Exploring British Design
From IvoryTower to People Power11/06/2015
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Jane Stevenson, Jisc
Pete Johnston, Jisc
Tom Hart, Jisc
Catherine Moriarty, Brighton Design Archives
Anna Kisby Compton, Brighton Design Archives

Exploring British Design
»AHRC: “DigitalTransformations aims to
exploit the potential of digital
technologies to transform research in
the arts and humanities”
»Archives Hub: aggregator of archive
descriptions
»Brighton Design Archives, the University
of Brighton
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Project Aims
» Exploring Britain's design history by involving information
professionals, historians and researchers
» Moving away from traditional collection-level archival
descriptions towards more inter-connectivity
» Enabling researchers to explore and connect people, subjects,
and events.
» Using the XML standard, EncodedArchival Context -
Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families (EAC-CPF)
» Creating high-quality bespoke name authority records for
British designers and making these openly available for
further utilisation
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The IvoryTower
Or “Ignorance is Bliss”
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People Power
Or, “Once you introduce people,
things are a lot more complicated”
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Flickr: nolnet, https://www.flickr.com/photos/nolnet/5502831713/

Student workshops
»We asked focus groups of postgraduate students:
› How do you research?
»We gave them an event, person or building to think
about and asked them to chart their research paths
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Research Paths: results
» Google is the most common starting point
» There is often a strong visual emphasis to research
» It is common to utilise the references listed in Wikipedia
» The library is one part of a diverse landscape; library searches can
produce ‘meaningless results’ (too many results; relevance not clear)
» Online research: immediacy but issues of trust, results may not be very
specific, obscure sources may be hidden
» Personal habits and past experience play a large part
» Research (i) means to an end (ii) an important (enjoyable!) process
» Serendipity is valued – browsing the library shelves is a good example
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Student workshops
»We asked a group of postgraduate students:
› Think about websites and what you like and dislike
about them
»We showed them some sites and discussed them
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http://va.goodformandspectacle.com/

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Student workshops
»Students did not like sites that seemed patronising
»They liked the ‘explore’ features
»They talked about discovery beyond what the site
appeared to provide
»They tended to ask about whether they could search for
‘x’ or ‘y’ – something relevant to their own particular
research interests, e.g. gender studies
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http://blog.archiveshub.ac.uk/category/exploring-british-design/

Documenting Archives
»An archive is described through a collection description
»One archive = one document describing the archive
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From search box…
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Collection
Person
Place
Organis
ation
Image
Collection
Person
Place
Organis
ation
Image
Collection
Person
Place
Organis
ation
Image
Search:

Collection
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Collection
Person
Organis
ation
…to search result
From A to B,
From B to C,
And then from C you get to D.
But this does not enable you
To get to C from A or Q
CollectionPerson
Person
A
B
C
Place
Collection
Person
Person
Event
Date
Q
Occup
ation
?
?

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Person
Collectio
n
Person
Collectio
n
Collection
Person
Place
Organis
ation
Image

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Person
Collectio
n
Collectio
n

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Person
Person
Person
Person
Org
Org
Collectio
n
Collectio
n

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http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/

11/06/2015 23http://socialarchive.iath.virginia.edu/ark:/99166/w66m35nm

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Exploring British Design
Or, “Beating a Path through the Dense Dark
Undergrowth is HardWork”
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Any thing can be a focus for a user/application
»Archival materials
»Persons, organisations
»Places
»Events
»Relations
»Objects

AgentBiography
Event
Time
Period
Chronology
Place
Thing
Relationship
Archival
Resource
“Thing”
Bibliographic
Resource
(Object,
Artwork,
Design)
Agent
Relationship

Data sources
»Bringing together data from different sources
› Archives Hub data
› Hand crafted data created for the project
– chronologies
– relationships
– relationship type
› Hard to create this data any other way
› Looked at other sources (Design Museum)
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EAC-CPF
»EAC-CPF – XML format for
organisations/persons/families
»Data went beyond what is supported by EAC-CPF
› images linked to agents (people) and events
› ‘see also’
»Formats can provide rigour but they can constrain
»EAC-CPF essentially for data sharing – provide export
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Tools
»We didn’t find suitable robust tools for data creation
»xEAC – good functionality (VIAF lookup) but glitches
› didn’t seem to support whole EAC standard
› couldn’t go beyond EAC limitations
»Variations in our data were always likely to challenge
available tools
»“tidy datasets are all alike but every messy dataset is
messy in its own way"
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Entities and Events
»Go beyond ‘find records to match x query’
»Focus was on person, organisation & events
› matches through various criteria
»We do not have standards where events are
foregrounded
»EAC-CPF treats events as secondary
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Archives
Hub
SNAC
Partial EAC
XML
EAC
XML
Search/Get
Create/Edit CSV
Google
Sheets
EACfrom
HubO.py
Search/Extract

Partial
EAC
XML
RDF
RDF
Geo data
Convert Store
CSV
Application(s)
Full
EAC
API

Observations
» Lack of tools
» Data variations and inconsistencies
› Tools are looking for consistency – i.e. is this person the same as
that person, if so I can link them
› Hand-crafted means rich data but hard to ensure consistency
› Archives Hub data is full of variations
» Responsive development requires flexibilty and it isn’t easy!
» So many decisions about data structures - what’s in, what’s out
» Not enough resource….
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Observations
»Could we have done it differently?
› Maybe a different set of technologies, e.g. take time to
learn about elastic search
› Maybe prioritising things differently – easy to say in
hindsight
»Too many ideas can be a dangerous thing!
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Expanding Our Focus
» Record = about one person/organisation?
» No! In reality it is about many people, organisations, places
and events
» Small scale but multiple connections meant our approach was
strained (x80 people = 800 entities)
› e.g. If Maxwell Fry went to X art school then we have
information about that art school, even if its just that he
attended it (but as it is a focus, we can add more
connections)
» A record focus is a narrow focus; it does not bring to the fore
all these different entities
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Exploring British Design
….Website coming soon
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Thank you.