1. Digitisation in the UK and the JISC Content programme
Paola Marchionni, Programme Manager Digitisation, JISC
University College London Summer school
24 May 2012

2. The digitisation landscape is varied: public and private, big
and small, organisations and individuals and they often merge
into each other.

3. Partnerships with
libraries all over
the world.
Focus on book
digitisation.
20m books
scanned as of
March 2012.
Over 100m books
still to do.
Microsoft stopped
its scanning
project in 2008.

4. Scholarly publishers:
JISC Collections purchases and licences
content for the UK HE and FE sector.
Journals, special collections, ebooks...
from broad coverage (eg EEBO, over
100,000 books between 1473-1700 ) to
niche content (Pidgeon Digital)
Negotiated deals with over 100
publishers.

5. Museums, libraries
and archives digitise
their collections to
increase access for all,
support learning and
engage new audiences.
In the UK memory
institutions house over
500m books, records and
objects, but only 5-10%
has been digitised.
British Library – Virtual Books
Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery –
Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource

6. AHRC grant for
digitisation of criminal
court cases, Old Bailey
Public and private funding bodies support
digitisation with different priorities, eg research,
lifelong learning, cultural heritage, education...
HLF grant for building and
digitisation of
Tate Archive
Private donation to set up
the Cambridge Digital
Library

7. People do their
own
digitisation:
The Great Archive
collected and
digitised 1000s of
WW1 items from
the general public
in the UK and
Europe

8. Students, researchers, teachers,
learners, people... access digital content
from different places and in a variety of
ways
RSS

9. Where is JISC in the landscape and what do we do?

10. www.jisc.ac.uk
JISC receives funding from the UK government mainly
through the Higher Education Funding Council for England
(HEFCE) and often its Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish
equivalent and funds:
UK HE internet and Innovative ICT Services such
email network, projects for as advice and
JANET teaching, research guidance, and
and learning data centres

11. www.jisc-content.ac.uk
The JISC Digitisation and Content programme
focuses on creating and enhancing content for use in
research, teaching and learning in Higher Education
and encourages partnerships within and outside HE.
Since 2004: over £30m and over 100 projects:
•Digitisation of special and archival collections
•Open Educational Resources (OER)
•Enriching existing collection
•Clustering existing digital content
•User generated content/community engagement
•Developing skills and strategies

12. JISC Content programme 2011-2013
Just under £6m - 24 projects:
Strand A: Digitisation and OER Creation
small scale digitisation and creation of learning resources for courses
Strand B: Mass Digitisation
large scale digitisation of collections for research
Strand C: Clustering Digital Content
bringing together existing but scattered digital content
JISC Content programme Netvibes site with projects’
blogs http://bit.ly/xfy1Qh

13. JISC awards grants by issuing Calls to the HE
community and selecting the best projects.
All projects have special and, often unique, collections
to digitise, but they have to make a strong case about
the value and potential use of their content to
others as well.
Projects also have to show innovation, create content
that is legal, standards based, open, if possible, and
sustainable.
Partnerships are
encouraged.
.

14. JISC Film and Sound Think Tank http://bit.ly/KeLHQo
This short video explores many of the issues
projects face when digitising content and
making it available.

15. There is a huge amount of content that can be
digitised, so institutions need to prioritise
selection and tailor it to users’ needs.
Freeze Frame identified UK The
courses which would benefit form Online Theatre Histories Archive
their polar images collection, eg. embedded theatre archive
geology, geography, health, resources in courses/modules
photography... across four partner universities

16. Often projects don’t own the copyright to the
material they want to digitise and have to undertake
lengthy negotiations to licence the content for
their users.
Often because of copyright reasons collections are
only accessible to universities behind
password.
However, there is also a strong drive towards
openess at the moment and the use of Creative

17. InView: over 2000 non-
fiction films from the archives
of the British Film Institute
available to UK universities
behind authentication.
However, a lot of
content is available as
Open Educational
Resources under
Creative Commons
licences.
www.myleicestershire.org
Many of the projects
funded by JISC make
content freely and
openly available.

