Tag: Digitisation

Sally Jenkinson – McCulla Award Speech

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In the week we announce the latest winners of the McCulla Award, Sally Jenkinson of Surrey History Centre, reflects on the achievements that won her the Award in 2019/20.

Highlights of my projects 

When I first joined Surrey History Centre my main role was to help with a project to set up volunteer run Local History Centres in libraries around the county, mainly supporting the volunteers with training and resources.  Some of their excellent work can be seen online at Epsom & Ewell History Explorer and the RH7 History Group

I soon became involved in developing the Surrey History Centre website, and in due course in an interesting new project to make it possible for customers to pay for events and buy books online.  This has now been superseded by Surrey Heritage’s combined online catalogue and shop. 

The Quarter Sessions project was rather special as it was undertaken by the Surrey History Trust.  The project was led by volunteer John Holland who sadly passed away before completion.  I was pleased to be able to help finish producing the CD, and a few years later to arrange to put the same data on Findmypast where it continues to produce income for Surrey Heritage. 

Probably the most important work I have done has been arranging to put records online on Ancestry, Findmypast, Forces War Records and The Genealogist.  To be able to make so many records available all over the world so easily is something we would never have thought possible when I started work in Surrey Local Studies Library in Guildford.  That was in 1989, when enquiries arrived on paper in the post. 

The database I most enjoyed making is the Loseley Letters database.  I created this for colleagues so that they could enable researchers to reconstruct sequences of correspondence as well as searching for a person, place, subject or keyword.  

My favourite volunteers project was the Surrey tithe records project because tithe records are so useful for local history research.  We made transcripts and copies of the maps available to purchase, and we were all very pleased that the project also helped the Surrey Wildlife Trust protect some ancient woodlands.  In the second phase of the project volunteer David Young produced GIS-enabled tithe maps and first edition 25 inch OS maps for the county which researchers could purchase, and we were able to provide courses to show them how to use them.   

A whisky for Dracula: Digitising Nottingham’s oral history

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Bela Lugosi in the trailer for Dracula (1931). Source: WikiMedia Commons. Url: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bela_lugosi_dracula.jpg.

Count Dracula walks into a bar and orders a whisky … It sounds like the start of bad joke, but in 1951, if you were drinking in a certain bar in the East Midlands, you would have got the fright of your life. That year, Bela Lugosi was reprising his most famous film role in a performance of Dracula at the Theatre Royal Nottingham. After the Monday night performance, he walked straight out of the stage door and, in full costume, headed for the Flying Horse Hotel in need of refreshment. Mr. Stokes, the Night Porter, remembered the shock of the regulars for many years afterwards. (You can see a copy of the original program on the Theatre Royal online archive.)

This anecdote is one of the highlights of Nottingham’s oral history collections. The Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH) project has been spent the last four years digitising oral history and sound collections from around the Midlands. This is part of a national project run by the British Library to preserve at-risk collections and improve public access, where possible.

Over on their blog, UOSH give overviews of the work they have been doing with Nottingham Local Studies and Nottingham University Special Collections. The former post includes a clip of the Bela Lugosi anecdote. Major collections that have been digitised by the project include:

  • Making Ends Meet: Earning a Living in Nottinghamshire 1900-1950
  • The History of the University of Nottingham
  • Nottingham General Hospital Oral History Project
  • The D.H. Lawrence Collection.

Toolkit – Digital Preservation

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Background

The bulk of local studies and archive holdings have so far been received in traditional formats, such as paper, parchment and photographic material, and this may well continue indefinitely. However, an increasing quantity of decisions and transactions are now being recorded in electronic format thus creating digital records to transfer to Local Studies and Archive collections. In addition to these so-called ‘born digital’ records are digital copies of hard copy originals, but these are being created as facsimiles to enhance access and should not be seen as a substitute for maintaining the original.

