• Technology is destroying the visual arts!
• ARIA - Music to your ears
• Resistance! Fighting Napoleon during the Spanish Little War
• Digitising the art of conflict
• Digital Resources for the Humanities: a personal perspective
• Digimap: Mapping the Past
• Methods Network launched
• Coping with information
• Update: AHDS diary and news
• AHDS Resources on the Reformation

The inexorable rise of digital technologies, led by Parliamentary initiatives such as Modernising Government, is, as promised, ‘revolutionising our lives, including the way we work, the way we communicate and the way we learn.’ Sadly, as with all revolutions, there are many silent, innocent victims.

In UK arts education, many of the traditional modes of creativity that have kept Britain at the forefront of the international art scene are at risk from the small grey boxes that are increasingly dominating art students’ workspaces. If you held the purse strings for a major arts institute which would sound more appealing: a room set aside for two sculptors or the same space set up for twenty students in front of PCs? Furthermore, there are fears within the community that the essential qualities of arts teaching and learning are also at risk. With an ever growing digital environment comes the potential for loss of cultural absorption for students: that invisible but fundamental air that exists in an environment where face to face contact - student to student and student to lecturer - is the predominant learning tool, not an impersonal screen and keyboard where every image is simply a collage of pixels and bytes.

In response, AHDS Visual Arts has established the Digital Picture: an initiative funded by the JISC Images Working Group to produce an overview of issues, and potential solutions, relating to the effects of the digital image revolution within the UK arts education community. However, the project is not intended to be an arbiter of doom.

Whilst there are inevitably fears associated with change, there are, obviously, huge benefits in the digital development of the UK arts education sector. When asked about the Digital Picture, David Bowie, icon of generations of youth and patron of both on and offline student art, pointed out that a website can not only provide younger artists with a platform to exhibit their work but, importantly, can also be complimentary to traditional exhibitions and projects.

What is certain is that the rise of digital images and their supporting technologies within arts education brings amounts to one of the biggest and most profound changes that the sector has ever seen. Everything, from teaching in the classroom to finding images in the library, is having to adapt to the new model. the Digital Picture has been designed to explore this brave new world.

Through a coordinated, open consultation with representatives of all art colleges, schools and university departments across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, plus other associated or interested organisations, the Digital Picture will identify problems and offer arenas for discussion and possible routes towards practical solutions.

The project kicked off in early April at the Association of Art Historians’ Conference in Bristol, with the launch of a simple, 10 question consultation document available as both a beautifully illustrated brochure and a simple-to-use online version.

Each of the ten questions is accompanied by brief discussion notes and a number of quotations, all carefully created to help contributors to come to their own conclusions about crucial issues such as the ownership of images, technological problems, image discovery and the availability of training or appropriate funding. Contemporary artists Boyd and Evans, on hearing about the project, commented: “the Digital Picture is a very interesting development and we think the findings should prove to be essential reading for anyone involved in arts education.”

If you have any interest in the use of digital images, log onto the Digital Picture website and have your say. Or, if you would like to play a bigger part in the project, you can attend, free-of-charge, one of eight workshops/expert seminars in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For details of the whole project, or to book your place at a workshop, visit: http://www.thedigitalpicture.ac.uk •••

Top

An increasing number of activities and projects (funded by the AHRC, JISC and others) are producing digital services, information and resources of potential value to the research community. This diverse and growing range of data sources available to arts and humanities researchers imposes new needs in terms of skills or at least awareness of the possibilities created by ICT. A few examples illustrate this point.

Researchers accessing extensive audio archives made available through the Independent Local Radio Programme Sharing Scheme Digitisation Project (http://www.ahrb.ac.uk/awards/award_detail.asp?id=321751) need to understand different file formats and digital playback standards and may need to use digital editing tools.

Digital tools themselves create opportunities for new research practice in performance arts such as online collaborative musical composition/performance (see the intercontinental spontaneous jam session at http://130.208.220.190/), or theatrical visualisation (see the Kent Interactive Digital Design Studio at http://www.kent.ac.uk/sdfva/kidds).

