AHDS Newsletter Autumn/Winter 2006-7
Contents
Getting to know our audience
Daisy Abbott reports on an AHDS scoping study on the creation and use of digital resources in the performing arts
AHDS Performing Arts is currently working towards developing a greater appreciation as to how the higher education community uses digital resources and how opportunities for research, teaching and learning in Performing Arts disciplines can be enhanced.
This scoping study is a major part of this, designed to understand the nature of digital resources created and used in the Performing Arts, how their creation and use is integrated into the research, teaching and learning process, what methods scholars are using, and what kinds of services, including guidance and advice, AHDS Performing Arts should be providing.
The scoping study found that, while Performing Arts communities in Higher Education demonstrate highly innovative and experimental engagement in the creation and use of digital resources, the development of a core digital collection at AHDS Performing Arts has not kept pace with demand.
This report presents conclusions based on evidence gathered during 2006 and makes recommendations. These findings and conclusions will form the foundation for establishing for AHDS Performing Arts a proactive vision and a strategy. By sharing the outcome of the Scoping Study with the AHDS' funding bodies, it is hoped that their attention will be drawn to issues related to the research and teaching and learning needs of the Performing Arts community. The full report, written by Daisy Abbott and Emma Beer, can be read at http://ahds.ac.uk/performingarts/pubs/scoping-study-2006.pdf
Some of the findings are:
In creating digital collections, the biggest stumbling block is related to institutional infrastructure. Currently, technological resources and services at the majority of institutions lag well behind the pace of change in technological sophistication and the cutting-edge facilities available to some scholars in a small number of UK universities and research groups.
Dance and the broadcast arts tend to receive the lowest number of awards in almost every research scheme. As the AHDS Performing Arts survey demonstrates, in these subjects digital resources are in high demand – both in terms of frequency of use and in perceived importance.
Demand for digital materials related to dance teaching and research was much higher than average.
A great deal of importance was attached to materials documenting the performance itself, however, and very significantly, materials documenting the process of creating that performance were in equally high demand. Most research funders, and most digital resources privilege ‘product’ over process. This shows a clear disparity between what is currently being funded/provided and what users actually want.
Resources from outside HE are a great (currently untapped) asset to research and teaching. Making some of these collections available would be a great benefit to academics.
Digital resources are not only used for study, but also contribute significantly to performance practice both directly (e.g. archived sound recordings being remixed into contemporary commercial music) and indirectly (in affecting the processes and experiences of practising performers).
Performing Arts academic tend to make greater use of digital resources than academics from other disciplines. Use for research and teaching varies across Performing Arts subjects. Dance teachers make a proportionally higher use of digital resources than other subject teachers.
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Punching above ones weight
Zoe Bliss writes on how AHDS History's punch-card reader can save aging history records from oblivion
‘Who today has a punched card reader…?’
A key role of the AHDS is the preservation of the digital resources that are deposited at the various AHDS centres. The AHDS uses a migration based approach to digital preservation to ensure that the significant properties of all digital resources deposited with us can be preserved indefinitely through periodic migrations in data format and on-going media refreshment. The fragility of digital resources has been acknowledged for some time both in terms of the deterioration of electronic storage media and format currency in the face of technological change. However, there is a vast amount of data outside the AHDS collections or similar digital archives, which were created without particular consideration for their long term preservation and are currently stored in obsolete formats. Often these were created by obsolete software and hardware and are presently stored on obsolete forms of storage media.
When significant digital resources are offered to the AHDS centres we attempt to ‘extract’ the data from outdated media. Whilst AHDS History has preferred deposit formats (for details see http://ahds.ac.uk/history/depositing/deposit-formats.htm) we make considerable efforts to accept data in other, often older formats. Unfortunately there are limitations to formats and media we are able to accept and our primary concern is to preserve what is offered to us now rather than rescuing inaccessible data. Obviously we attempt to strike a balance between the significance of a study and the time (and cost) needed to extract data from obsolete file formats and media. Until recently, one such limitation related to data stored on punched cards.
