a more reflective audit of the content to see how much of it was feasibly re-publishable. The second stage idea would have been to use an online journalistic approach to appraising the content, considering IP status of the images and text, and also the shape and form of it. It was about re-curating again, after that point. 

That said, the 2009 proposal was actually about R&D, not necessarily to produce a magical re-awakening of the material. What might we have learned? Perhaps, new ways to data-mine old content and invest it with new cultural value; maybe, ways to index and sort content into currently popular themes; approaches to copyright indemnity schemes for older digital content; some knowledge of ways to shape content better in the first place.

Putting the bid together it seemed that a lot of the NOF-digi content would have been hard to link to as it was, anyway. Titles were often separate from body text, images floated free from text and captions, titles weren't keyworded, copyright info and captions lived separately from the stories they belonged to. All of things publishing states make it hard to aggregate content. 

I think the big NOF-digi learning point needs to be around considering, in the first instance, the real lifecycle of your content. Make it simple; keep text, rights info, pics and titles in archivable blocks, and always think how else it might be published on other platforms.  

JP                       



Jon Pratty
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick Poole
Sent: 28 June 2011 09:46
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: MCG historical query - criticisms of Culture Online programme?

Hi Mike, 

Cross-project aggregation/metasearch for the NOF-Digi projects was certainly an afterthought, but it did happen in the form of the EnrichUK platform. Sadly, this was short-lived. I am not entirely sure why, but I suspect that it was not widely used.

As you know, the Collections Trust worked with Leicester University on a proposal to JISC for a post-hoc aggregation of the content produced by the NOF-digi projects. At the time, this didn't proceed - partly because of the relative complexity of resolving the challenge of retrospectively licensing the content for re-use. 

We haven't given up, however, and are on the case once again to try and aggregate the legacy NOF-digi content into the Culture Grid. The registry of NOF-digi projects produced by Alastair Dunning at JISC provides a useful way of reconnecting to approximately 2/3 of the material, but there remain real problems in working out exactly how it can be used. One difficulty is that it is neither alive nor dead, but in a state of suspended animation. 

Personally, given that this represents the largest single body of public investment in Digitisation in the sector from the 'golden age' of museum funding between 1999 and 2005 (yes, that was a golden age...), I think we really should collaborate to ensure that the current and next generation of services can make use of it. 

I'm also *very* keen not to present this as just a technology problem. Yes, there are a number of simple search apps that would do the job, but if that's all we do, we're going to be creating another EnrichUK. So, what is the model for re-use and persistent access which would ensure not only that these things exist, but are actively used by a significant number of normal humans?

All best, 

Nick 

Nick Poole
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mike Ellis
Sent: 28 June 2011 09:29
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: MCG historical query - criticisms of Culture Online programme?

This is slightly off-piste...

But one of the things I never understood about the NOF project was that there was never any cross-project aggregation. 

We spent months (probably like most people involved in the project) getting our metadata (head tags) right for http://www.ingenious.org.uk, and adhering to what I understood was a NOF-wide standard. The natural next step - and probably not a terribly hard one once all the work had been done by the various projects - would surely have been some aggregation / search?

Not a sausage. 

Maybe someone burnt the money, but still a shame. A £15k Google Search Appliance would have done it :-)

cheers

Mike

Mike Ellis
Digital Strategist
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of J DAVIS
Sent: 27 June 2011 23:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: MCG historical query - criticisms of Culture Online programme?

I'd remembered City Heritage Guides - once I saw them in the list.
They seemed to overlap - quite a lot in some places - with what we were trying to do in the NOF-Digitise Sense of the Place projects that were already well under way or finishing by that time. But it provided more jobs, which is always a good thing, and gathered info in one place where it hasn't vanished, which is A Very Good Thing.

One thing that I think came out of 2000-2005 funding for digital projects in public culture was that it would be good to have better overview and coordination across funding streams for future projects. 

Is there an up-to-date list now of all digitisation & digital culture projects? I'm aware that Alastair Dunning put together a NOF-Digi and HLF projects list a while ago.
Janet

--- On Mon, 27/6/11, Bridget McKenzie 
> Ah yes, completely forgot Icons. City
> Heritage Guides wasn't in my 
> consciousness as a collections-based project.
...


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