ICT is now well-established in the field of scholarly editing. Digital editions are able to incorporate different versions of texts, annotations and associated materials, as well as allowing various options for the user to access the text in ways just not possible in print. One such example is the Canterbury Tales project (http://www.cta.dmu.ac.uk/projects/ctp/).

ICT tools can be used for data capture and enhancement, as well as data analysis. In the case of the Roman Vindolanda tablets digital scanning combined with infra-red filters is used to detect subtle differences in shade between ink writing and the wooden surface on which it appears. These differences can be digitally manipulated and enhanced so that the ink writing stands out more clearly against the background. High resolution scanning also allows individual letters to be examined very close up. After capture, digital images can be further manipulated by image processing software (http://vindolanda.csad.ox.ac.uk/).

These examples show the range of innovative and exciting uses of ICT in Arts and Humanities research. However, while universal provision of services such as electronic mail in university campuses, as well as the widespread use of personal computers for tasks such as word-processing, ensures that some basic ICT skills are possessed by most arts and humanities researchers, the use of computer based tools and resources beyond these basic office functions is still quite patchy and limited.

Most universities have a pressing need for ICT training resources. The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is placing increased emphasis on generic research training in both MA and doctoral degrees.

Clearly this will have to include a significant element of training in the use of ICT. As this element becomes more important in postgraduate training, we can reasonably expect a knock-on effect on established researchers’ perceptions of their own development needs.

In this context, the JISC, through its Committee for the Support of Research, and with the support of the AHRC, is funding an awareness and training programme targeted at the arts and humanities research community: ARIA (Arts and Humanities Research ICT Awareness and Training). The purpose of this initiative is:

• To build on and support existing ICT training and awareness activities within the UK education community, specifically the work of the RDN Virtual Training Suite http://www.vts.rdn.ac.uk/ and Netskills http://www.netskills.ac.uk/

• To directly support and complement the work of the AHRC ICT Methods Network.

• To promote the use of JISC funded collections and development within the arts and humanities

The project started in earnest in January 2005 and will end by 30 September 2006. We aim to have some prototype materials available for testing by June 2005 and a fully functioning web site for large scale trials by February 2006. See the project website at http://aria.dmu.ac.uk/ for further details.

ARIA will help universities to respond to the AHRC’s increasing emphasis on generic research training by providing access to a range of training resources in the use of ICT that most institutions cannot provide on their own.

Although universities provide generic training for students and staff in the use of basic ICT training such as spreadsheets and databases, very few have the facilities to provide dedicated Arts and Humanities training in the use of ICT.

Such resources are needed if the majority of researchers are to be enabled to make the best use of the new technologies and understand their benefits. Preliminary findings indicate a number of structural problems: low awareness of what is possible, both theoretically and practically; training not easy to find; lack of generic tools for particular disciplines; shortage of time in which to keep abreast of new tools.

The main output therefore will be ready access to a suite of nationally available on-line resources that give researchers, including postgraduates, a broad overview of relevant ICT tools and resources and illustrations of their use across the range of disciplines covered by the AHRC.

While some may be new, we aim to make maximum use of existing resources through a thorough review and selection process and to reuse resources as far as possible through localisation of content to different subjects. We expect these resources to be a combination of case studies and training materials for use both by trainers and directly by researchers themselves.

We welcome the wide involvement of the Arts and Humanities research community in the content review and development process and in testing and evaluating the project outcomes. If you would like to get involved or suggest a resource for inclusion, please contact the project director Stephen Brown (sbrown@dmu.ac.uk) or research assistant, Vivian Liang (v.w.liang@salford.ac.uk), or visit the project website at http://aria.dmu.ac.uk/•••

Top

The identity of the Spanish guerrillas who fought Napoleon in the Peninsular War of 1808-14 is not a subject that has ever gripped the attention of the historical community. Whilst there has been general agreement that popular resistance played a considerable role in Spain’s struggle against the French presence, the men and women who actually took up arms against the invaders have remained cloaked in anonymity.

