Some compelling lessons from 
previous JISC projects
Alastair Dunning, JISC Programme Manager
JISC Content Programme Meeting
Oxford, 15th November 2011
Please have cool URLs
Eek!
Better!
Usability testing is difficult to implement
Not having stable, identifiers for your web content dramatically
reduces the chances of that content - what ever the content
being re-used in the myriad ways possible on the web. Both
machines and humans will find it more difficult to discover,
share, document and re-use your content if your URL naming
is confused
The East London Theatre Archive is a great resource, full of great content.
But it took them a long while to get the website into a position where people
could find and engage with this content - a simple Google-tpye search box is
not enough when users aren't sure what to find - hence the different ways
into the content via categories, types, dates and places.

The theatre project also found it difficutlt to conduct usability testing - when
and how should it be done, who does it, how does one react to suggested
changes. Skills and experience to cope with this is either expensive or
difficult to find


http://www.elta-project.org/
Do lots of planning early on
Cambridge's Freeze Frame project took a while to recruit the right staff, but they used this to their advantage, calculating workflows, doing some test digitisation and refining the policies and strategies that underpinned their project plan

When staff were in place, and digitisation started in earnest, the project proceeded rapidly

Slow start, rapid finish

The project did not have some of the obstacles other projects faced, but nevertheless it was a very competently run project

http://www.freezeframe.ac.uk/
however, some projects felt a
more agile management structure
(focussing only on the next few months) allowed them to focus on particular problems and issues better
Targets are boring, but will keep you focussed
Both
the Welsh Journals project 
and the Bodleian's Electronic 
Epehmera project felt intimidated by the
promises they had made in their project plans - 500,000 pages digitised! 150,000 images! Why did we promise that?
Will JISC notice? What will the
Vice-Chancellor say?
But they 
realised that such
targets allowed them
to work a particular goal
and give the project an 
ongoing focus
Don't neglect graphic design and artistry
You'd be surprised how many websites showing
'beautiful objects' are poorly designed. But not
only did Birmingham Museum produce a stylish
website, they had exceptionally high standards
for their digital capture, meaning some great
images were produced for them to use now in 
the future. The site has won numerous awards
both for its functionality and its design - another
way of bringing more users to the site

http://www.preraphaelites.org/
Get institutional buy-in
A project is not just about the project staff working, but how they all interact with the
relevant parts of the university. (This is particularly true for the current projects dealing
with institutional strategies!)
Other contact points within the university
IT support to run your hardware and software
Marketing and PR to disseminate info both internally
and externally
Senior library staff who will have to sustain the
resouce in the long term
Human Resources :-(
Finance stuff who will look after your budget
Teachers and researchers who will use your content, 
hopefully for a long time into the future
Senior management - political clout
Line managers who have other demands on staff time

Are all these contact points on board? Do you have an internal
communications plans?
Everyone has a story to tell
While it may seem like others have the best tunes (e.g. Freeze Frame images), there are always good stories within projects - it just might be that they are little parts of your project which you have never thought about. JISC workshops on comms will be able to help tease them out

It's also useful to think about your branding - a clear visual appearance with a siomple message that can be used to convey what you are doing to a wide audience. Once you have done
that, then you can tell the more complex stories
However, if you really want to get
big number of hits - do your press 
releases in the USA. The Codex 
Sinatiticus got 450,000 hits on its
first day - thanks to press coverage
in the United States.

http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/
Remember why you're involved in digital content!
I once asked a group of scholars on the eighteenth-century what the best thing about 
digitised resources was, and the general consensus was that it allowed them to work
at home without putting their socks on. 

But there are more compelling reasons for digitisation - it's worth holding on to them
during that mid-project stage when the thing seems like an arid exercise in pointlessness
Hold on to this information both for you, your project and others
Digitising royal navy logbooks
has allowed the University of 
Sunderland's CORRAL project
to gain valuable metereological
data. Having  data on
sea temprature, wind direction 
and wind speed can help 
provide an historical context 
for current changes in the
climate

The map shows the route of the 
HMS Isabella in 1818, based on
the logbook above.

http://www.corral.org.uk/
Census material might not seem like the most engaging resource, but has a number of valuable uses in the classoroom. The following quotes  concern the Online Historical Population Reports resource at http://histpop.org

A lecturer in Historical Geography at King’s College London reported that he had used Histpop in both second and third year undergraduate courses in Urban Historical Geography, allowing students access and freedom to explore primary sources at this stage of their undergraduate careers. This, he
said, led to several Final Year dissertations of high quality, which he said were enhanced by early access to primary sources. ‘I think [the students scored so well]... Because they had already been used to dealing with historical documents...using Histpop as a teaching tool fed into those particular
dissertations.’