Punched cards were an early storage medium made of cardboard that held data as patterns of punched holes. The ubiquitous (but not universal) ‘IBM punched-card’ consisted of 80 columns with each column generally holding a single piece of information. In use from the earliest days of computing, they fell out of favour during the 1970s. When the UK Data Archive, which houses AHDS History, was founded in 1967 punched cards were a common deposit format. However, the last accession on punched card was in the mid 1980s and the ability to deposit punched cards has since been lost.
In May 1996 the Report of the Task Force on Archiving Digital Information, instrumental in highlighting the problem of preserving digital objects asked “Who today has a punched card reader…?” Ten year later AHDS History along with the UK Data Archive with its recent purchase of a Cardmation CF300 punched-card reader, can answer “We do!”
Our new punched card reader has already been put to good use to ‘rescue’ data on the appointment and dismissal of Justices of the Peace originally created on punched card as part of the preparation for The History of Parliament: the House of Commons, 1660-1690. The original sources from which the cards were created can still be consulted at The National Archives, but until recently researchers were only able to consult the punched cards at the History of Parliament Trust, or one of the few surviving printouts at the History of Parliament Trust or The National Archives. The data extracted from the punched cards will make the analysis of the details of appointments and dismissal of JPs during the late-seventeenth century far more accessible to political and local historians.
The photo on this page shows the Cardmation CF300 in location at AHDS History. The punched cards received from the History of Parliament Trust were stacked into the reader and were then ‘read’, with the cards being transferred from the right hand hopper to the left. The first stage of reading creates a card image. The first screenshot shows a representation of a card containing information about Sir James Butler. This card gives the simple information that he was appointed to the Middlesex bench of JPs in December 1695. After this process, a piece of software (Cardmation’s Winread) transfers the data into a simple text file. The result of this process is shown in the second screenshot, where each line in the main pane represents the data from a single card.
These text files can easily be transferred into a tab delimited format which can be read immediately into a Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet for swift analysis. This format is also a superior format for long-term preservation. The end result is the migration from pre-digital to digital format; the History of Parliament Trust can now easily circulate these data; AHDS History can preserve and disseminate these data; and more than two metres of shelf-space can be reclaimed.
AHDS History is now confident that we can read most varieties of 80 column punched card which have not been multi-punched and are willing to undertake, for a small fee, reading of cards containing data of interest to historians and social scientists. For further details about this service please email: info at ahds.ac.uk
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Preserving digital lives - a practical paradigm
Biographers use personal letters, notes and journals as vital clues to understand their subject. But will personal emails, word documents and spreadsheets be available to future biographers? Susan Thomas explains how such items could be preserved in the digital age
Many universities collect the archives of private individuals. These materials contain valuable personal perspectives on people, places, events and ideas ranging from the everyday to the momentous, and are important to education and research communities. University special collections departments are very familiar with the management requirements of these materials in analogue forms, but the digital personal records which are being received alongside analogue deposits present multiple and novel challenges to those institutions charged with the continued survival and accessibility of personal archives.
The Personal ARchives Accessible in DIGital Media (Paradigm) project was devised to allow two such institutions, the Bodleian Library and the John Rylands University Library, the opportunity to learn about these new challenges in a practical way.
The project chose to work with contemporary politicians as an example of individuals whose papers the Bodleian and the Rylands traditionally collect. Some of the data types Paradigm has accessioned from politicians include email, word-processed documents, spreadsheets, images, presentations and websites as well as complementary analogue records. The development of procedures which accommodate analogue and digital items are important to the archival integrity of our collections.
A key outcome of Paradigm has been to allow the libraries to develop a better understanding of digital-specific preservation issues and to begin integrating processes which address these into workflows extant for the analogue components of personal archives where possible, and to develop parallel workflows where this is impossible. There is still much to do, but Paradigm is a solid foundation for future work.