For a long time it was argued that this was inevitable on the grounds that, as an essentially peasant movement, the Spanish guerrillas could not have been expected to leave much of a footprint in the archives, and debate therefore remained centred on the exploits – semi-fictionalised, it must be said – of a few prominent individuals.

But between 1999 and 2002 a programme of detailed archival work funded by the University of Liverpool and the Leverhulme Trust whose chief result was the current author’s Fighting Napoleon: Guerrillas, Bandits and Adventurers in Spain, 1808-1814 revealed that many of the old suppositions about the guerrilla movement were unfounded. Far from there being nothing in the archives, the paper-trail was very extensive, if rather fragmentary.

With the aid of fresh research funding from the AHRC and the BA, work therefore commenced on a prosoprographical survey of the Spanish guerrillas. Entitled ‘Spanish Little War, 1808-1814’, this has recently been deposited with the AHDS History, and will be accessible under the code SN.5095.

In putting this database together, a number of issues had to be tackled. Chief of these was the issue of what was meant by the word ‘guerrilla’. Historically, this definition has been the subject of much debate, and it can safely be assumed that for casual observers it means an irregular combatant acting outside, and often in opposition to, the military structures of the state.

This is fair enough, but one of the lessons of the research that had given rise to the database was that in Spain the ‘little war’ – the sort of raiding and skirmishing that is generally associated with guerrilla bands – was actually in large part the work of regular troops.

In consequence, it was decided to select a much larger pool of information. Irregular combatants would be included, certainly, but so would local militias such as the Catalan homeguard (known as the somatén) and regular units that had been specifically raised to fight as guerrillas.

The results were very interesting. At the time of writing, the number of combatants entered in the database stands at 3,024, and working from this sample it is possible to make a number of suggestions.

First of all, there is a steady decline both in the number of active combatants and in the number of military units or irregular bands into which they were grouped. Second, different parts of Spain responded to the French invasion in different ways, with some provinces providing far more combatants than their populations would suggest, and others providing far fewer; curiously, however, the very provinces that produced fewest guerrillas tended to generate the largest number of irregular bands.

Third, a very high proportion of those individuals whose occupation and social class could be identified were in some way associated with either the Church, the Bourbon state or the social élite. And, fourth, only a comparatively small number of combatants served in irregular bands; regular units and people’s militias being far more important.

It must be stressed that great care must be taken with these figures, which are seriously distorted by the stronger trace that property, education and social status leaves in the archives. To believe, indeed, that the populace was absent would be patently ridiculous, for absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.

But what is clear is that to paint a picture of the Spanish people rushing into the hills to take up arms in defence of díos, rey y patria is distinctly unwise; a conclusion also reached by the more traditional methods that produced Fighting Napoleon. Whatever conclusion is reached on this issue, however, we now know more about the composition of the men who fought Napoleon in Spain than was ever the case in the past.

NB. In writing this article, the author would particularly like to acknowledge the assistance of his research assistant, Doña Leonor Hernández Enviz, with regard to the elaboration of the database. Also of great assistance has been Dr Zoe Bliss of the AHDS. For a fuller account of the research project and its findings, cf. C.J. Esdaile and L. Hernández-Enviz, ‘’The anatomy of a research project: the sociology of the guerrilla war in Spain, 1808-1814’ in C. J. Esdaile (ed.), Popular Resistance in the French Wars: Patriots, Partisans and Land-Pirates (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 115-36.

Top

The success of the critically acclaimed William Orpen exhibition currently showing at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) and the corresponding recent increase in the number of hits to AHDS Visual Arts’ image catalogue is by no means a coincidence. The two events are linked by a decade- long collaboration to bring the IWM’s remarkable art and graphic design resources online.

