Digitising five centuries of UK life: further £12m investment
Jisc today announced the successful bids in a further
£12m investment in the digitisation of major resources of national
importance. Following the enormous interest in last year’s call for
proposals and the high quality of the many bids received, the extra
investment has been made by the Higher Education Funding Councils for
England and Wales (HEFCE and HEFCW) to support the wider availability of
national, scholarly resources.
The 16 winning bids represent a wide range of rich and
vivid perspectives on the history, culture and landscape of the UK and
beyond. The successful consortia include nearly 60 organisations from
education and other sectors, including the British Film Institute, The
National Archive, the BBC, ITN, the British Library, the National Library
of Wales and the Bodleian Library, alongside nearly 30
universities. The 16 projects will
join six current projects funded in 2004 which are delivering resources of
enormous value to education and research, widening access to otherwise
inaccessible and in some cases fragile and unique
resources
Projects will capture a wide variety of aspects of UK
life, from Cabinet papers to First World War poetry, radio news to East End
music hall archives, political cartoons to British borders, and in a wide range of media, including sound, film, images,
journals, newspapers, maps, theses, pamphlets and cartoons.
The 16 projects will join six current
projects funded in 2004 which are delivering resources of enormous value to
education and research, widening access to otherwise inaccessible and in
some cases fragile and unique resources.
The successful bids (with their lead institutions)
are:
- First World War Poetry Archive (University of Oxford)
– Preserving and sharing memories of the Great War through the words of
its poets - Voices – Moving Images in the Public Sphere (British
Film Institute) – Watch the key social, political and economic issues of
our time unfold - British Governance in the 20th Century,
Cabinet papers 1914-1975 (The National Archive) – The British Government
at peace and war - Historic Boundaries of Britain (University of
Portsmouth) – Mapping the past – a digital library of Britain’s
borders - British Cartoon Archive Digitisation Project
(University of Kent) – Browse the largest online archive of cartoons in
the UK - Welsh Journals Online (National Library of Wales) –
Free, online searchable access to the best Welsh periodicals – past,
present and future - Electronic ephemera (Bodleian Library)– Discover
hidden treasures of everyday life from the 16th to the
20th centuries - 19th Century Pamphlets Online (University
of Southampton) – Polemical voices from the past on the great debates of
the 19th century - Discovering the Poles – Historic Polar Images
1845-1960 (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge) –
Making historic Polar resources accessible to all - A Digital Library of Core e-Resources on Ireland
(Queen’s University Belfast) – Visit a one-stop shop for Irish studies
e-resources - Archival Sound Recordings 2 (British Library) – A
critical mass of rich audio materials from all over the world, at your
fingertips - UK Theses Digitisation Project (British Library) –
Opening access to over 5,000 of the most popular British research
theses - British Newspapers 1620-1900 (British Library) – Read
the first three centuries of newspapers from all regions of the British
Isles - Digitisation of the LBC/IRN Archive (University of
Bournemouth) – From apartheid to Blair – hear history being made with the
UK’s largest commercial radio news collection - Pre-Raphaelite Resource Site (Birmingham Museums and
Art Gallery) – Trace a movement that changed the face of English
art - The East London Theatre Archive (University of East
London) – Putting the spotlight on East End music hall heritage
Professor David Eastwood, CEO of HEFCE, welcomed the
announcement, saying: ‘The Jisc Digitisation programme has been
leading the way in making more widely available resources which are either
inaccessible or hard to access, something that is quietly but rapidly
transforming education and research in this country. I look forward to
seeing the results of these projects in the coming years and the uses to
which these important resources will be put.’
Professor Sir Ron Cooke, Chair of Jisc, said: ‘The
success of Jisc’s current digitisation projects, which have already made
available sound resources, population data and medical journals and will
soon deliver further important resources, has been crucial in raising the
profile of digitised resources and attracting this further investment. Jisc
is delighted that this success has been recognised and that the programme
will continue its important work.’
For further information, please go to: Digitisation
programme
For the Jisc Digitisation blog, please go to: Digitisation programme
blog
Contact: Philip Pothen (Jisc) on 020 7848 2935 or 07887
564 006 or write to: p.pothen@jisc.ac.uk