The project concludes in February 2007, but we have been writing up our experiences as the project unfolds in Paradigm’s online Workbook on Digital Private Papers. The Workbook is compiled as the project experiments with standards, procedures, tools and approaches and includes examples drawn from our activities. It also contains template documents, which should be of use to others engaged in similar work.
Our work to date includes defining approaches to collection development; thinking about the lifecycle for digital archives; working with creators of personal archives; learning how to survey, extract and transfer authentic digital archives; and drafting terms of deposit which secure the rights needed to undertake preservation-related actions on archival materials.
We have also implemented a prototype preservation repository infrastructure at Oxford and experimented with tools aimed at addressing digital curation and preservation issues. These tools include the Fedora digital repository, format registries and format validation and metadata extraction tools, as well as persistent identifier schemes and standards such as the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) standard, Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) and the preservation metadata standard, PREMIS. It has been working with real people, real archives and existing tools which has helped us to draw some very valuable practical lessons from our exemplar. Some of these lessons can be implemented now, and some require further research and development. For further information about the project visit http://www.paradigm.ac.uk
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DIGitise for victory
Amy Robinson looks at a new collection of military posters available via the AHDS
Millions of posters were distributed during wartime Britain to influence public opinion and many of the designs are still famous to this day. Just think of the slogans ‘Dig for Victory’, ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’, and ‘Walls Have Ears’, and the pointing finger of Kitchener with the strapline ‘Your Country Needs You’.
Another 4000 posters from the Imperial War Museum poster collection are now available online via AHDS Visual Arts, bringing the total number of digital images available from the Imperial War Museum Posters of Conflict collection to over 7000 images.
The Imperial War Museum’s poster collection is the largest and most comprehensive of its type in Great Britain, documenting the social, political, ethnic and cultural aspirations of various nations from the First World War to more recent conflicts. The material selected for digitisation includes posters from the two World Wars originating from Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Belgium, Italy, India, and Sri Lanka, amongst other counties. The collection is an essential resource for looking at the development of mass communication, propaganda, publicity, commercial art and graphic design.
The posters have been digitised, catalogued, and published online as part of the Posters of Conflict project, a joint venture between the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Art Department at the Imperial War Museum. The project obtained funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and ran from 2003 to 2006.
The collection complements other material from the Imperial War Museum already available through AHDS Visual Arts, including the Concise Art Collection and the Spanish Civil War Poster Collection. This new collection also relates to other resources and images available via the AHDS Visual Arts catalogue. The designer F H K Henrion, for example, produced a prolific number of Second World War public information posters, using photomontage and often surreal compositions, many of which have been digitised as part of the Posters of Conflict project. Further examples of his work, including his Union Jack design for the top of the British Pavilion at Expo ’67, are also available via the Design Archives Collection and the learning resource ‘Exhibiting Britain’. Likewise, the wartime posters and post-war exhibition designs by British designer James Gardner can now be viewed online side-by-side.
The Imperial War Museum poster collection is now also set to be the subject of a major exhibition, due to take place at the Imperial War Museum, London, in September 2007. The IWM is working in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University and the exhibition should include around 300 examples from the poster collection. What’s more, with 7000 images already online, everyone who is inspired by the exhibition can now see a whole lot more of the collection at the touch of a button.
http:vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/IWMPC.html
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Euro integration
Martin Wynne looks at how the AHDS is becoming involved in European archive structures
AHDS Literature, Languages and Linguistics (LLL) is one of the main pillars of the Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN). CLARIN is establishing a pan-European, integrated and interoperable research infrastructure of language resources. It aims to overcome the current fragmentation, and offer a stable, persistent, accessible and extendable infrastructure which can facilitate the emergence of eScience research in literary and linguistic subject areas. AHDS LLL is playing a leading role in building CLARIN, and is coordinating the UK activities of this network.
