A team at Derwen College received training from Video Assist in the production and creation of video illustrating best practice in teaching students with learning difficulties and disabilities. JISC Digital Media supported the project by:

• advising on the purchase of equipment and software for production and post-production
• undertaking an on-site tutorial in production and interview techniques including practical exercises in cinematography and interviewing
• demonstrating an effective post-production workflow as well as various editing techniques
• providing consultation on improving sound quality in the College’s theatre for both live performance and video recording

Background

Derwen College is a specialist institution in Shropshire for students with learning disabilities. It recently obtained Beacon School status. This award recognises not only excellence in teaching at Derwen but also its embracing of technology in the drive to improve and increase methods of delivering knowledge and facilitating learning, not least through the use of video.

Challenge

The Learning Resources team at Derwen College, headed by Russell Pentz, wished to disseminate information about best practice in teaching both internally and to specialist colleges throughout the UK and felt that video was an ideal medium for this purpose. In order to achieve this, they decided to develop the skills within their team, enabling them to produce high-quality video that could then be used in both internal and external CPD events.

Response

The Video Assist team began by facilitating a thorough consultation with the College around equipment procurement, taking into account the budgets available and offering a series of recommendations and points to consider in light of the intended aim of the project. Out of the initial consultation, which was conducted by telephone and email, Video Assist and the College together developed a plan for the most effective use of the limited funds, with specific criteria and suggestions for each piece of equipment clearly laid out to ensure the available money was put to best use. The initial consultation was followed by a day-long site visit at which the Video Assist team could meet Russell and his team. A number of things were accomplished:

• An in-depth seminar about production and post-production, paying particular attention to cinematography and sound recording, the twin foundations of good video production
• Examination of existing equipment, with recommendations made for modifications and improvements
• A series of short exercises, shooting mock one- and two-person interviews in order to practice good techniques and identify problem areas. These interviews were then played for the group and feedback was given about their various strengths and weaknesses
• Examination of the hall that Derwen College uses as a theatre, with recommendations made for improving the sound quality, both for live performances and also for video recordings made of performances

A further site visit a month later included the examination and testing of some new equipment, an in-depth discussion of sound recording and the review and critique of some footage shot by the College team the previous month. Finally, more footage was shot by the team which was then uploaded to a computer and a tutorial was held to demonstrate an editing workflow and a variety of useful editing techniques.

Benefits

The series of consultation and training events provided by Video Assist succeeded in teaching the team at Derwen College the fundamental principles of video production in order to help them achieve their goal of producing a library of CPD resources in a cost effective and professional manner. The skills learnt have enabled the team to successfully disseminate best practice in teaching through the sharing of the CPD resources they created not just within the College but with other specialist colleges too.

Testimonial

The Derwen College team found the assistance from Steve and his team invaluable. They were highly skilled and informative, and although we had little prior knowledge and experience, Steve taught us in a relaxed and friendly manner. He not only advised us on the correct equipment to buy but was also able to install a sense of confidence and professionalism in the team. We definitely would not have been able to carry out our project if it wasn't for the guidance and support from Steve and his team.

Russell Pentz Learning Resources Manager Derwen College

Case Study: Video Assist at the University of Manchester

Researchers at the University of Manchester used Video Assist* expertise to inform the creation of a series of videos on the topic of doing research interviews.  JISC Digital Media supported the team by:

• Providing advice about the suitability of existing equipment, the purchase of appropriate new equipment and discussing various issues connected with audio recording
• Hosting a workshop to demonstrate equipment and discuss shooting and interview techniques
• Site visits to critique existing footage, demonstrate equipment and discuss production, post-production and interview techniques
• Supervising the shooting of practice footage, observing production and demonstrating editing techniques

Background

Realities is a part of the National Centre for Research Methods, located at the Morgan Centre for the Study of Relationships and Personal Life at the University of Manchester. It studies social and qualitative research, assists social science researchers in developing their skills and fosters an understanding of research methods. It accomplishes this in part by holding training workshops and seminars for researchers throughout the UK who need to interview people as part of their research methodology.

