Making an Impact: How Digitised Resources Change Lives

Simon Tanner King’s College LondonEmail: simon.tanner@kcl.ac.uk Twitter: SimonTanner

www.kcl.ac.uk/ddh/

Department of Digital Humanities International leader in the application of . technology in the arts and humanities, and in the social sciences. Innovation Involved in typically more than 30 major collaborative research projects at any one time. The highest rated digital humanities Teaching research unit in the UK. 65% of our research is judged to be world- leading or internationally excellent . Research DDH has 3 MA programmes: Digital Asset Management, Digital Humanities, and Digital Culture and Society Innovation partnerships with >500 projects and 20 countries.

Digital Humanities is about Collaboration . Literary/linguistic English History Art History Music Theatre studies Information management Digital library and archives National and international strategic activities

Honoring our sponsorsThe research underpinning this presentation is . funded from two sources: Inspiring Research, Inspiring Scholarship: The value & benefits of digitised resources www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html Impact of Digitised Resources www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/impact.html

Culture is the wealth of nations“Knowledge is power... knowledge is also wealth” . Dr Joseph Phaahla, Deputy Minister South African Ministry of Arts & Culture International Conf of African Digital Libraries & Archives Culture is essential to develop information into personalised knowledge Culture is an essential underpinning for national identity Memory institutions are essential actors in national cultural identity and digitisation is re-emphasising this role Cultural values are an important element in economic advancement

Culture: Edward Said’s View Two distinct meanings: Cultural practice – the manifestation of ideas that come into being in aesthetic forms, whose main reason for being is to provide pleasure for those who consume them – e.g. novels, art, music... Conceptual container – culture is seen as an abstract tool for refining and elevating a society – it is the container for all that can be defined as the greatest offerings in terms of knowledge, creativity and thought that society can offer. In this mode, culture will become associated with a nation or a state and is a source of identity for the group that identifies with it. Said, E.W. (1994) Culture and Imperialism. 4th Ed. Vintage

National Identity – contested space? Anderson posits: national identity is preceded by and grows out of cultural resources and institutions. History, maps, museums, censuses, literature etc all contribute to the collective imagining of something called a nation. Benedict Anderson (2006) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism Pickover: “cyberspace is not an uncontested domain. The digital medium contains an ideological base – it is a site of struggle. So, the real challenges are not technological or technical but social and political.” Curators/librarians/archivists are thus “agents of social change” Pickover, M. (2005) Negotiations, contestations and fabrications: the politics of archives in South Africa ten years after democracy. (from ukzn.ac.za) INNOVATION-PIETERMARITZBURG

The role of public repositories: My View My view: A place where a community nourishes its memory and its imagination – where it connects with the past and invents its future. Purpose of digitisation: To educate, enlighten and entertain: to promote and disseminate and to preserve culture

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html Inspiring Research, Inspiring Scholarship

New areas of research enabled“Old Bailey Online reaches out to communities, such as familyhistorians, who are keen to find a personal history, reflected in anational story, and in the process re-enforces the workings of acivil society. Digital resources both create a new audience, and reconfigure our analysis to favour the individual.” Professor Tim Hitchcock, University of Hertfordshire “Digitised resources allow me to discover the hidden lives of disabled people, who have not traditionally left records of theirlives. I have found disability was discussed by many writers in the Eighteenth Century and that disabled men and women played an important role in the social life of the time.” Dr David Turner, Swansea University www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

Effective, efficient and world leadingwww.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

Bringingcollections out of the dark

Bestowing economic & community benefits Glasgow Museums Collection is the city’s biggest single fiscal asset valued at £1.4 billion. It contains around 1.2 million objects. On average only 2% of the collection is exhibited to the public at any one time. Digital access is opening up further access to these collections. A major impact sought is to increase self-confidence in the populace – to feel less marginalised, less insignificant, less unheard. Increased feelings of self-worth through interaction with the Museums will spill over into every aspect of their lives. Digitised content & JI SC Collections negotiations save the sector ~£43 m illion per year www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

Interdisciplinary & collaborative“The Freeze Frame archiveis invaluable in chartingchanges in the polarregions. Making the materialavailable to all will help withfurther research intoscientific studies aroundglobal warming andclimate change”Pen Hadow,Polar Explorer www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

A digital library vision for the future What the Bodleian Library is doing now, in digitising large portions of our vast collections, is like the human genome project. Thousands of people can evaluate and use creatively the digital resources to discover new ideas and make innovations. Many hands make light work and those many hands will profoundly touch Britains future capacity for learning, research and innovation.Dr Sarah Thomas, Bodleian Library, Oxford University

Digitising for our Digital Futures We are sitting on a goldmine of content which should be within a coherent UK national digital strategy. To support Digital Britain we need to deliver a critical mass of digital content. Access... ought to be the right of every citizen, every household, every child, every school and public library, universities and business. Thats a vision worth delivering on. Dame Lynne Brindley, The British Library

Digitising for our Digital Futures?? “You want a massive digital collection: SCAN THE STACKS!... You agonize over digital metadata and the purity thereof... And you offer crap access. If I ask you to talk about your collections, I know that you will glow as you describe the amazing treasures you have. When you go for money for digitization projects, you talk up the incredible cultural value... But then if I look at the results of those digitization projects, I find the shittiest websites on the planet.It’s like a gallery spent all its money buying art and then just stuck the paintings in supermarket bags and leaned them against the wall.” Nat Torkington (@gnat) http://bit.ly/rNHMVr “Libraries: Where It All Went Wrong” The text of a Speech delivered to provoke the National and State Librarians of Australasia, November 2011

Making an impact or just a splash? © H de Smet

The Balanced Scorecard: museum example Audience & external stakeholders Internal Digitisation Innovation & museum processes Strategy development Financial

AudiencePeople Exhibition Development AccessEvents Learning & Web 2.0 EducationPlacesTimes Conservation RevenueConcepts Marketing Research Making Collections VisibleSubjects, themes

Courtesy of www.museum-analytics.org

Understanding the audience: methods http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/

Understanding the audience: methods http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/ http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/

Understanding the audience: methods http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/

Option Value5 modes of cultural value • People value the possibility of enjoying the digitised resources and the resultant research outputs created through the endeavours of academics and HE now or sometime in the future. Prestige Value • People derive utility from knowing that a digitised resource, HE institution or its research, is cherished by persons living inside and outside their community. Education Value • People are aware that digitised resources contribute to their own or to other people’s sense of culture, education, knowledge and heritage and therefore value it. Existence Value • People benefit from knowing that a digital resource exists but do not personally use it. Bequest Value • People derive satisfaction from the fact that their descendents and other members of the community will in the future be able to enjoy a digitised resource if they choose to.

Future research directionsThe Arcadia Fund have provided a further $143,000to explore methodologies for impact and valueassessment.Factoring impact as meaning:how has a life or life opportunitybeen changed?More information:www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/impact.htmlI would welcome your comments, guidance and ideas!Results will be published freely under Open Access

Measuring life changes?To measure change we need to know the baselinefrom which change happensTo measure life changes we have to look at methodsfrom a wide range of Impact Assessmentpractitioners: Health IA Environmental & Ecological IA Social IA Economic & Governmental IA, etc...We also consider longitudinal studies may proveuseful.The study will report in May 2012www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/impact.html

One last thought for you to consider...

Is value in the wine, the glass or the drinking? Twitter: @SimonTanner

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Making an Impact: How Digitised Resources Change Lives

by Simon Tanner on Dec 05, 2011

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Making an Impact: How Digitised Resources Change Lives — Presentation Transcript