CLARIN has been included in the first European roadmap for new, large-scale Research Infrastructures which was adopted by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) in September 2006. The ESFRI Roadmap is the result of an intensive two-year consultation and peer review process involving more than 1000 high level European and international experts. The ESFRI Roadmap includes only three humanities projects, and, alongside CLARIN, one of these is the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH) project, in which the AHDS also plays a key organising role. Both of these initiatives have been inspired by the success of the AHDS in the UK, and aim to extend the AHDS framework to the European level.
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The archaeology image bank
A new bank of images is available for teaching and learning in archaeology and history, and for the community to add to it.
Stuart Jeffrey reports
Created and hosted by the ADS/AHDS Archaeology for the Higher Education Academy for History, Classics and Archaeology, the Archaeology Image Bank is intended as a tool for locating and sharing archaeological images for use in teaching, learning and research. The Image Bank allows users to search for archaeological images to use themselves, for example as PowerPoint slides, and also encourages them to submit their own images to the bank for others to use.
Users can either submit their images on line, or if they have a large collection, they can submit the images on CD/DVD with an associated database containing the required metadata. All the images are submitted under a non-exclusive license that allows bona fide educational Image Bank users to use the images free of charge. Each image is also unobtrusively watermarked with the name of the depositor to ensure the appropriate credit is given. The donator always retains the copyright of the submitted image.
The response to this resource so far has been extremely positive with close to eight hundred images already available to use and nearly fifteen hundred in the process of validation prior to release. The metadata associated with each image allows those searching the Image Bank to perform advanced searches on multiple fields relating to subject, monument type, location, donor, year and so on. The acceptable range of terms in each of these fields is constrained by reference to existing archaeological or place name thesauri, such as English Heritage’s Thesaurus of Monument Types.
An additional feature of the system lets users add images to their own ‘image list’ for each session thereby allowing them to download groups of images for use rather than having to do this one at a time. A further useful feature is the flagging of new images, so frequent users can see immediately which images have been added since they last visited and a ‘popular images’ listing which directs the user to the most frequently download images.
Image Bank usage has already reached around two and half thousand downloads, with the most popular topics being Stonehenge and the excavations at Dolforwyn Castle in Wales. The range of images that are currently accessible is impressive with good examples of prehistoric sites such as Stonehenge, Bargennan Cairns and a huge collection of Standing Stone images, right through to medieval monuments like the 9th-century High Cross at Kildalton on Islay and Pictish Symbol stones. For the teaching of archaeology, what really marks out the Image Bank is the number of images of sites under excavation and of archaeologists at work.
The ADS/AHDS Archaeology have been very pleased to have had the opportunity to work with the HEA History, Classics and Archaeology subject centre on this project. As with all such projects, we have managed to identify a number of enhancements that could make it even more useful and we hope to develop the project further in the future. That being said, we are very encouraged that the rapid uptake of this resource suggests that it will quickly become and invaluable tool for all those engaged in teaching and researching in archaeology.
See http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/learning/image_bank/
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Restoration drama
Hazel Gardiner looks at a Methods Network workshop on digital restoration
The Methods Network has been engaged in developing a wealth of activities, ranging from a series of large-scale Expert Seminars initiated by the project’s Executive Committee, to focused Workgroups, Workshops and Seminars.
All workshops have been of exemplary quality and all have been well attended, if not over-subscribed – a telling demonstration of the level of interest in, and the need for, focused events of this kind. One of the most strikingly successful was the workshop on ‘digital restoration’ (26 June 2006) organized by Julia Craig-McFeely of the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM). The workshop aimed to train participants in the use of mainstream commercial software as a means to recover damaged and obscured readings from high-resolution digital images of manuscript sources. The workbook produced for this event has proved one of the most popular Methods Network outputs so far. This text is freely downloadable from the Methods Network website, and hard copies may also be purchased.