The IWM’s Concise Art collection is acknowledged as one of the leading collections of twentieth-century art in Britain, and the Poster Collection is the largest and most comprehensive collection of its type, documenting the social, political, ethnic and cultural aspirations of warring nations from the First World War to more recent conflicts. The collaboration between the IWM and AHDS Visual Arts, an established national service serving the needs of the UK visual arts education community, was born out of a need to provide greater access to these invaluable resources.

AHDS Visual Arts offered the IWM a unique opportunity to make their collections accessible to a broad cross section of users from secondary schools through to further and higher education. In addition, all of the images would be fully catalogued to international educational standards, copyright cleared for educational use and fully cross-searchable with other AHDS Visual Arts collections.

There are currently three IWM collections available via AHDS Visual Arts’ website: the Concise Art Collection, the Spanish Civil War Poster Collection and the Posters of Conflict Collection.

The Concise Art Collection consists of 2,000 text and image records. Both fine and graphic art are well represented in this collection, and it is perhaps most notable for the work of the official artists commissioned to record the events of World War I. The collection is a rich social document, recording the human histories of war and conflict from the Great War to the present day.

The Spanish Civil War Poster Collection comprises around 85 images. The posters in the collection are predominately Republican, although there are a few Nationalist examples. Themes range from recruitment and propaganda to agricultural and social policy. The high quality of the graphic design in this group of posters stands out as a highlight in the IWM’s collections.

The Posters of Conflict collection encompasses some 2,000 images of posters from British, Commonwealth and Western European countries from the First World War to current times. The collection includes work by leading twentieth-century designers from Britain and abroad and is an essential resource for studying the development of mass communication, propaganda, publicity, commercial art and graphic design. This collection is set to grow by some 8,000 additional images later this year and will incorporate posters from the USA, Russia and Central Europe.

One of the benefits of using AHDS Visual Arts to access these vital collections is the interoperability of the resources. Researchers have the advantage of searching the IWM collections in isolation or as part of a larger image bank. This provides a broader horizon across which to examine these collections.

For example, when cross searching just the IWM collections, an initial instinct is to think of something readily associated with a “boys-own” view of war, such as plane, tank, gun or soldier. Images depicting these subjects are returned, but possibly not in the context expected. Rather than a documentary record of weaponry, artillery and machines, human stories are poignantly revealed. A further search via AHDS Visual Arts’ website on more oblique terms redolent of the causation or legacy of conflict such as hospital, flowers or peace, perhaps, get to the true heart of the collection and uncover the less obvious messages and stories within.

Cross-searching the entirety of AHDS Visual Arts’ image catalogue further enriches the range of results. For example, a collection wide search on the term peace brings back a wealth of information in addition to the IWM’s collections. Some of these related results would include:

• Satirical prints celebrating peace from the John Johnson Collection of Political Prints.

• War memorials from the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association.

• Displays from the ‘War to Peace’ section of the ‘Britain Can Make It’ exhibition from the Design Council Archive.

• Post World War II letters from the Crafts Study Centre’s Bernard Leach Archive.

The diversity and richness of the results will appeal across academic disciplines to the art student, designer, craftsman, art and general historian.

Since depositing their collections with AHDS Visual Arts, the IWM has developed a section of its own website dedicated to delivering these same images. Users continue to also access the collection via AHDS Visual Arts, however, which highlights the importance of continuing collaboration with the IWM and demonstrates the need felt by the visual arts education community for a fully integrated and searchable catalogue of high quality images that can be accessed together in imaginative and enlightening ways.

Top

I was asked to write a short piece about the Digital Resources for the Humanities annual conference which reflected on the evolution of DRH since its founding in 1996, and to suggest how the conference might develop in the future.

I have been involved in every DRH conference to date, whether as part of a local organising committee (the first two were organised by Oxford’s humanities computing team); or as a member of the DRH Standing or Programme committees.

I recently completed a three-year stint as Chair of the Standing Committee. The Standing Committee provides continuity between conferences whilst the Programme and the Local Organising committees, established for each conference, actually do the real work.

