Digitisation of collections
Liz Selby and Helena LiszkaJewish Museum London
AEJM 2011
Why digitise?• Bring your collections
out of the dark• Preventative
conservation• Bring your collections to
new audiences• People expect digital
content to be available and will do so increasingly in the future
• Use your content in creative and innovative ways – either online or in collaboration with others. Don’t get left behind!
Ways to use your digital content
• Online databases
• Online exhibitions
• Apps for smart phones and ipads
• Virtual tours
Digitisation at the Jewish Museum London
Over 15,000 items (of 28,000 in the collection) are currently digitised and searchable online: http://www.jewishmuseum.org.uk/search-our-collections-new and
www.Europeana.eu
Collections digitised through grant funded projects such as:• DCF/DDF (1999 onwards) – Judaica collection• Moving Here (New Opportunities fund, c.2004) - Social history collections• Judaica Europeana (2010-11) – Prints, posters, documents and oral histories
Ultimate aim: digitise and upload entire collection– but dependant on receiving grants
Europeana
Europe’s digital libraries, archives and museums online
http://www.europeana.eu/portal/
• Common point of access to millions of digital objects housed in Europe’s museums, libraries and archives
• Multilingual search engine
• Type of content includes documents, manuscripts, periodicals, audio recordings, pictures, photographs, posters and postcards
• 1500 institutions contributing access to their collections
• Access to 20 million objects online by 2013
•
Judaica Europeana: Jewish content online
• Brings together content under the EUROPEANA theme of cities, demonstrating specifically the Jewish contribution to Europe’s cities
• Makes digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable by digitising available collections
• Identifying Jewish content in collections that reflect the activities, creativity and self expression of Jews in European cities
• Digitising and aggregating this content into a coherent thematic collection in order to open up access
The networkJudaica Europeana is a network of
leading institutions which joined forces to promote Jewish cultural heritage:
• European Association of Jewish Culture, London
• Judaica Sammlung der Universitätsbibliothek der Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main
• Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris• Amitié, Centre for Research and
Innovation, Bologna• British Library, London• Hungarian Jewish Archives,
Budapest• Jewish Historical Institute,
Warsaw• Jewish Museum of Greece,
Athens• Jewish Museum London• Ministry of Cultural Heritage and
Activity (MiBAC), Rome
• Associate Partners• Ben Uri Gallery – The London Jewish
Museum of Art• Biblioteca Rosenthaliana, Amsterdam• Center for Jewish History, New York• Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam• Jewish Museum Berlin • Jewish Museum, Frankfurt/Main• National Library of Israel, Jerusalem• Paris Yiddish Center—Medem Library• Sephardi Museum, Toledo• Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem• Ministerio de Cultura, Madrid• Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute,
Duisberg Museum, Frankfurt/Main
Our contribution to Judaica Europeana
• Digitising images, texts and oral history interviews
• Producing two online exhibitions: Yiddish Theatre in London and Jewish Britain: A history in
objects
• Working with schools and universities
Travelling trunk brought by a German refugee family to England in May 1939, The Jewish Museum London
JML collections on Europeana
Reach unexpected audiences
Digital resources for Jewish history
European Holocaust Archives Projecthttp://www.ehri-project.eu/
Digital Yiddish Library: http://www.archive.org/details/nationalyiddishbookcenter
Sponsored by Stephen Spielberg
Digital Dead Sea Scrollshttp://dss.collections.imj.org.il/
Reconstructing past climate change through crowd sourcing
Apps – Museum of London street view
Hold your mobile up to a street scene and see the same location in an archive photograph from the Museum of London collection
Google art project
Digitising our collections
Practical considerations
• Who will fund your project?
• Do you have space for large 3D photography?
• Do you have the right equipment?
• Do you have staff hours and skills?
• How will you use the digitised resources?
3D object photography
Using the Digistore
Working with 2D material
Using volunteers• Using still life
photography students from Farnborough college at the Jewish Museum
• Using interns at the British Museum for the West Africa digitisation project
Planning, processing, guidelines
• Overview of work load• In-house photography or outsourcing• Selecting material• Copyright checking• Sorting material by size and type; creating batch lists
accordingly; deciding location• Processing and re-sizing• Uploading to collections management system (Adlib) and
web • Guidelines:www.minervaeurope.org/interoperability/technicalguidelines.htm
Technical considerations
– Need for a digital master
• Best possible reproduction
• Create jpegs for online use, sending by email etc
– Naming the files
– Digital storage
Documenting your collection
• Good documentation standards increase access to collections
• Creation of a common language for the semantic Web using controlled terminologies eg. Creating terms on Adlib using other thesauri as reference point eg.Getty
• Applying established vocabularies created by generations of librarians and scholars to the web
Poster for 'The Daughter of Zion' at St Luke's Hall in London, 1944
Coffee set from Aden, brought by an Adeni family to the UK
Interview with Minnie Levy about her WW2 service, recorded in 1991 on cassette tape
Please discuss in groups
• What are the advantages of digitising these items?
• How would you approach digitisation for each object?
• Which would be your priority and why?
• What problems might you encounter? (technical, legal and practical)
• How would you use the digitised record?
Talking points
• How to select what to digitise? What about those collections not digitised – ignored? Not used?
• Will smaller museums with smaller budgets be left behind if they can’t digitise their collections?
• Will digital objects take precedence over the real thing?
• How will the increase of historical content online impact upon academic research?