Challenge

Such is the demand for this training that it was decided to create a set of videos to explain interview techniques as well as to disseminate information about such topics as participatory research. Hazel Burke, the Communications and Development Manager, who is responsible for the Realities website and the production of online resources, was assigned the task of creating the new videos.

Hazel had already made use of the JISC Digital Media website to acquire a basic understanding of video production as well as information to aid in the selection of equipment. However, since these videos would not only be used at Realities but would also be circulated to NCRM colleagues at seven other universities across the UK, she wanted to take extra steps to ensure that they were of a high quality. In addition, Hazel knew that she would be passing on her knowledge of video production to others in the Centre and so she wanted to be certain that her skills were sufficient for the task.

The Video Assist programme run by JISC Digital Media provided the level of training she needed to ensure that she had the knowledge to do her job.

Response

Hazel initially contacted JISC Digital Media by phone to discuss both their existing equipment and their planned purchases. “"I gave Hazel feedback on the appropriateness of their existing purchases," comments Steve Hull, the Video Assist consultant for Manchester. "At the same time, we had a discussion about sound recording and I was able to discuss recording techniques with her to improve the quality of their audio." Following on from this conversation, Hazel exchanged a number of emails with Steve in which they discussed the equipment Manchester was intending to purchase. This list was critiqued and suggestions were made about the criteria that should be used for deciding future purchases.

The next stage of the consultation was a face-to-face session to which Hazel brought some of her team’s equipment for Steve to examine and comment on. The session also covered shooting and interview techniques and a demonstration of some of JISC Digital Media’s own equipment.

"Getting expert advice on what kind of equipment to buy was really helpful because it's so hard to know what you really need as a beginner," said Hazel. "We probably would have spent more of our budget on the video camera, but Steve listened to what we wanted to do and suggested that we concentrated on a really good microphone"

In addition to addressing audio quality, Steve also proposed an inexpensive way of significantly improving the images Hazel’s team created. "He also suggested a reflector and a stand (plus a video camera that was simple to use). Having kit that is user friendly and that gives good results makes our videos look and sound much more professional." The initial workshop was followed by the first of two site visits to Manchester to look at the specific requirements of the videos that Hazel's group was intending to make. Steve provided further advice about production and post-production, including a one-on-one tutorial on the correct usage of the wireless microphone. Steve critiqued footage that Hazel’s team had already taken and made recommendations about how to deal with nervous interviewees and other common interview problems. "The site visits were really useful because we got hands-on expert advice on exactly the things we needed to know - my brain ached at the end of the day!" said Hazel. "Again, the practical and technical advice, on everything from how to get the most out of the equipment to keyboard shortcuts and tips for video editing, was great."

Having looked at equipment and techniques, the next step was to look at the practice of creating videos. To that end, a second day's consultation was arranged and began with Hazel conducting an interview with Steve which was then critiqued. Steve then interviewed Hazel to give her a sense of what it was like to be on the other side of the microphone. Hazel then carried out two interviews under supervision; these were then followed by a feedback session.

The issues raised by these practice sessions were then discussed. Steve was able to illustrate some of the topics by showing Hazel some training videos on the JISC Digital Media. Afterwards, some of the footage which Hazel shot earlier in the day was uploaded onto a computer and experimented with using various editing techniques in order to illustrate different ways of utilising footage. Hazel felt that this second day of on-site consulting was particularly helpful. "I think the thing I found most useful from the site visits was having somebody to talk us through actually shooting the video, taking care that we shot what we needed and giving us lots of extra ideas and suggestions for things we could do differently."