Visual art and the arts in general are among the more complex fields in terms of usage of advanced ICT methods and the Methods Network is particularly keen to demonstrate its support for these communities. Activities supported so far include the disciplines of Performance Studies and also Film Studies. Art History is represented in a forthcoming seminar on technical innovation in art-historical research, and further arts-focused activities include a workshop on the future of ICT in music technology and practice and a seminar analysing innovative protocols in electroacoustic music analysis.
The scope of the Methods Network’s interests also extends into the increasingly important arena of 3D visualization, supporting proposals such as those focusing on: theoretical approaches to virtual representation in archaeology; establishing transparent procedures for demonstrating 3D visual research outcomes; and visualization and remote sensing for the arts and humanities.
A list of the activities supported by the Methods Network may be found on the project website along with full reports on each event and training materials. The Methods Network invites the arts and humanities HE community in the UK to submit proposals for funding for activities. Activities may include workshops, seminars, focused workgroups, postgraduate training events and publications. The Methods Network has two deadlines each year; the next is 31 December 2006. If you would like to submit an application please see the Methods Network website for further details.
http://www.methodsnetwork.ac.uk
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Grafting an ear onto one's arm
Alastair Dunning reports on some of the intriguing questions raised by this year's DRHA
In 2006, DRH developed a new limb, and has evolved to become the Digital Resources for the Humanities and Arts. To inaugurate this development, and also to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the conference, this year’s event was held at Dartington College of Arts, Totnes, Devon.
Bringing together arts practitioners with humanities computing experts, the conference established an exchange of ideas and cutting-edge argument that belied the splendidly bucolic nature of surrounding Devon countryside.
Below are quick sketches of some of the themes that developed.
What is a digital resource?
For the humanities, a digital resource provides a record or reference to some kind of pre-existing human endeavour or object. The digital resource is a tool with which enhances understanding of this original. Thus the resource is not a primary source, but an interpretation of the original.
But for the arts, the digital output may be the be all and end all of the creative process. There is no single existing object or endeavour to which it need refer. Indeed, for the arts the whole notion of a resource - as a tool used to enhances immediate understanding of something else - does not chime with the concept of a digital output as an object developed in an aesthetic context.
Who uses digital resources?
Everyone. But the more interesting question concerns what resources are used. And the answer is incredibly varied. Early results from the AHRC’s knowledge-gathering surveys indicate show that, when asked to name their favourite digital research resource, over 60% of scholars gave different responses. This indicates that there are plenty of digital resources out there but they do not gain much usage past very specific user communities.
What happened to Van Gogh’s ear?
I don’t know. But just over a hundred years after Van Gogh’s death, Australian performance artist and DRHA keynote speaker, Stelarc, was engaged in an art project to graft an ear, created from cartilage and live tissue cells, to his arm. Documenting the artwork was hampered by the project photographer fainting during the surgery.
Who’s actually using JPEG-2000?
The still image format JPEG-2000 has still not gained widespread usage, but Peter Ainsworth’s Virtual Vellum resource demonstrates its advantages. In being able to allow for the quick and efficient zooming in of extremely high-resolution images, JPEG-2000 provides a powerful means for analysing, investigating and comparing digital pictures, in this case particular details of French medieval manuscripts.
Why do we need HD-DVD?
Martin White's project to accurately recreate Jacobean theatre performance on film faced two problems. One - how to record film when stage lighting consisted of only tallow and wax candles. Two - how to reflect the different viewpoints that spectators had within the theatre.
The use of High Definition DVD permitted these problems to be solved. Firstly, it allowed him to achieve high picture quality even in low-lighting conditions. Secondly, it helped, with some added software, for users of the recorded DVD to quickly switch between viewpoints; in essence to switch between the same performance shot from four different angles.
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How are digital resources used?
