Digitisation Doctor Conference

Starting off a series of 'guest' blog entries, the Archive (or at least half of it) had an away day today, and attended a digitisation information event in London. Being from London myself, it's always great to get to go back, particularly for educational/academic visits. I've had the pleasure in the last year of being able to visit the British Library for an Oral History Workshop, for example.

Kate and I went to the Wellcome Trust at Euston, a building which I have passed many times on my travels around town but never had the privilege to visit before. It was a great venue and I must say I loved the modern style of the architecture, a great juxtaposition to the great St Pancras Hotel - or St Pancras Station if you believe the Harry Potter franchise - a few hundred yards away.


The Wellcome Trust was a great venue

I think it's fair to say that we were treated to an outstanding day, my first proper conference of sorts, having attended a number of workshops with my secondary school. The papers were varied but all highly applicable to the developments at the Archive.

I could easily highlight any of the presentations but I want to mention specifically William Kilbride (follow him on Twitter @WilliamKilbride) from the Digital Preservation Coalition. His 'Preservation Planning in 12 Questions' was particularly brilliant and I can definitely see myself incorporating this into my MA in the coming two years. On a personal note I am thrilled to have been accepted on that course and look forward immensely to continuing my studies here at Corsham Court.

These are some great questions that preservation projects would do well to keep in mind... 

I also particularly enjoyed Christy Henshaw (@Chenshaw) who spoke about workflows in digitisation projects. Her flow diagrams certainly took me back to the project modules I did on my ICT A-Level. Memories! Finally, I wish to mention Simon Tanner (@SimonTanner) and his talk on Optical Character Recognition (OCR). It has certainly led me to appreciate the systems available via Bath Spa University's Electronic Services. I cannot help but feel a lecture on this to undergraduates would help them to appreciate the enormity of the scope of putting such resources online, and why currently they cannot hope to be 100% accurate.

All of the talks had some resonance with our project, though, and elements of them all will no doubt feature on our work as it progresses in the next couple of years. It really is an exciting time for anyone associated with the BSU Archive!

There was also time for discussion with the rest of the group, and we were fortunate enough to be able to chat with some representatives of the Collections Trust, based at the Natural History Museum, South Kensington. They opened our eyes to some fantastic funding opportunities available through the European Commission, particularly the Europeana project. This looks like it could have the makings of a fantastic portal for materials across Europe. I highly recommend it to any fellow students or those interested in European history in general. Who knows what one might find there?

The day was made even better with the use of Twitter, allowing members of the group to communicate with the speakers once they had finished. They were also able to post up their slides before they spoke so that we could follow on our connected devices as well as on the projector. For those interested, you can have a look through the tweets using the hashtag #digidoctor. For someone involved with IT, it was an excellent use of social media to help add to an already excellent event. In my opinion it really showcased the power of social media.

Today has certainly got my creative juices going and I can already think of directions to take the digitisation of the project forward, particularly in relation to OCR systems, funding, planning and development of a cataloging and online digitisation system. I have really enjoyed today and once again look forward to helping the project to develop in the future. I could write so much more but I think I leave more detailed specifics (for now!) to my own private reflective blog for the project. Good things come to those who wait...

There was even some time to stop by one of my favourite watering holes in the area before heading back to Paddington for the train to the West Country. As I write we are being delayed by signalling problems, some things really never change! Had a beautiful sunset to bid me a fond farewell from the capital, so it's not all bad news.

From the train coming out of London

I would once again like to point a friendly finger towards our own Twitter presence, @BSUArchive. Please do give us a follow to keep up with our latest news.

Richard