The challenges of digital preservation centre on how best to preserve not only the information itself long-term, but also its associated evidential value, without which it is not necessarily worth preserving. Challenges include: the rapid obsolescence of hardware, software and storage media.

Services should seek to create a digital preservation strategy to address both short-term and long-term solutions to these challenges.

Examples of digital material and their sources

Transfers from your own local authority departments mainly relate to archives and records management, for example, databases in a variety of formats, CAD drawings, Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets, e-mails and so on. Some of these records will be held in other software packages such Sharepoint; some on network drives. Neither Sharepoint nor network drives are suitable for long-term storage of electronic archives (i.e. records selected for permanent preservation), due to limitations on space, obsolescence of software formats, and problems caused by staff accessing out-dated information.

Acquisitions from many and varied external sources, including other local authorities, official organisations, groups and individuals, can include: e.g. digital photographs, millennium scrapbooks, e-publications and so on.

Records created in-house as accessible surrogates for use in and beyond the local studies library for example the TIFF and JPEG digital photographs created as part of projects.

Audio-visual material kept in digital form, such as cinefilm or sound recordings which have been transferred to DVD or CD.

Preservation of electronic records

Short term strategies  

Some of the fundamental challenges for Local Studies collections and Archives include:

  • Preserving not only raw data – the ‘bits’ – but also the contextual information (metadata) vital to their interpretation.
  • Preventing tampering or distortion (whether deliberate or accidental), in order to give evidential value to the electronic data, which will act as the modern equivalent of the seal or the signature on a hard-copy record.
  • Inability to access material, whether through media failure, lack of compatible hardware or lack of compatible software, especially for complex specialist software such as CAD drawings etc.

Ideally a digital preservation system should be considered. Without this there is no guarantee that records once received by the Local Studies collection or Archive will have the necessary audit trail of access and usage required for legal admissibility and historical authenticity.

In the absence of a reputable digital preservation system an interim policy might be to copy records from portable storage media onto the relevant dedicated read-only drive where they can be backed up by the corporate back-up system, but this is purely a short-term solution as it will not tackle the evidential value issues mentioned above. However, this does not address the needs of more complex digital records such as databases or websites.

The portable media on which the records were received should be kept short-term to give access to them for the public, but they will not be able to be kept permanently in that format due to obsolescence of hardware and software. 

For digital records created by the local studies library gold-quality DVDs should be used and stored in optimal temperature and humidity conditions, (18-22 degrees centigrade, 35-45% RH), but again this cannot guarantee longevity beyond 25 years.

Longer term strategies  

Investment is required by a parent authority or usually an archive service in a digital preservation system which can manage the complex needs of digital records and ensure their integrity and authenticity over time. The system needs to comply with the ISO standard Open Archives Information System (OAIS) model for the acquisition and storage of digital records and to facilitate public access to electronic archives via the internet. Such a system will ensure that when records are received into the system (ingest) metadata is captured to help with their long-term interpretation, and that once ingested the records can be monitored to ensure they have not been damaged or tampered with. Public inquiries such as the Hillsborough disaster inquiry show how important such transparency and reliability of record-keeping is. The system will also flag up when record formats are becoming obsolete and suggest pathways for onwards migration.

There are various solutions now available on the market which could fulfil these requirements. Most also have a secure public front end. This is important for public access and it means that the public do not need to have access to your organisation’s internal systems to access relevant information.  For local studies libraries it is worth considering whether your archive service or parent authority has invested in a digital preservation system and if so, how might you be able to contribute to the content?

Recommended formats

For images, it is recommended to use TIFFs (for master copies) and JPEGs (for access copies). For audio files it is recommended to use WAV files (for master copies) and MP3 or MP4 (for access.)

For other documents, Microsoft formats are recommended at present, as this is usually a preferred supplier, but this should be discussed with relevant ICT teams. Therefore, any upgrade or change could be managed as part of work on other organisational files.

Adobe Acrobat files can be read by many systems, too, and this format may be useful for preserving e-publications.