After Video Assist

This concluded the formal part of the consultation period, but it was not the end of contact between Manchester and JISC Digital Media. Now that the Centre is proceeding with their videos, JISC Digital Media remains in touch with them and will continue to support them with any advice and information that they require. "Video Assist was a real boost, in lots of ways," said Hazel. "We were video novices at the beginning of the programme, so although we'd thought about using video for a while it just always seemed an impossible learning curve and we never got started. At the end of the Video Assist programme we're now up and running with making video resources quite happily."

Hazel is determined that she not be the sole beneficiary of the Video Assist consultation, however. She has become somewhat of a video evangelist at the NCRM and is carrying forward the Video Assist philosophy of embedding skills within the institution. "I think it is having the kind of effect that was planned," she said. "It does take a while to trickle through, but I think we're heading in the right direction. I've had quite a few queries from colleagues about how people would go about either using existing video clips in their teaching or how they would make their own. So there's definitely more awareness of how video is used and how it can be created. I've also been enthusing about how it's actually pretty easy and fun to create your own resources and I've been showing people how to use the equipment for themselves, rather than simply being the video star."

Benefits

Hazel Burke at the National Centre for Research Methods applied for Video Assist because she wanted to ensure that the videos that she was to make for the Centre would be of a high quality. She was able to acquire the skills to do this rapidly, because the training she received was intensive, on-site and tailored to her specific needs. JISC Digital Media was able to rapidly assess the knowledge she was bringing to the consultation and determine what additional information would best serve her stated purpose.

Hazel duly received the training that she desired, but also received something more: the skills to pass on her knowledge to others and thus embed video production as a skill throughout the Centre. She continues to create videos and to train others to create them as well. "...it's a lot of fun and we're learning a lot together. I can definitely point to an increase in interest in, awareness of and use of digital resources in teaching, training and research in all kinds of ways... Video Assist was a real luxury and I'd definitely recommend it to anybody else!"

Digitisation and the Environment

This article assesses the extent to which digitisation impacts on the environment in the creation, use and storage of its outputs.

Digitisation is defined as the conversion of analogue information into digital information.  Or, more specifically, the representation of an arts, cultural heritage or educational object, image, event or document in digital form, with the express purpose of providing a resource that can be re-used in learning, teaching and research.  The digitisation of the world's cultural heritage and other educational resources has grown considerably in the recent past.  Significant sums of public money have been invested in digitisation, and museums, galleries, archives and libraries have placed high priority in providing access to their collections and holdings in the formats expected by today’s increasingly digitally-connected learners, teachers and researchers.  

Among the positive impacts of digitisation are the reduction in handling and better conservation of fragile material, improved access to information and resources for more people, increased flexibility over where and when resources are used, the emergence of new avenues and methods for learning, teaching and research and, ultimately, a better understanding of the world around us.   Yet, the rise in digitisation, and in Information  and Communication Technology (ICT) use generally, puts added pressure on administrators to provide the equipment, tools, on-going management and storage necessary for the creation, archiving and use of digital resources.  Digitisation therefore results in a rise in carbon use at a time when national and international governmental bodies are setting targets for carbon reductions.

Between 2008 and 2009 the size of the all the digital files created and replicated in the world was estimated to grow by 62 percent.  By the year 2020, this digital universe is predicted to grow by a further 44 times to the unimaginable size of 1.2 zetabytes (1.2 trillion gigabytes).  (1) Greenhouse gas emissions from data storage centres are anticipated to triple by 2020, (2) and 1.4 Giga-tonnes Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (GtCO₂e) is expected to be used to fuel the manufacture and use of ICTs by that time. (3) Concerns, therefore, over the environmental impact of ICT are justifiable.

However, the fact that ICT's carbon use is rising while simultaneous pressure is being applied to reduce carbon dependency throughout the economy is not necessarily an incongruity.  On the contrary, Smart2020, a report published in 2008 by the Climate Group, identified a potential reduction of 7.8 GtCO₂e in global carbon emissions enabled by increasing the use of ICT by 2020. (4) This reduction therefore equates to some five times the total ICT-related carbon emissions predicted by that time.  Thus increasing the use of ICT and therefore raising its carbon emissions has the potential to enable net carbon reduction in the economy as a whole.