The organisation of the first two DRH conferences (1996-97) was led by what became the Humanities Computing Unit at Oxford University in collaboration with an international programme committee and a group of generous sponsoring organisations.

The over-arching rationale for creating DRH was a perceived need for a broader, inclusive treatment of the creation and use of digital resources within the humanities. DRH has always advertised itself as having appeal to the scholar, the librarian, the archivist or the publisher and the first conference had representatives from all these groups and more.

The opening keynote speaker in 1996 was Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey who addressed the conference not long after the publication of the immense Patrologia Latina and English Poetry databases.

In the following year DRH situated itself within the long tradition of humanities computing by inviting Roberto Busa SJ, considered the father of humanities computing, to address a packed conference. Towards the end of the that same conference Pioneer High Fidelity (GB) Ltd hosted a reception to launch DVD, the optical medium of the future, one of the first launches of this new technology in the UK (all the demonstration equipment, including the DVD discs had to be shipped from Japan). Thus were conjoined tradition and innovation, humanities and arts.

The success of the first two conferences indicated that DRH was meeting a perceived demand. The subsequent establishment of a persistent Standing Committee and a public conference protocol encouraged other institutions to host the conference and, more significantly, ensured that participation in the organisation of the conference involved organisations in addition to the original founding institutions.

The DRH Standing Committee now includes representatives from the AHRC, AHDS, the publishing industry, public libraries and archives, subject associations, as well as centres of humanities computing expertise. From 1998 DRH travelled to Glasgow, King’s College London, Sheffield, SOAS, Edinburgh, Gloucestershire, and Newcastle. This year, the tenth DRH conference will be held at Lancaster University.

Of course, it is more difficult to predict the future of DRH given not only the twists and turns of technological change and trends, but also because the spirit of DRH is very much dependent on its participants, whether through the commitment of the Standing or Programme committees, or the active contribution made by the numerous attendees which DRH has attracted over the years.

The future of DRH is likely to be assured if it remains true to its founding principles of inclusivity and breadth. An international conference organised by an international programme committee and hosted within the British Isles has been its common mantra. DRH is not a specialised academic conference comprising members of a well-defined subject area.

Indeed, there are a significant number who would deny humanities computing is, or should be, considered a distinct subject. The boundaries are blurred and there is no pressing need to define a shibboleth to keep the others out.

Both the digital and the humanities aspects of DRH are broad. Despite the use of ‘humanities’, each DRH has attracted papers and participants from cultural heritage, the performing and the visual arts, suggesting that the humanities in DRH is shorthand for learning and scholarship associated with human culture.

In doing more to attract participation from the arts and creative industries, it is notable that DRH2006 will take place in the stunning surroundings of Dartington College of Arts (by Totnes, Devon), one of the UK’s leading centres for contemporary performance and creative arts practices. The modern and flexible spaces at Dartington (including a cinema) will offer new opportunities for conference presenters.

Before DRH2006, however, readers are reminded that DRH2005 is taking place at Lancaster University, long a centre of expertise in using digital technologies to challenge (or indeed confirm) the results of earlier humanities scholarship.

Whilst DRH is almost wholly a corporeal conference, its organisation is increasingly virtual. It would seem likely, given the advances in multi-site conferencing technologies, that DRH will continue to expand across other types of boundary and facilitate participation in future conferences through online collaborative environments.

Indeed, one of the key themes of DRH2005 is a discussion of what constitutes appropriate virtual research environments for the humanities. We look forward to seeing you there.

Top

EDINA Digimap now provides access to a new JISC data collection: Historic Ordnance Survey maps of Great Britain - the first time such a large collection of British historic maps has been available on-line. This valuable resource will have many uses in teaching and learning across a broad range of subjects.

Digimap is an established educational resource in Higher and Further Education (HE/FE), providing on-line access to contemporary Ordnance Survey (OS) maps and geographic data for over 5 years.

