Have you been doing too much of this recently?
And started the year with a splitting headache…
Or maybe you got stranded by the winter storms….
And had to be looked after by others…
Either way, now that we have started a new calendar
The DIU team hope that 2014 will bring you manna from heaven!
The new Library and University 2014 calendar is now on sale. This year’s theme is Bygone Edinburgh, with all images coming from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. Highlights include some of the work of Scottish pioneers of photography, Hill and Adamson, and this image taken by an unknown photographer around 1887.
The three gentlemen shown demonstrating the cantilever principle for the Forth Bridge are engineers Sir John Fowler, Kaichi Watanabe and Sir Benjamin Baker.
The calendar is on sale in the Library at the front desk and at the CRC reception on the 6th Floor, priced £8.
Further information on the calendar is available at collections.ed.ac.uk
Last month I was lucky enough to attend a week long Summer School in Oxford- and being the week that the heat wave kicked in, it really did feel like a Summer School! The course managed to be both varied and intensive, with large lectures, group workshops, surgeries where specialists would help you with your own project, evening events & even a guided tour of the Ashmolean.
The range of topics covered was staggering, but I think the ones that stuck out for me were Crowd Sourcing, Public Engagement/Knowledge Exchange, Social Media, ‘Openness’ in the Digital Humanities and Measuring Impact. I’d really like to share with you a couple of the wonderful Crowd Sourcing projects:
Robert Simpson of the Zooniverse team https://www.zooniverse.org/ gave a fascinating talk about the crowd sourcing portal they have developed. What started out as an experiment to see if they could find enough people interested in identifying planets from raw astrophysics data, developed into 17 separate projects across 5 Research fields & around 860,000 people taking part world-wide. Some of the projects include transcribing 2000yr old Papyri, identifying Whale language & mapping Martian weather- not a bad way to spend your lunch break! Robert thought the key to a good Crowd Sourcing project was a subject where human beings can interpret the data better than a computer & a hook that makes people want to be involved- even if it is as simple as the desire to contribute to the worlds knowledge. Zooniverse are great believers in the Open Source community & are happy to share both their knowledge & code.
While Zooniverse is centred on developing online virtual data, another Crowd Sourcing project started out with a real crowd and analogue objects- Kate Lindsay really bought the Re-Imagining WWI project to life http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/ . This started out almost like an Antiques Road Show where the public was invited to bring along their family WW1 history: stories, letters, photo’s & memorabilia. Experts were on hand to look at the items & photographers to document them. In the first 12 weeks it proved so popular that they had 6500 submissions, and led onto an online submission system & further road shows across Europe- the submissions now are well into the tens of thousands.
All in all, the Summer School was an enjoyable & inspiring week which should prove invaluable as we endeavour to develop the potential of our digital archive.
http://digital.humanities.ox.ac.uk/dhoxss/
Susan Pettigrew
Last week saw the delivery of our brand new camera- the Hasselblad H5D-200MS. This camera is hot off the press with only a few in the country so far. Capable of capturing high quality files up to an astonishing 570MB, this should be fantastic for shooting exhibition images when large format printing is called for. The addition of a second copy unit will also help us to gear up towards increasing the departments output.
More information about the camera can be found at http://www.hasselblad.co.uk/promotions/h5d.aspx
The Centre for Research Collections is trying to find one image from the vast and immensely diverse Collections to stand out and proudly represent it. Some of the highlights captured by the Digital Imaging Unit have been selected and a Facebook competition asking people to help find the Iconic Image of the CRC was launched!
Some of the Treasures nominated for the best and most iconic image are various books from the William Shakespeare Collection, different beautiful medieval and oriental manuscripts, musical instruments and other objects which all deserve to win. However, only the one which receives the most Likes will win the competition!
Please vote for the image you like and think best embodies the Centre and its Collections!
The CRC is looking forward to announcing the winner in the near future, so keep tuned for more updates and follow the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/crc.edinburgh