ICT can produce these carbon reductions primarily outside its own sector through the enablement of better energy efficiency in buildings, motor systems, electricity production, transport and logistics.   The Smart2020 report also highlights the potential of the ICT sector to at least negate rising carbon emissions in its own industry through employing more environmentally efficient practices and technological innovations, such as in equipment manufacture, storage systems and uses of ICT.  ICT also has the potential to facilitate what is known as dematerialisation.   That is, the gradual replacement of carbon intensive physical products and activities, like article and travel, with low carbon electronic alternatives like e-documents, tele-communications and home-working.

The article will begin with an overview of Government and sector targets and policy when addressing climate concerns.  It will then examine the rise in digitisation over the past decade or so, highlighting its educational benefits and also look for evidence of its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.  The article will go on to assess the means by which digitisation can minimise its carbon emissions though more efficient working practices, greener systems architectures and use of technologies like cloud computing.  Finally the article will look it detail at the evidence for dematerialisation enabled by digitisation in activities like learning, travel and article use.

1.  Carbon reduction policy and activity in the Education and Cultural Heritage sectors

Current environmental legislation is a useful indicator of climate concerns in the Education and Cultural Heritage sectors.  In December 2008, European Union (EU) member states reached agreement over an energy and climate change package which included a target to cut greenhouse gas emissions across the EU by 20 percent by 2020, and generate one-fifth of the EU's power from renewable sources by that time. (1) Through the introduction of the Climate Change Act of 2008 the United Kingdom Government set an unilateral target to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, and by at least 34 percent by 2020.

UK Government departments have been responding to these targets.  When focussing on digitisation the two departments that have relevance to the Higher Education (HE), Further Education (FE) and Cultural Heritage sectors are the department for Business and Innovation (BIS), which has responsibility for Business and Further, Higher and Adult Education, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).  

BIS produced its Sustainable Development Action plan for 2010-2011 in which it sets out plans for developing sustainable business practices and use of resources in response to climate change.  In its plan, the BIStasks the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) to produce achievable carbon reduction targets for HE, and an accompanying strategy for achieving them. (2) Following a programme of consultancy with the sector in 2009, HEFCE published its Carbon reduction target and strategy for higher education in England. (3) This article set out the framework within which HE could reduce its carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050, in line with the UK wide government target.  As well as providing a supporting mechanism in which HE can meet it target commitments, HEFCE has also linked some future capital funding allocations for HE to adherence to carbon reduction plans.

The DCMS which has responsibility for Museums, Libraries, Galleries, Archives, Arts Organisations and the Built and Historic Environments, published its Sustainable Development Strategy in 2007 and followed this up with a Climate Change Plan in 2010.  The Climate Change Plan sets out steps to embed climate change considerations into the DCMS’s own departments and estate as well as in the Non Departmental Public Bodies (NDPB's) that fall under its control, which include some national museums, archives and libraries.  Unlike HEFCE, the DCMS has so far not set explicit carbon reduction targets in specific areas, and until now has been involved in stakeholder engagement through a series of carbon usage awareness activities.

Despite the lack of specific reduction targets from the DCMS, the Culture and Heritage sector is acting to reduce its emissions.  The Museums Libraries and Archives (MLA) and the National Archives are to publish Environmental Standards for Cultural Heritage Collections, through the British Standards Instituteby Autumn 2011.  The MLA has also fundeda 'Green Tourism Business Scheme' which provides some small museums with environmental assessments and carbon reduction action plans.  Both national and regional museums are actively seeking to reduce emissions, for example, the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum has published figures that show a 20 percent carbon reduction in the museum's operations when compared to 2005 figures. (4) The National Archives recently published figures highlighting that it has reduced its carbon footprint by ten percent when compared to 2008/9 figures.(5) There is therefore a consensus, stemming from Brussels and national government and cascading through  the Education and Cultural Heritage sectors themselves, on the need for action to reduce carbon emissions and to ensure more environmentally efficient working practices.  