Digimap is used in many subject areas by experts and non-experts alike. Less than a third of Digimap users are geographers with the service being used in subjects ranging from Clinical Medicine through to NVQ Hairdressing courses.

It is anticipated that the Historic Map Collection will be as popular as the current OS maps, with usage just as broad.

The Historic Maps available through Digimap are digital scans of OS paper map sheets dating back to the mid 19th Century and include:

• all available County Series maps at 1:2,500 and 1:10,560 scales published between 1843 and 1939

• all available National Grid maps at 1:1,250, 1:2,500 and 1:10,560/10,000 scales published from 1945 and before the introduction of the Ordnance Survey’s digital Land-Line product.

The paper maps were captured in digital form by the Landmark Information Group in a joint venture with the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, producing over 400,000 separate map images. Landmark created a digital version of the original map sheets and also historic map data projected to the modern National Grid for use in Geographical Information Systems (GIS). These have been used by EDINA to provide seamless (where possible) on-line historic map browsing, though individual map sheets can also be viewed and downloaded.

Historic maps have many applications (see the box below) and there are many potential historic map user groups within HE/FE. Until now, those requiring historic maps for their teaching or research have needed to visit map libraries or pay for maps downloaded from commercial websites. So the use of historic maps in teaching and research has so far been limited by accessibility.

With the release of the Digimap Historic Map Service, staff and students in HE/FE will for the first time have unlimited on-line access to historic maps covering Great Britain from the mid 1800s to the early 1990s.

The service provides various ways of viewing and downloading the historic maps, so there is flexibility in how the service and maps are included in teaching and learning materials or used for research:

• Maps can be viewed on screen, with various zoom and pan functions to aid navigation. Up to four differently dated maps of the same location can be viewed side by side, allowing comparisons of the changing landscape. So the service can be incorporated into teaching materials or used to aid research, without the need for any other software or associated training. Also, because the service is available 24/7 from any PC with an Internet connection (via Athens authentication), students can find, view and use the historic maps in their own time, from their preferred location.

• The maps and associated support materials can be downloaded in a number of ways and then printed out. The printed materials can then be included in teaching packs, or materials for field courses.

• Electronic historic maps can be downloaded and then used to create or enhance learning materials within a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Of course, the Service itself could be linked to via a VLE.

• The historic maps can be downloaded as geo-referenced data for use in GIS. This provides materials for more advanced users using GIS tools for teaching and academic research.

On its own, or used with other JISC resources (e.g. Digimap Ordnance Survey data or the IDOX New Town Records), the service will be an essential resource to many.

The Digimap Historic Map Service will be available to all staff and students within a subscribing HE/FE institution (via Athens authentication). Institutions wanting access to the service will be required to pay an annual subscription. JISC are offering a 20% discount to existing Digimap subscribers. To subscribe to the Digimap Historic Map Service, visit the JISC website: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/

For more general information on the Digimap Historic Service, visit the EDINA Digimap web site: http://edina.ac.uk/digimap/ •••

AHDS History also presents a range of historical maps for users to download and exploit. These include :

• Historic Maps of England and Wales: An Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 with a Gazetteer and Metadata
• Enclosure, Rating, Drainage and Sanitary Maps of England and Wales in Public Archives, 1598-1936
• Maps from the Online Historical Population Reports project
• Irish Poor Law Union and Barony Boundaries, 1841-1871
• GIS of the Ancient Parishes of England and Wales, 1500-1850

See http://ahds.ac.uk/history/collections/historical-maps.htm

Top

On April 18 2005, the Methods Network, part of the AHRC’s ICT in Arts and Humanities Research Programme, was launched.

Working closely with current AHRC services such as the AHDS, the Methods Network will act as a forum for bringing together established and emerging practitioners in arts and humanities computing, allowing them to exchange and debate ideas, good practice and expertise through seminars, publications and training workshops.

Five leading academic institutions: King’s College London, Lancaster University, The Royal College of Arts, Royal Holloway, and Sheffield University, have created a partnership to establish the Methods Network.