Other comments about the resource collected during the course of this research:

‘Histpop made it possible to do a completely different project [at undergraduate level]... It allows them to start using primary sources and do some basic research, which otherwise they wouldn’t be able to do.’

‘You tend to get a very big spread of marks in this kind of coursework... It sorts out the really good students from the weaker ones.’

The King’s College London lecturer also stated that setting up undergraduate courses that make use of (easily accessible) digitised primary resources counters the plagiarism issue. ‘There’s a plagiarism problem with coursework, and getting them to use primary documents [means] there’s no chance
that they can plagiarise. That was a consideration.’

Taken from Oxford Internet Institute's Toolkit for the Impact of Digitised Scholarly Resources, http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/system/files/TIDSR_FinalReport_20July2009.pdf, page 26
From the project plan for the Furer-Haimendorf Archival 
digitisation, 
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/digitisation/furer_haimendorf.pdf, page 3

The significance of this collection for future scholarship is considerable. In fact, it is the world's most comprehensive visual record of tribal cultures in South Asia. The breadth of the Fürer-Haimendorf collection for South Asia is matched only by the photographs taken by fellow anthropologist Verrier Elwin. The distinctive quality of the Fürer-Haimendorf collection, however, is that because he lived (in some cases for years) with the tribes he recorded, his collection has a visual density and historical depth unmatched by any other in the world. For each of the four primary regions documented, the collection presents a comprehensive ethnographic portrait of tribal cultures, ranging from agricultural practices to religious life, from house architecture to intimate portraits. In some instances, we have a dozen images of a single ritual, which enable the viewer to see this complex activity from a variety of perspectives and to identify small objects and details of clothing. 

The Fürer-Haimendorf collection is also a valuable documentation of historical change in the tribal cultures of South Asia. There is a tendency, in both popular and academic writing, to view tribal cultures as 'timeless survivals' from history that preserve 'lost' forms of human culture. Like all cultures, however, tribal societies change and have always been changing, an important point that the Fürer-Haimendorf collection demonstrates. Once these photographs have been digitised and properly catalogued, they will enable scholars to make more accurate assessments of the changes that have transformed South Asian tribal societies during the 20th century.

For some of the cultures recorded in the collection, the rapid and fundamental changes in the 20th century (Christian conversion, hinduisation, the shift from barter to market economy, schools and roads) have led to 'new' societies emerging in the place of traditional ones. For example, the photographs record the following practices that have been abandoned in Arunachal Pradesh: holding 'slaves' (or debtors), blacksmithing, pottery, negotiations to end feuds, tattooing for men and women, wearing nose-plugs by women, and a form of mock warfare. We can also see that the gender-division of agricultural work has changed, that houses are built with different materials and that the landscape has been transformed. On the other hand, we can see that the general pattern of major festivals has remained largely intact, and that traditions such as back strap weaving and the wearing of necklaces have remained virtually unchanged.
http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/
There is clearing copyright. 
And there is licencing to users.
Make mistakes here and your project is handcuffed

Every digital object within the School of Oriential and African School's (SOAS) Digital Collections is available via Creative Commons - the terms of use and re-use are clear and easy to implement
Engage Multiple Audiences
And engage them early
This Oxford project (http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/) started off by identifying JISC, Oxford University, Researchers, Teachers, Students, Literary Estates, Collections Holders and General Public but as the project expanded (especially via the crowdsourcing Great War Archive) the list of stakeholders was larger and more refined, as specific partnerships with other bodies - specific libraries, WW1 groups, local schools, other museums - allowed for much richer dissemination
The more open your content
the more it will be used
Have a look at the Splashes and Ripples report:
http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/case-study/359/splashes-and-ripples