The Henslowe-Allyen Digitisation Project

2000 digital photographs of manuscript pages in the single most inportant theatrical archive in the age of Shakespeare, as well as 15 digital essays by world-leading scholars

Copyright & Risk: Scoping the Wellcome Digital Library Project (peer reviewed)

Copyright & Risk: Scoping the Wellcome Digital Library is a comprehensive case study which assesses the merits of the risk-managed approach to copyright clearance adopted by the Wellcome Library in the course of their pilot digitisation project Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics (http://wellcomelibrary.org/collections/digital-collections/makers-of-modern-genetics/#).

Lunchroom to boardroom : an audio digitization project

The University of Queensland Cybrary in partnership with the Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC), has created a searchable, web based digital oral history resource, based on a collection of stories of women involved in the Queensland Labor movement. A Trades and Labour Council of Queensland oral history collection was used to develop a framework for retrieval of audio materials on the web. A system for linking digitized media files to indexes created from transcripts (Meggie) has been developed. This allows the media file itself to be searched via key words. A trial was conducted and work is now proceeding on completing the collection. The final product will be made available via the Library's web site. The process followed, the choices made, the problems overcome, and the results achieved, will be outlined.

Digital archives and cultural memory : discovering lost histories in digitised Australian children's literature 1851-1945

A recent Australian literature digitisation project uncovered some surprising discoveries in the children’s books that it digitised. The Children’s Literature Digital Resources (CLDR) Project digitised children’s books that were first published between 1851 to 1945 and made them available online through AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource. The digitisation process also preserved, within the pages of those books, a range of bookplates, book labels, inscriptions, and loose ephemera. This material allows us to trace the provenance of some of the digitised works, some of which came from the personal libraries of now-famous authors, and others from less celebrated sources. These extra-textual traces can contribute to cultural memory of the past by providing evidence of how books were collected and exchanged, and what kinds of books were presented as prizes in schools and Sunday schools. They also provide insight into Australian literary and artistic networks, particularly of the first few decades of the 20th century. This article describes the kinds of material uncovered in the digitisation process and suggests that the material provides insights into literary and cultural histories that might otherwise be forgotten. It also argues that the indexing of this material is vital if it is not to be lost to future researchers.

Problems with drawing lines: Theo-geographies of the Catholic parish in Ireland

While people in Catholic parishes in Ireland appear keenly aware of parish boundaries, these understandings are more often oral than cartographic. There is no digital map of all of the Catholic parishes in Ireland. However, the institutional Catholic Church insists that no square kilometre can exist outside of a parish boundary. In this paper, I explain a process whereby the Catholic parishes of Ireland were produced digitally. I will outline some of the technical challenges of digitizing such boundaries. In making these maps, it is not only a question of drawing lines but mapping people’s understanding of their locality. Through an example of one part of the digitisation project, I want to talk about how verifying maps with local people often complicates something which may have at first sight seemed simple. The paper ends on a comparison with how other communities of interest are territorialised in Ireland and elsewhere to draw out some broader theoretical and theological issues of concern.

Fusion: repo to expo

Deakin University has set up a new exhibition system, Fusion, to showcase the University's special collections and research outputs. Data in Fusion will also be used by researchers in the digital humanities, and will provide a means of involving the wider, local, community in research efforts and collaborative projects. Fusion uses the Omeka software, which supports highly-visual, media-rich presentations. It is linked to the University's research repository, which remains the primary store for the data.Deakin’s special collections include unique material related to Alfred Deakin and the Federation of Australia, as well as the cultural and social milieu of the period 1859 to 1920. The Library has begun a digitisation project to ensure the long-term preservation of the rarer, older and most fragile items from the collection. The poster will cover:• Principal software requirements for the new system• Fusion setup, features and functionality• Curation of items for digitisation• Long-term preservation strategy• Exhibition planning and setup• Collaborative projects with Research Services• Collaboration with the wider community• Future plans, including crowd-sourcing projects• Lessons learntThe poster will draw on the following conference themes:Supporting research: Research digital outputs as collection materialsSupporting research: Research content accessibilitySupporting research: Data management / curationConnect: Crowdsourcing

Digitisation Processing and Recognition of Old Greek Manuscipts (the D-SCRIBE Project)

After many years of scholar study, manuscript collections continue to be an important source of novel information for scholars, concerning both the history of earlier times as well as the development of cultural documentation over the centuries. D-SCRIBE project aims to support and facilitate current and future efforts in manuscript digitization and processing. It strives toward the creation of a comprehensive software product, which can assist the content holders in turning an archive of manuscripts into a digital collection using automated methods. In this paper, we focus on the problem of recognizing early Christian Greek manuscripts. We propose a novel digital image binarization scheme for low quality historical documents allowing further content exploitation in an efficient way. Based on the existence of closed cavity regions in the majority of characters and character ligatures in these scripts, we propose a novel, segmentation-free, fast and efficient technique that assists the recognition procedure by tracing and recognizing the most frequently appearing characters or character ligatures.