Examples of formats which are unsuitable for long-term preservation are proprietary software, e.g. family history programs. This is because the information value doesn’t warrant the expenditure required to monitor and migrate a large number of very specific programs for which only a limited number of examples may be held. The results could be rendered in an alternative format, for example Adobe, if necessary.

Disaster Recovery

In the short-term it is the responsibility of your organisation’s information management team to ensure that electronic records held in the Local Studies and Archive service’s network storage folders can be restored from back-ups where needed, and to use systems to make sure there is more than one copy of every record. In the long-term a future digital preservation system may exist off-premise (e.g. in Cloud storage) and it will be the responsibility of the supplier to ensure that there are adequate disaster recovery procedures.

Preservation of records held elsewhere

Local Studies libraries should encourage good practice and provide advice to owners of digital archives on the care of their digital records. If you do have access to a digital preservation system it is always worthwhile enquiring if owners of large digital records could consider contributing to the costs.

Further information:

There is much guidance on the National Archives website: Preserving digital collections – The National Archives

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Event: Lessons learned from family history digitisation

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Archives South West Webinar

Lessons learned from family history digitisation

Wednesday 21 April 2021 10.00-12.00

Archives South West is an English regional collaboration of local authority funded services whose vision is to promote collections care and knowledge and to encourage public engagement with the South West’s rich and varied archival heritage.

In recent years, many local authority archive services have worked with family history publishers such as Ancestry and Findmypast to digitise, index and publish popular collections such as parish registers. The costs of the digitisation are met by the publisher whilst the archive service also receives a royalty.

As part of a project looking at the potential of newspaper digitisation, Archives South West have collated lessons learned from previous digitisation projects that used a licensing approach. This project was funded by The National Archives.

This webinar is aimed at local authority archives and library staff in the United Kingdom who are thinking about working with a family history publisher to digitise collections or are renegotiating current contracts.

The webinar will be facilitated by Janet Tall,  Head of Archives, South West Heritage Trust, and Heather Forbes, Head of Archives Service, Gloucestershire Connty Council. Current speakers include:

– Kevin Bolton, independent consultant: lessons learned from the South West.

– Kim Collis, County Archivist, West Glamorgan Archives: the Welsh parish registers digitisation project.

– Larysa Bolton, Heritage Collections Manager, Manchester Central Library: the Greater Manchester Archives and Local Studies Partnership approach to family history digitisation.

There will also be an opportunity for questions and a general discussion.

The webinar is free, but priority will be given to Archives South West members and local authority archives and library staff in the United Kingdom.

The webinar will take place on Zoom, login details will be sent nearer to the event. To register, please visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/archives-south-west-lessons-learned-from-family-history-digitisation-tickets-141261185007

For more information, contact Kevin Bolton at kevin@kevinjbolton.com

Watch the recording: Sharing Content with Peoples’ Collection Wales

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Last month CILIP Wales, CILIP LSG and CILIP MDG organised a successful webinar exploring how public library, archives and community group collections can be shared online with Peoples’ Collection Wales. We heard how this growing platform supports Welsh Government education and health initiatives, as well as recording the rich cultural heritage of Wales. 

The recording is now available for viewing via the MDG YouTube channel:

Although targeted at public librarians working in Wales, the principles of digitising, describing and sharing metadata covered in the webinar are relevant to all working with local studies collections.

Updates to the Historical Directories of England and Wales

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You may be interested in some recent updates to the Historical Directories of England and Wales collection, maintained by the University of Leicester Library.

The collection is the largest freely available digitised collection of trade and street directories. The collection contains 689 directories, with at least one directory for every English and Welsh county for the 1850s, 1890s and 1910s. Searchable by name, place and occupation this is an essential tool for local, urban and family history.

