The document outlines the significance of digital humanities, emphasizing collaborative research and the role of culture in national identity. It discusses the impact of digitized resources on society, including education and cultural preservation, while advocating for broader access to digital content. Key insights include the importance of public repositories and the challenges faced in digitization efforts as a means to engage and elevate communities.

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

2. www.kcl.ac.uk/ddh/

3. 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.

4. 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

5. Honoring our sponsors
The 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

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

12. New areas of research enabled
“Old Bailey Online reaches out to communities, such as family
historians, who are keen to find a personal history, reflected in a
national story, and in the process re-enforces the workings of a
civil 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 their
lives. 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

13. Effective, efficient and world leading
www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

14. Bringing
collections out
of the dark

15. Bestowing economic & community benefits
Glasgow Museum's 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

16. Interdisciplinary & collaborative
“The Freeze Frame archive
is invaluable in charting
changes in the polar
regions. Making the material
available to all will help with
further research into
scientific studies around
global warming and
climate change”
Pen Hadow,
Polar Explorer
www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

17. 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 Britain's future capacity for
learning, research and innovation.
Dr Sarah Thomas, Bodleian Library, Oxford University

18. 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.
That's a vision worth delivering on.
Dame Lynne Brindley, The British Library

19. 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

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

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

22. Audience
People Exhibition
Development
Access
Events Learning &
Web 2.0
Education
Places
Times Conservation Revenue
Concepts Marketing Research
Making
Collections
Visible
Subjects, themes

23. Courtesy of www.museum-analytics.org

24. Courtesy of www.museum-analytics.org

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

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

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

28. Changing a life or life opportunity!
© H de Smet

29. Option Value
5 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.

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

31. Measuring life changes?
To measure change we need to know the baseline
from which change happens
To measure life changes we have to look at methods
from a wide range of Impact Assessment
practitioners:
Health IA
Environmental & Ecological IA
Social IA
Economic & Governmental IA, etc...
We also consider longitudinal studies may prove
useful.
The study will report in May 2012
www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/impact.html

32. One last thought for you to consider...

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