2.  The rise in digitisation and the rising ICT carbon footprint

These top down carbon reduction targets and sector activities are taking place at a time when the carbon footprint of ICT is rising.  The creation and use of digital materials in learning, teaching and research has grown considerably in recent years.   A report published in 2005 by the Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) estimated that some £130 million of UK public money had been invested in digitisation in research libraries and archives during the previous ten year period.(6) In addition to this direct public funding for digitisation, a similar rise in smaller scale locally funded initiatives is evident, and could equate to the  funding provided directly through central government. (7) This is likely make the total figure invested in research library and archive digitisation closer to £250 million.

The Cultural Heritage sector has also funded large scale digitisation. The sector received an early digitisation investment of £50 million in 2001 by the New Opportunities Fund (NOF, now renamed the Big Lottery), and museums have subsequently been striving to digitise entire collections to provide online access and to aid preservation and curation.  For example, The V&A can now can provide online access to one million works.  Investment in digitisation does not seem to be abating.  The French government has announced plans for an almost £700 million investment in digitisation, partly as a repost to the Google Books initiative which has to date digitised over 12 million books.  A recently published vision for future digitisation calls for a higher priority to be given to the complete digitisation of all European cultural heritage at an estimated cost of €100 billion. (8)

The rise in the availability of digital resources is also evident in the drive to foster easier access to education across the world in an initiative known as Open Educational Resources (OER).  OER has received hundreds of millions of US dollars funding from organisations such as the Hewlett and Mellon Foundations and UNESCO, since 2001.   In the UK, HEFCE has provided over £10 million since 2009 to fund an OER programme to kick-start the notion of sharing digital educational resources across UK education.  The aim of OER is to make it possible to share materials, tools and media, primarily via the Internet, for teaching and learning.  These resources are either free from copyright restrictions or licensed for anyone to use and re-purpose for educational means.  OER is seen by its exponents as a potential step towards a solution to world educational inequalities and to radically improve access to education for developing and developed countries alike. (9)

Examples abound of innovative and collaborative uses of digital resources to support the claim that digitisation can democratise and further knowledge by improving accesses to resources for learning, teaching and research.  For example the notion of 'citizen science' is becoming increasingly common, whereby digitised research material is provided to interested enthusiasts who supply the expertise to enhance it.  Galaxy Zoo is a good example, where some one million high resolution images of previously unseen galaxies have been classified by over 300,000 volunteers. (10)  These volunteers have been instrumental in providing the background data required by researchers investigating our galaxies and the universe.  Another project called Old Weather has also taken the citizen science model and asked volunteers to transcribe data from late nineteenth and early twentieth century naval records that have recently been digitised by a collaborative group working under the Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions of the Earth (ACRE) initiative.(11) This work will enable better understanding of historical weather patterns that will inform future research on climate change today.  

The creation of digital resources can be truly transformative for entire cultures.  The almost forgotten music and lore associated with the historic Bantu kingdoms of Uganda is a case in point.  This music has been revived recently partly as a result of the digitisation of the Klaus Wachsmann collection, a unique record of this music recorded just after the second world war.  These digital recordings are for the first time being accessed by young Ugandan musicians who are now learning the music of their past.(12) These are only a few of the plethora of examples of how digitisation can engage us in our past history and culture, provide new avenues and methods for research and reshape our understanding of the world around us.

Digitisation can also provide opportunities for new economic activity through the development of technologies and processes for the creation and use of digital materials – such as scanners, cameras, PCs, and information management processes, as well as monetary gain for some types of pay on demand materials.  Digitisation thereforehelps create jobs in the wider economy and can provide funds directly for some cultural and educational institutions.  Indeed it seems that the Education and Cultural Heritage sectors' future use of ICT in learning, teaching and research, and their ability to provide openly available digital resources, will further affect their ability to generate future income from government, foundation and local institutional funding.   Providing digital access to collections, archives and learning and research materials promotes institutions, enhances the possibility of external funding and attracts visitors and students who provide consumer demand for the products of digitisation, and the flexibility in learning and teaching that digitisation can provide.

