Presentation about the University of Bristol's 'Historical Photographs of China' collection at the GW4 Remediating the Archive digital humanities workshop in Cardiff, November 2016. The 'Historical Photographs of China' project began work in 2006 as part of an AHRC funded project on the 'History of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service' into an initiative that locates, digitises, and publishes online photographs of China held, largely, in private hands outside the country. Although some of the 10,000 photographs now online - a quarter of the total - originate from UK institutional repositories, our materials are principally 'crowdsourced' from families living outside China. This presentation introduces the collection and discusses the technical challenges of growing and sustaining free access to this virtual photographic archive of modern China.

1. Historical Photographs of China
the journey towards sustainability and utility
Professor Robert Bickers and Jamie Carstairs
Department of History (Historical Studies)
Dr Simon Price
IT Services (Research IT)

2. Part 1
The collection

3. Cultural Revolution, 1966-69
Destruction of China’s heritage and records of it

13. Guiding principles and practice
• Open Access
• Free
• Searchable, … enough
• CC licence for low-res, but can relay usage
requests for high-res
• We want them to be used

14. Users include
• Teachers and researchers
• Interdisciplinary researchers and students
• science, computer science
• Publishers
• Museums and galleries
• UK Embassy in China
• Heritage enthusiasts and restorers

15. Exhibitions
& reuse

16. Part 2
Technical Challenges

18. • Research Data Storage Facility (RDSF)
• Each PI allocated 5TB "forever"
• Secure storage, data sharing and
data publication with DOI
Historical Photographs
of China was the first
collection to be stored
in Bristol's RDSF

19. Bespoke legacy systems
hpc.vcea.net
visualisingchina.net

20. Towards a standard
sustainable system
• Tried Omeka but found too
restrictive for collection.
• Drupal more flexible and
larger user community.
• Still a one-off solution.
• Visualising China would be
another one-off instance.
• Future: institutional Digital
Asset Management (DAM)

21. Website www.hpcbristol.net
Visualising China www.visualisingchina.net
Blog www.visualisingchina.net/blog
中国历史老照片 weibo.com/hpcbristol
HistoricalPhotographsofChina
twitter.com/vischina