Introduction

When there is a digital component involved, funding bids to the Arts and Humanities Research Board involve an extra appendix. There are four sections to this appendix - project management, data development methods, infrastructural support and finally, data preservation and access. Together, these four sections allow the applicant the opportunity to demonstrate his or her understanding of the technical and managerial aspects of the project and also how best to tackle these issues throughout its lifespan. Unlike the rest of the application, the technical appendix is not judged on intellectual and creative merit; rather, fulfilling the criteria used for assessing the appendix is based on exhibiting knowledge of certain standards and practices involved in the creation of any digital resource, and evidence of strategies for handling the digitisation of the distinctive elements within the source.

The --Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi-- is one project centred on the creation of a digital resource. Based at the Courtauld Institute of Art and the National Monuments Record (NMR) at Swindon, various scholars and fieldworkers are involved in the creation of a digital record of all stained glass in Britain made before 1530. It has recently received funding from the AHRB under the Resource Enhancement scheme, and the assessors considered the application to be an excellent exemplar of how to approach the technical appendix. This case study looks at what made the --Corpus-- application such a success. It is not meant to be prescriptive - digital resources come in manifold shapes and sizes and each one has its own especial requirements - but to give an indication of the issues an applicant may need to consider.

Figure 1 - A sample piece of stained glass from Exeter Cathedral

History of Project

The --Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi-- was instigated as an international federated project in 1949, designed to document all instances of medieval stained glass. The British segment of the project commenced in the late 1950s, and for the past 35 years a photographic collection, developed as part of the National Monuments Record, has funded the creation of numerous printed volumes on British stained glass. In 1998, the project received funding from the British Academy to commence a pilot project to digitise parts of the collection. This pilot project was completed in September 1999, and the team immediately looked for funding with the newly created Arts and Humanities Research Board. They were eventually pointed in the direction of the AHRB's Resource Enhancement Scheme. The scheme can be utilised in order to initiate new academic projects, but it is also popular for projects, often with a digital component, already in progress. When the results of the scheme were published, the --Corpus-- team discovered they had been successful and received enough funding for a further three years work on the project.

Pilot Project

In their application to the Resource Enhancement Scheme, the Corpus team could speak confidently about many of the problems involved because an earlier pilot project had thrown up various unexpected obstacles, for which they had developed strategies to overcome. A pilot phase is almost an essential part of any large-scale digitisation project. Digitisation, especially of an idiosyncratic primary source such as stained glass, is not a straightforward business. Experimentation allows one to detect these obstacles, and so make the necessary preparations for hurdling these when digitisation is being performed on a much larger scale. For the stained glass team, the pilot project included testing the various different formats of photograph they wanted to digitise, and testing various standards that could be used for documenting the digital objects. Choosing the samples for such a trial requires care - the team needed to analyse not the typical part of the collection, but representatives from different parts of the collections that could cause problems in the long run. Examples from different formats (negatives, transparencies, slides, prints, all in a variety of conditions) were selected, as were representatives with varying subject-matter.

As expected, the results from the pilot project were different from the expectations of the team at the outset. They had hoped to digitise 5,000 images in the pilot project, but only managed 3,500. Various aspects of the scanning took longer than anticipated. Quality control, where team members check for any corruptions or errors in the scanning, was a more demanding task than expected. Perhaps the most instructive part of the pilot concerned the database used for housing the images and data. Filemaker Pro had seemed like a good choice at the beginning, but failed to cope adequately with a large number of images, and was also inefficient when attempts were made to transpose the data to a web interface. The team realised a more sophisticated database structure would need to be built to house the entirety of the project. A pilot also made apparent the need for a coherent plan in seemingly uncomplicated tasks, such as developing naming conventions for all the separate digital files. Knowledge of these difficulties was of immense benefit when applying for further funding.