The educational benefits of digitisation and its link to future revenue generation can only result in more digitisation in the education and cultural heritage sectors.  And as research, learning and teaching become more ICT dependant the pressure on the managers of ICT to provide adequate data storage and infrastructure will increase.  Technological advances and potentially more complex use of resource intensive image and video formats and services will add to this pressure, as will the sheer volume of predicted data.

The environmental question then is the extent to which digitisation contributes to the world's carbon footprint and is the carbon cost of digitisation justifiable?  Digitisation's contribution to carbon emissions could be usefully measured by assessing the size of its outputs in terms of bits and bytes and by obtaining concrete data on usage figures.  However, this information is difficult to obtain, as a recent attempt to compile a statistical assessment of European digitisation activity proved.(13)  This project uncovered a lack of a standard means of describing digitisation - for example, outputs are recorded as files, images, pages and collections across various scenarios – which results in a profound difficulty in measuring like-for-like digitisation activity.  This is compounded by a lack of co-ordinated digitisation planning. Only one third of participating institutions  had formal digitisation plans, and, consequently, most institutions do not maintain rigorous information about their available digital resources from which statistical analysis can be gleaned.

Moreover, problems seem to exist when trying to gather empirical evidence on the use of resources.  The CURL report mentioned above, and others, have tried to gauge use satisfaction with digitisation.(14)   However, institutions generally do not maintain data on resource access figures on any great scale, and at the point of resource creation expert user-needs analysis seems to be lacking.  Digitisers often cite users as being central to their digitisation decision making, however the evidence shows that users' views can often be assumed rather than expressly solicited.(15) A more explicit link between funding for digitisation and the use of digital resources therefore needs to be found.   The lack of which makes compiling meaningful statistical data on the size and extent of digitised resources difficult, and presents a significant problem when trying to asses digitisation's environmental implications.    However, while there is little quantative research currently on the environmental impact of digitisation, there are undoubted repercussions to the environment in its increase.  Generic ICT-related carbon emissions, to which digitisation contributes, are more closely monitored and provide another means of assessment.

ICT accounts currently for two percent of global CO₂ emissions, and under BAU growth estimates, is expected to treble by 2020 to 1.4 GtCO₂e.(16) Figures show that the use of ICT in UK HE and FE currently generates over 500,000 tons of CO₂ annually.  Personal computing is the main area of ICT-related energy consumption in UK Universities and Colleges, accounting for an estimated 40 to 50 percent of the total, while printing accounts for between 10 and 16 percent.  The remainder is taken up by server, network and data storage facilities.  Using figures scaled up from those gathered from the University of Sheffield, a recent study estimated that HE and FE utilises nearly 1,470,000 computers, 250,000 printers and 240,000 servers, and consumes nearly one million mega watt-hours of electricity annually with a cost of approximately £116 million.(17) These figures account for the environmental impact of operating ICT services. On the other hand, the impact on the environment of manufacturing the hardware must be taken into account.  The carbon generated from the manufacture and materials of PCs, peripherals and other devices accounts for one quarter of the total ICT carbon footprint.

When assessing the particular issues associated with digitisation, it is the need for data storage that stands out. Data centres are expected to grow faster than any other aspect of ICT.   In 2006, the United States (US) Department of the Environment estimated that data centres in the US used 61 billion kWh of electricity, representing 1.5 percent of all US electricity use, the equivalent to the amount of electricity used by about six million US homes.(18)   The Smart2020 report estimates that if data centre growth continues in line with demand, the world will require some 122 million servers by 2020, up from a total of 18 million required servers in 2008.  The global carbon footprint of data centres was measured at 76MtCO₂ in 2002, and this is expected to treble by 2020.(19)

3. Dematerialisation in learning, teaching and research

A key mitigator in the rising use of ICT-related carbon emissions is the expected potential to reduce  dependance on carbon intensive physical products and activities. More specifically in terms of creating and using digitised resources, evidence for dematerialisation can be measured in in e-learning, travel, and article use.