18. Digital resources are often built in isolation to other,
relevant, collections, which causes fragmentation.
JISC projects cluster
existing content to
provide a seamless
search across
disparate collections.
Also, by making data
openly available projects
increase the chance of their
content being used by
others.

19. Locating London Past brings together 17th and 18th C GIS-enabled data
sets (criminal, archaeological, social, population...) and visualises them on
historical and contemporary maps of London.
An API allows geo-referenced material to be exported and re-used in Google
maps mash-ups and other GIS environments.

20. Partnerships are a good way to source
content not in the public domain or difficult to
access, expand audiences, combine
different expertise and strengths to create
innovative content.
New Connections
BT Archive and University of Coventry
Fashion designer’s 3D metalwork collection –
Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection – Museums Sheffield and
Zandra Rhodes and the University for the Sheffield Hallam University
Creative Arts

21. People, whether the public at large or specific
communities, are increasingly becoming
partners in content creation.
Since 2010 over 1600 volunteers
have helped transcribe
45% of the 7,464 manuscripts
uploaded to the UCL
Transcribe Bentham website
A small group of
supertranscribers
(“gangsourcing”) participates
actively gaining “status” through
competitive element.
Value of this project: no Research
Associate would be paid to do this
kind of work.

22. JISC-funded project part of
the Citizen Science Alliance, a
transatlantic collaboration of
universities and museums
who are dedicated to
involving everyone in the
process of science.
The Old Weather project asks volunteers to help scientists
record weather observations of Royal Navy ships during WW1.
Transcriptions will contribute to climate model projections
and historians will be able to track ship movements and study the
stories of the people on board.

23. Once grant funding terminates, collections
have to be sustained, both technically and
editorially. This is arguably the biggest
challenge institutions face when creating digital
resources.
P artnerships with the
commercial sector
Host institutions play a key provide an alternative:
role in supporting own Bodleian Library John
collections. Johnson Collection
Integration into delivered and sustained
institutional through ProQuest.
infrastructures is the best
way for an new resources to
be maintained as part of

24. Development of services:
CHICC at University of
Manchester’s John Rylands
Library
Revenue generation models such as
Google Ads can contribute to the
running costs of maintaining a service,
as in the case of the Vision of Britain
website.
The Faculties provides
university-level podcasts
for A level students and
experimenting with and
sponsorships to keep
Freemium models provide the content open.
the flexibility to deliver a
mixture of free and paid for
content.

25. Image credits
(unless otherwise stated on individual slides)
Map of Great Britain: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection http://bit.ly/Lulr7P
Hong Kong harbour, c.1900: http://visualisingchina.net/#hpc-bk02-04
Fancy dress whilst in camp: http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa/item/7114?CISOBOX=1&REC=2
Lightbulb: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vermininc/2777441779/sizes/s/in/photostream/
Federer: http://www.flickr.com/photos/franz88/1092672031/sizes/s/in/photostream/
Coins: http://www.flickr.com/photos/59937401@N07/5474205269/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Puzzles: http://www.flickr.com/photos/horiavarlan/4273913228/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Beaded creations from the Zandra Rhodes archive:
http://zandrarhodesarchive.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/cataloguing-the-zandra-rhodes-archive/
Teapot http://www.museums-sheffield.org.uk/collections/objects-in-3d/drink/teapot-sheffield
All other images are screeshots of websites.
Thanks also to Alastair Dunning for some of the slides and images.
Text of slides licenced under CC-BY

26. Thank you!
Paola Marchionni
Programme Manager Digitisation, JISC
p.marchionni@jisc.ac.uk
@paolamarchionni
JISC Digitisation blog:
http://digitisation.jiscinvolve.org/wp/
Portal of JISC-funded digital content:
http://www.jisc-content.ac.uk
JISC Digitisation and Content programmes:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/digitisation