{"id":164,"date":"2019-10-28T13:38:45","date_gmt":"2019-10-28T13:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/?p=164"},"modified":"2020-01-13T15:05:43","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T15:05:43","slug":"forging-new-routes-to-open-scholarship-for-he-and-cultural-heritage-institutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/researchmatters\/2019\/10\/28\/forging-new-routes-to-open-scholarship-for-he-and-cultural-heritage-institutions\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Access week 2019: Forging new routes to Open Scholarship for HE and Cultural Heritage Institutions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Written By Vicky Fenerty, Research Engagement Librarian<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To support Open Scholarship across the boundaries of Higher\nEducation (HE) and Cultural Heritage Institutions (CHI), the British Library\nhosted their 2nd<\/sup> \u201cOpen and Engaged\u201d, a one-day conference during\nInternational Open Access Week. With leaders and influencers from the British\nLibrary, National History Museum as well as Trinity College Dublin , the day\nhoped to examine obstacles hindering open scholarship, combined with real life\nexamples in breakout sessions, finishing with by an open panel session to\nidentify where change could break down barriers to promote research for all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liz Jolly, (Chief Librarian, British Library) welcomed us and explained about the shared repository<\/a> they had created with partners using Open source software <\/a>. It is still in beta but they are hoping it will enable not just enable new content but allow connections to be made – opening out all the resources that are shared. There will be a shift from unique local collections to content globally in multiple formats as they work towards their Living Knowledge Strategy.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helen Hardy (the Digital Collections Programme Manager,\nNational History Museum @NHM_Digitise)  gave\nus an excellent overview of the work they are doing using Hardware<\/a>\nand Software innovations to enable the large scale digitisation and metadata of\nsome of the collections they hold. With their own research audience, there are\nover 300 scientific researchers on their staff as well as the many visiting\nresearchers and public and over 80 millions items in their collections, they\nhave to innovate to scale up previous manual processes. Using the Data portal<\/a> to showcase their collections,\nthey are working towards an \u201cOpen by default\u201d approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 This data is being used across the world – there have been 240 million unique downloads from the portal. In addition to showing impact via citation data, Marian Hill is using the images to create insect collages.<\/a> In future, they want to create track usage and impact more successfully, integrate ORCiD,<\/a> allow transparent annotation to correct errors and many more longer term plans which will feed into the SYNTHESYS+,<\/a> a final iteration of previous projects which lay the foundation for DiSSCco<\/a> which ultimately will see the digital unification of the collections form 115 European Museums in 21 Countries using common curation and access policies and practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark Sweetman (Asst Professor from Trinity College Dublin)\nspoke about the Cultura<\/a> project\nwhich aims to bring together providers and users of digital cultural heritage collections\nas well as creating communities that will increase and enhance engagement with\nthese collections. Using the principles of Relationship building, Reciprocity\nand Respect, they worked with partners using a User Led Design approach to\ncreate an adaptive interface allowing personalised information retrieval and\npresentation. They have digitised the 1641\ndepositions<\/a> as a unique Irish collection, transcribed them  using  Text Encoding\nInitiative guidelines<\/a> to provide a searchable resource. There were some\nchallenges  – 41 different spellings of a\nBarony in County Cork and this review<\/a> looks\nin depth into this initiative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There were 3 parallel session: \u201cOpen Collections and Impact\u201d; \u201cAccessibility and Inclusive design for open content\u201d and \u201cThe cost of images\u201d. Open Collections and Impact included case studies from Birmingham Museums Trust, one of 5 institutions who have opened their \u201cout of copyright\u201d images for free download. A relatively new trust formed out of the council, their aim is to engage and inspire. With this in mind and conscious of the cost, confusion of licences and discoverability of their collection for researchers (which includes some of the finest Pre-Raphaelite paintings<\/a> in the world) they have opened their digital asset management system to the public<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fiammetta (Portrait Of Georgie Gaskin), 1898 Arthur Joseph Gaskin (d 1928)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Linda Spurdle, (Digital Development Manager)  has led on this work and talked about the ongoing efforts to engage the community with this resource through Remixes, Workshops and Competitions. With only 5 curators for over a million items, they are conscious that most of the collections are under researched but are actively looking for academic researchers to work with them to unearth more treasures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another case study was from the National Wikimedian from the\nNational Library of Wales. Jason Evans explained that by uploaded 17,000 images\nto Wikimedia Commons there has been a 50% increase in the images being used in\nWikipedia articles so massively extending their reach. They are now using Wikidata,<\/a> which is\na central storage area for the Wikimedia sister projects. Each item or property\nhas a unique identifier. Douglas Adams is Q42!.<\/a> This has enabled them to use\nconnecting tags  on their digitised Landscape\ncollections<\/a> so connecting to other sources of material, references and\nother external collections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Open and Engaged 19 closed with a panel discussion chaired by Dr Andrea Wallace (University of Exeter) with Torsten Reimer (Head of Research Services. British Library) standing in for Dylan Law for the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Kathryn Eccles ( Oxford Internet Institute) and JD Hill, (Research Manager at the British Museum). They were asked to talk to \u201cHow can higher education and Cultural Heritage Institution (CHI) better work together to ensure the success of Plan S and open scholarship. Highlights from these discussions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CHIs are experts in \u201caccess\u201d, experts in \u201cmeaning making\u201d  – using objects to start and end conversations\/engagement. We need to collaborate, communicate, improve findability, trust and audience building. We can do this through<\/p>\n\n\n\n