3.1 E-Learning

Digitisation is one of the key enablers in any e-learning activity. Digitised objects and learning resources can offer a means of reducing the carbon footprint of HE through its implications for more home-working, less face-to-face teaching, reduced use of campus resources and the availability of electronic course documentation as opposed to printed handouts.  A study carried out by the Open University which looked at measures such as heating, travel, computer use and printing, found that distance learning courses on average consume nearly 90 percent less energy and emit 85 percent less CO₂ than traditional campus-based courses.(20)   However the same study also found that more traditional e-learning courses that utilised a blend of electronic and traditional teaching methods resulted in a much lower 12 percent reduction when compared to courses that used no electronic materials or tools.  Indeed, another study carried out by University of Leicester in 2009 points to even lower differences in carbon use between courses carried out with face to face teaching and others using more electronic components.(21)

While the Leicester survey was carried out on a comparatively small scale looking at a limited number of students and their travel requirements, it does highlight the potential difficulties there can be in reducing carbon emissions through more e-learning.  There are many contributing factors that affect the extent to which e-learning reduces the use of carbon, such as: where students and teachers live, travel methods and travel frequency, printing, computer use and heating requirements.  Moreover, e-learning has such a wide variety of implementations that it seems there is an equally wide scope for making carbon reductions.  In some instances, such as distance learning courses, environmental benefits can be significant, whereas courses that have a blend of campus based teaching alongside electronic components will tend to have less of an impact.  It seems therefore that more research is required in this area, providing detailed studies of travel, computer, heating and printing needs across a wide variety of learning scenarios, before one can say categorically that e-learning can in itself enable dematerialisation that results in significant carbon reductions.

3.2  Travel

As mentioned above e-learning in a blended or distance context can have implications on travel and its associated emissions. Furthermore, travel can be reduced through the increased use of electronic methods of communication – most notably in using Video Conferencing (VC) technologies to replace physical meetings.  The extent to which VC is used currently in the education and cultural sectors is difficult to ascertain due to a lack of available research.  However one recent study published by the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association states that by replacing 30 per cent of business meetings with VC, over 30 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions could be saved.(22)   Statistics produced by the Janet Video Conferencing Service (JVC), a JISC funded service which held over 20,000 video conferences in 2007/8, indicated comparatively high use.(23) However this figure did not take into account the fact that users are often the same people and institutions returning for multiple visits, and therefore cannot be used as an indicator of the breadth of usage across HE and FE.   A small survey of HE carried out by SustainIT as part of their research for JISC, pointed to 43 percent of respondents never having used VC while nine percent were regular users.(24)

Another driver for reductions in travel could be availability of digital resources online which negate the need for users to travel to see the real thing.  However hard evidence for this is scant.  Museum access figures could be one indicator – the theory being that as collections go online access figures correspondingly drop.  The reality however is that museum access figures have generally risen in line with a rise in their collections being available on-line.(25) While this rise in visitor numbers coincides with the move to free entry to museums in the late 1990s, and many other factors impact on reasons for visiting a museum, it potentially raises questions about the notion that the availability of a digital surrogate of a resource equals less travel.  Indeed it is likely that digitisation acts more like a promotional tool for the museum, and the availability of a museum object online in many instances will encourage people to travel to see the real thing.  An interesting future study could begin to unravel this question, however currently this evidence is lacking.