Sydney Opera House – FM exemplar project

The Sydney Opera House Facilities Management Exemplar Project (SOH FM Exemplar Project) aims to develop innovative research on facility management (FM) with the focus on asset maintenance. The project utilises the Sydney Opera House (SOH), one of most unique buildings in Australia, to research and create innovative FM strategies and models that will have a direct beneficial role for the Australian facilities management industry as well as the economy as a whole. The procurement, benchmarking and digitisation are crucial in improving the performance of FM. The procurement develops strategic plan and deployment framework enabling products, services, etc. meet objectives of performance, economic, environment, etc. Benchmarking is a technology used to compare practice and assess performance against the competitors recognised as industry leaders who achieve most successful activities in the field. Digitisation develops digitized FM modelling that facilitates the integration and automation of facility management. The project carries out the research on all the three areas as well as the relationship between them. It aims to develop an integrated approach for the improvement of FM performance.

Digitisation and copyright compliance for course materials and library reserve materials at Deakin University

A digitisation effort employed by Deakin University Library has proven to be of great benefit to its distance and lifelong learners. This paper discusses issues involved with digitisation and copyright compliance issues associated with producing electronic information resources made available to distance and lifelong learners at Deakin University. The authors discus the balance between print and e-reserves, the differences in course-pack content and electronic reserves and the copyright compliance issues that regulate fair access. Budgetary concerns, in terms of staff time, computer equipment were weighed to determine efficiency. The project was carried out in several phases, beginning with the digitisation of class notes, exams, class presentations, and finally with the materials covered within copyright regulations. A respective project would complete the project. It was found that there was a significant financial savings in the digitisation of electronic reserves, yet the main goal was to better serve the remote user with enhanced access. Relevant screenshots and bibliography are included. M. Thomas.

Bulgarian National Ethnographic Museum – Meeting the Challenges of Digitisation

The conservation, spread, comprehension and recreation of traditional culture heritages is one of the main purpose of the National Ethnographic Museum in Bulgaria. As other cultural and scientific heritage institutions, it begins to use new information technologies and strategies for providing access to its cultural heritage treasures. This paper aims to present digital libraries with multimedia content as a modern technological solution for innovative presentation of Bulgarian ethnographical heritage. It includes some basic concepts of digital libraries with multimedia content and a description of three types of architecture. The paper also describes the ideas, conceptual decisions and strategies in the project Experimental Digital Library “Bulgarian Ethnographic Treasury”.

Digital Preservation and Access to Cultural and Scientific Heritage: Presentation of the KT-DigiCult-BG Project

The fast development and wide application of digital methods, combined with broadened access to the Internet and falling computing costs, have created intense interest in electronic presentation and access to cultural and scientific heritage resources. Information technologies have offered cultural institutions new opportunities for the presentation of their holdings, which are now made accessible not only to the specialists, but also to the citizens and interested parties worldwide. The paper presents an overview of the Bulgarian experience in the field of digital preservation and access and on-going work on the project “Knowledge Transfer for the Digitisation of Scientific and Cultural Heritage to Bulgaria” (MTKD-CT-2004-509754) supported by the Marie Curie programme of the FP6 of the EC.

MINERVA – the Ministerial Network for Valorising Activities in Digitisation Towards an Agreed European Platform for Digitisation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage

MINERVA is a project funded by the European Commission IST Programme within the 5th Framework Programme. It created a network of EU Ministries and other agencies in charge of cultural policies and programmes, which is open to enlargement to new countries and new sectors of the civil society. The network discusses, correlates and harmonises the activities carried out in the field of digitisation of cultural and scientific heritage, aiming at creating a common European platform made up of agreed recommendations, guidelines, standards. The network acts also to foster collaboration between European Commission and Member States, to ensure awareness of European policies at national level, to exchange good practice, to coordinate national programmes in order to embed in national digitisation activities the technical results achieved by the network. Some main outcomes of the activities are presented.

Digitisation and Presentation of Historical Materials in a Virtual Exhibition ‘The Image of India in Bulgaria: from the late 19th to the late 20th Century’

The main contribution of this project is the study of collections of valuable documents related to the image of India in Bulgaria. Digital repositories of selected samples are constructed using modern information technologies. The results are presented in a virtual exhibition ‘The Image of India in Bulgaria: from the late 19th to the late 20th century’.