Project Management

Project Management is the first section of the technical appendix, and perhaps the most important. This segment, in connection with the earlier sections on the financial administration of the project, gives applicants the opportunity to show that their plans for staff organisation and deployment of funds are well-founded. From this, assessors can decide if the technical ambitions of the project are feasible. Again, a pilot project can be of good help here. For the --Corpus-- team, it allowed them to approximate a realistic target for the number of images they could hope to scan in the three year's worth of money they were applying for. Good project management also involves recognition of the various experts that need to be consulted before, during and after digitisation. The Arts and Humanities Data Service, of course, is an essential part of this, as both advisors on good practice in digitisation and the recipients of a copy of the finished resource. The --Corpus-- team also listed the Higher Education Digitisation Service, King's College London and staff from the National Monuments Record as advisors. Members from each of this group were part of the --Corpus-- steering group, and the team have found their advice invaluable.

Figure 2 - Another sample piece of stained glass from Exeter Cathedral

Data Development Methods

Within this section, the applicant gives closer consideration to the process of recreating the primary resource in digital form. While applications will vary greatly according to the format of the material that is being digitised, there are some key themes that need to be addressed. The --Corpus-- application mentioned the location of the original materials, how copyright was being dealt with, the method of scanning the source material and the database system being used to accommodate the collection and its documentation. Whatever the type of material being digitised, applicants need to demonstrate that the project will be proceeding according to agreed standards and good practice, or indeed be involved in defining these standards. Content and copyright were not a serious problem for the --Corpus--, as the collection was held at one location (the National Monument Records archive), and because the archives holders, English Heritage, were partners in the project it was easy to gain copyright clearance to use their photographs. The --Corpus-- application did spend a little more time, however, specifying the technical results of the scanning process, and how the database holding the images and documentation could be tailored for web delivery. Other resources need to be aware of the specific problems that will cause their development the most serious problems, and make mention of this accordingly.

Infrastructural Support

Even the well-planned resource can fail because of a lack of immediate technical support, and the use of hard or software that is insufficient for the task in hand. The third section offers the applicant the opportunity to illustrate the resources that they have within their own university or library for technical assistance. If a project needs to purchase new equipment, this should be included in the costings in the main segment of the application form. Funding can help with a limited amount of hardware, but assessors are wary of funding projects that require the purchase of a large amount of IT equipment without giving suitable justification for the outlay.

Data Preservation and Access

While the AHDS exists to preserve and disseminate the resources created by AHRB-fundees, many resource creators also want to disseminate their material through their own websites, often with web interfaces added to the raw data. Applicants therefore have to stipulate their plans for preserving their data in the long run (i.e. making back-ups to avoid the pitfalls of data corruption and also migrating data when new soft or hardware systems come into use). Additionally, applicants will need to ensure the assessors that copyright issues have been dealt with (although the --Corpus-- team did this in the preceding section). It is the responsibility of the resource creator to discover if the rights holders of the materials being digitised are happy to see their property being distributed on the Internet. The --Corpus Vitrearum-- project used this section to outline their preservation strategy, noting that during the development of the resource, the documentary data would be copied daily on CDs, while the scanned images would be held at the Courtauld Institute and the NMR. Plans for access were not fully developed, but assessors were happy that plans were being developed to create an interface on a website within either the Courtauld Institute, or its neighbour, King's College, as well as the AHDS.

Conclusion

The technical appendix is not designed to be the most challenging part of any Arts and Humanities Research Board funding application. However, it needs appropriate preparation, and, where necessary, consultation, to indicate to assessors that the tasks entailed in creating a digital resource are fully comprehended and addressed. The --Corpus-- project stands as a good example of how to achieve this - by taking advice from experts in the field, by exploiting the results of a pilot project, and by becoming familiar with the various aspects of creating and maintaining a digital resource.

Many thanks to Tim Ayers and Phill Purdy for
their help in composing this case study.

Page last modified: by
[Email the AHDS] | [Site Index] | [Other Relevant Services] | [Latest Collections]