It will be hosted by King’s College London, and will be jointly directed by Harold Short and Marilyn Deegan, respectively Director and Director of Research Development at the College’s Centre for Computing in the Humanities.

A fuller article on the Methods Network will be appearing in the next edition of the AHDS Newsletter. In the meantime visit http://www.methnet.org.uk/

Top

Information is a modern zeitgeist. Never more ubiquitous, never more available, never more mundane, it is hard not to be impressed by the pace of change associated with online information services.

Academics have spent a decade or more coming to terms with the riches suddenly within reach. Taking this access for granted, a generation of students have been amazed at our amazement. If we have learned anything it is that information skills will be key to their academic achievement.

AHDS is a case in point. One of the core services provided by the AHDS is our online resources. In archaeology, ArchSearch (http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue) provides information on some 950,000 sites, monuments or interventions. Short descriptive records provide access to many rich and detailed archives that may contain any form of digital object.

Such archives include very large quantities of text – theses, monographs and journal articles in digital form – as well as unpublished ‘grey literature’. They include prodigious numbers of database files, images, CAD plans, geophysical and topographic survey, virtual realities, animations and statistical data.

These are available free of charge and access is supported by a help system and help desk. These supporting mechanisms also allow informal two-way communication, ensuring that ArchSearch meets the needs of its users.

But access is not education. Most students are not yet ready to be researchers, so for very many online resources the promise of access is illusory. It is not that the online resources fail to deliver the sophisticated knowledge environment that they promise – although some do fail in this regard too. More fundamentally, students are not able to articulate the sophisticated questions required to exploit the resource, and are poorly equipped to evaluate the resource available.

In allowing users to lift information out of context, Internet search engines suffer in particular from a sort of critical failure; students are overwhelmed with information that they can neither digest nor discriminate. Even, tailored and carefully contextualised online resources suffer from this problem. Learners are not yet ready to be researchers: so the sort of associative, self-motivating and open ended learning to which we may aspire will not be a practical reality without expert intervention.

Experience suggests that students introduced to ArchSearch at the right point in their studies gain a significant advantage over their peers. This reinforces the importance of introducing students to the services that the AHDS provides. Reviewing practice in a number of universities in the UK gives an insight into how that can be done.

Central to this activity is a suite of online tutorials that introduce students to how archaeological information is produced, validated and disseminated. These go far beyond the simple mechanical skills for search and retrieval, seeking to help students understand the nature of the information that is available. Moreover, by including these tutorials within the undergraduate curriculum a number of institutions ensure that their students learn to be researchers.

These tutorial packs were commissioned by JISC in 2000 and are the result of a project dubbed PATOIS (Publications and Archives in Teaching with Online Information Systems). Tutorials introduce monument inventories, digital archives, Internet publication and interdisciplinary study. Designed as a ‘structured engagement’ with data sets, the tutorials provide an advanced introduction to AHDS collections and an insight into the implied knowledge of the research community.

Information may be suddenly pervasive, but the core values of the research community remain. Information skills have always been critical for good research: the digital revolution simply makes them more pressing.

Top

• New History Collection - Wills & Inventories of Single Men and Women in Norfolk, 1605-1687
• Acronym Buster: newly updated
• Russian Visual Arts: Art Criticism in Context, 1814-1909
• William Orpen
• Society of Antiquaries of London - Catalogue of Drawings & Museum Objects
• How to choose an XML editor
• Risk Management and Contingency Planning
• Website Construction

Top

• The Bible, (translated by Luther) (licence form must be filled out first)
• Erasmus and search under Erasmus
• Designing Shakespeare: Henry VIII
• Survey of Scottish Witchcraft
• John Foxe's Acts and Monuments
• Genevan Sex Crimes Database, c.1440-c.1790
• Humbul Humanities Hub (and search under Reformation)

Page last modified: 12th May 2005 by Alastair Dunning
Email the AHDS | Site Index | Other Relevant Services | Latest Collections