In 2019/20, we have:

  • Restored the background pages, originally written by Andrew Hann

http://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p16445coll4/custom/background

  • Created a How to Search video
  • Created an online bibliography for scholarship using directories as a source

https://www.zotero.org/groups/2337777/trade_directories

Finally, a reminder that if you want to access the image and text files from the original digitisation, they are available via the UK Data Service https://www.ukdataservice.ac.uk/ . Search: “Digital Library of Historical Directories”.

William Farrell, University of Leicester Library

Newspapers as an Historical Resource – LSG event overview

Robert Jones1 Comment

A few weeks ago I attended a half-day event at CILIP HQ on the use of newspapers for historical research. The event, organised by CILIP Local Studies Group, featured two very interesting talks by Edmund King, former head of the British Library‘s newspaper library, plus a personal account by Diana Dixon of the way local newspapers have enabled her to piece together previously untold stories from her family history.

Most of the day focused specifically on digitised newspaper databases, and in particular the British Newspaper Archive which Edmund King oversaw the creation of at the British Library. Like Diana Dixon I had used the BNA for my own family history research and at the local studies library where I work, but had not previously appreciated the full range of international newspaper databases which can now be searched online. Some of these databases mentioned by Edmund King in the first of his talks included:

  • Chronicling America – Historic American newspapers from 1836-1922, sponsored jointly by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Library of Congress (free)
  • Gale News Vault – A broad selection of international newspapers and periodicals (paywall)
  • Google News Archive – Google’s discontinued newspaper scanning project, whose content is still available to search (free)
  • Ireland Old News – Transcriptions of old Irish news articles (free)
  • Newspapers.com – Database of 3,400 newspapers, mainly American (paywall)
  • Trove – The National Library of Australia’s digitised newspaper collection (free)
  • Welsh Newspapers Online – Welsh and English-language newspapers from 1804-1919, digitised by the National Library of Wales (free)

Several of the above can be cross-searched via Elephind.com, which is attempting to create a single-search interface for all the world’s online historic newspapers (they have quite a long way to go admittedly, but a noble aim nonetheless). As local studies specialists we might question how useful international databases like these are to our daily work, which tends on the whole to focus on local people and events. The truth of course is that historically these ‘local people’ often moved around considerably, especially within the Empire, and events on one side of the world would often be reported on the other due to the complex web of family and business connections which linked people across the globe. Indeed, comparing the regional and international reportage of local events can often provide unique insights into these events which local sources alone could not.

Next Diana Dixon provided a very useful overview of some of the ways local newspapers can be used by family historians. In the past I had used reports of local births, marriages and deaths as an alternative to ordering GRO certificates, but had not thought to examine the long lists of wedding guests and mourners frequently included in these same reports to put together a detailed picture of an individual’s extended family and social circle.

After tea and coffee Edmund King’s second talk focused on some of the more unusual items which can be found in the British Newspaper Archive. We would naturally expect to find reports of local events, births, marriages and deaths etc., but many of the ‘lighter’ pieces can be equally revealing. These include poetry, cartoons, celebrity portraits, ladies’ fashions, maps, literary reviews, serialised novels and items of musical interest, which can all help flesh out the world in which our ancestors lived.

All of the above were all illustrated with examples, and one of the best in my opinion was a brief mention in the Oxford Journal on the 23rd of February 1765 of a visit by:

“One Wolfgang Mozart, a German boy of about eight years old…who can play upon various Sorts of Instruments of Music, in Concert, or Solo, and can compose Music surprizingly ; so that he may be reckoned a Wonder at his Age” (p. 3, col. 1).

It is inconceivable to think this wonderful description would have been found without the BNA’s search engine, and it is worth remembering how lucky we are to have such an excellent tool at our disposal.

It was a very interesting and informative day, and a great opportunity to meet with colleagues and share experiences. If there are any historical newspapers in your library’s collections which you would like to see digitised, you can submit a request on the BNA forum.

Robert Jones, Assistant Librarian (Local Studies)
London Borough of Hillingdon
rjones1@hillingdon.gov.uk