Claire Warwick reports on the LAIRAH Project, looking at how arts and humanities users interact with digital resources
Digital Humanities is a relatively young but very productive discipline. In its short history scholars have produced thousands of digital resources which have been funded by governments, philanthropic bodies and universities. In the UK alone, over 250 digital humanities projects have been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council since 1998. Yet what happens to such resources after completion is poorly understood.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that some projects become well known but others have been relatively quickly forgotten. This is regrettable since the non-use of a resource represents a waste both of the considerable intellectual effort and time expended in its production, and potentially considerable amounts of funding. No systematic survey of digital resource usage in the humanities has been undertaken, and the characteristics of a project that might predispose it for sustained use have never been studied.
This report http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slais/research/circah/lairah/ presents the results the LAIRAH (Log analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts and Humanities) project) based at UCL’s School of Library Archive and Information Studies: a study to discover what influences the long-term sustainability and use of digital resources in the humanities.
Key findings from the project
Use Levels Levels of resource use were difficult to evaluate due to changes in service provision during the research period. However, our findings suggest that 30-35% of digital resources remain unused. This is comparable to the number of scientific articles that remain un-cited.
Signposting Non-expert users found it difficult to understand the purpose of several resources. As well as an unambiguous project title, they required information about the contents, scope and how it was selected; the purpose of the resource; and advice about how it might be used.
Documentation Few projects kept formal documentation or made it easily available. The exceptions were projects in linguistics, archaeology and archives, areas in which the scholarly community regards documentation as an integral part of research.
User Contact Few projects carried out formal user testing, thus have little idea of the needs of their user community. Those projects which had carried out user tests were amongst the most well-used in our survey.
Dissemination Successful projects had worked hard to disseminate information about their resource. Individual scholars served as important exemplars of good practice: respect for their scholarship in digital humanities inspired others to undertake similar research.
Staffing Staff who are knowledgeable both about humanities research and ICT techniques were key to successful projects. However, a lack of appropriate training meant that they were difficult to find, and scarce funding made them difficult to retain from one project to another.
Sustainibility Few projects realised the importance of ensuring their resource remained sustainable and that both content and interfaces must be maintained and updated. They did not appear to realise that archiving a resource with the AHDS does not guarantee a website's future accessibility. However, funding for maintenance is difficult to obtain.
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Recent AHDS news
Happy 10th birthday AHDS
"An article by Dan Greenstein and Jennifer Trant in an early edition (July 1996) of Ariadne introduced readers to the aims and organisation of the fledging Arts and Humanities Data Service. Exactly ten years on from that, as the AHDS undergoes a systematic review by its funders, it seems appropriate to take stock of how the AHDS has evolved, comparing its current position with that envisaged for it when the organisation commenced work in the 1990s .... "
Read more about the AHDS after ten years at http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue48/dunning/
Romanesque sculpture
Romanesque stone sculpture pervades buildings throughout Britain and Ireland. Carvings of human figures, animals, monsters, grotesques, religious motifs, geometric patterns, foliage and other adornment from the 11th and 12th centuries can be found in parish churches and cathedrals, houses and halls, and castles and museums, throughout the British Isles.
We are pleased to announce that a further 3000 images from the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland (CRSBI) are now available online via AHDS Visual Arts. This latest addition brings the total number of digital images available from the CRSBI to over 14,000 images.
http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/collections/CRSBI.html
GIS in history
The seminars will consist of a mixture of presentations and roundtable discussions and will help attendees to make better use of GIS in their research, by considering what exactly GIS has to offer historians, in what ways historians make, or would like to make, use of GIS in their research and what technological and methodological issues are faced. They are aimed at a broad audience including established academics, members of the heritage sector, junior researchers and post-graduates.
The first seminar will take place in York on 28 February 2007. Places are limited and booking forms need to be returned by 15 December 2006. Further details of the seminar, including a downloadable booking form, can be found at http://ahds.ac.uk/history/hgis/seminar-york.htm
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Page last modified: 22nd November 2006 by Katrin Weidemann