3.3  Article use and printing

As noted above, printing accounts for at least 10-16 percent of ICT related electricity consumption in education. And reprographics departments that once would have had control of printing and copying are increasingly viewed as non-essential with most members of staff and students now having access to networked laser and ink-jet printers.(26) However, rather than digital resources reducing article use it would seem that there has been a rise in printing and article use alongside a simultaneous rise in the use of ICT.  A study by the printer manufacturer Lexmark concludes that the average UK worker prints 38 pages a day, with an average 29 percent of these wasteful. (27) A recent study into printing in HE found that respondents printed an average of 240 sheets of article per week (48 per day) with some printing up to 4,000 sheets per week.(28) It is not known how many of these could be avoided.  The same survey further estimates that the HE sector consumes 4,250 million sheets of article (approximately 21,250 tonnes of article) annually. (29)  The article used in printing has a relatively large environmental footprint, with the energy used to make one sheet of article amounting to more than is used to actually print it.(30)

So evidence would suggest that digital resources do not seem to negate the need for users to retain their need for hard copy, and therefore printing continues to grow.  It would seem that a shift in attitude amongst users is required to fully realise potential carbon reductions through reduced article consumption.  In their report on the environmental impact of distance learning and campus based courses, Roy et al. observed that there can be tendency amongst students todownload and print a high proportion of web based learning materials for ease of portability and study, particularly at the beginning of courses. (31) Change in printing behaviour is likely to happen as more people consume their printed material via e-books and tablet PCs and less on the printed page, and more institutions implement article saving and awareness raising to stop non-essential printing. However, at this time, increased ICT use in learning, teaching and research does not equate to less use of article.  Indeed, evidence would suggest the reverse is true. 

4  Reducing the carbon emissions generated through digitisation and ICT

Having looked at the emissions generated through the operation and manufacture of digitisation services, balanced against the ways in which the employment of digitisation can potentially reduce the amount of green house gases emitted through traditional carbon intensive products and activities, we will now look at how green house emissions from digitisation can be minimised through responsible working methods and best practice.

4.1 Server Virtualisation

It is clear that digitisation increases the volume of data stored in data centres and on servers. One method of reducing the potential for increases in carbon emissions in data centres is to deploy a virtualisation strategy to facilitate a more environmentally efficient use of servers.  Research has shown that  servers typically run at 10-15 percent of their capacity. (32) This is due to the fact that a single server is often dedicated to one task, which is easier for administrators to identify and resolve problems.  However this architecture can also result in wasted energy used in powering and cooling servers for relatively little output.  This problem is compounded by the fact that as data centres utilise more servers they begin to take up a lot of physical space and larger data centres become more energy intensive to run and cool. 

Virtualisation can facilitate the conversion of one physical server into multiple virtual machines.  Each virtual server acts like a unique device, capable of running its own operating system which enables one server to undertake multiple tasks and run at closer to its optimal capacity while not restricting the identification and isolation of technical problems.   This makes it possible to consolidate down to fewer servers and maintain the same level of operation, and therefore virtualisation can result in data centres which are smaller, give off less heat and use less energy.

4.2 Dispersed / Cloud Computing

Another means of enabling a more environmentally beneficial architecture for data storage is to utilise some form of dispersed computing.  That is, a shift from the computer user storing files and using software on their own device, or within the confines of an institutional network, to a model that uses the Internet to undertake a wider number of activities and tasks.  For example, a user can store images, access email, create documents, use social networks and stream video by using software and storage accessed via the Internet, as opposed to their own machine or local network.  Dispersed computing is increasingly being referred to as cloud computing.

Some expected benefits for end users of cloud computing are: cost reductions, as services can be paid for incrementally at the point of use; better access to software as new software is updated centrally and not at a local level; and also flexibility and mobility as individuals are no longer tied to their local institutional networks.  For those responsible for managing and providing digitisation services the added benefit of cloud computing could be realised in better access to data storage, paid for on demand, and away from the institution itself.   The institution is therefore relieved of the task of stocking, maintaining and cooling its own data centres.  

However, environmentally, there is some debate as to the value of the cloud.  Currently cloud computing is responsible for between one and two percent of the world’s electricity use and Greenpeace predicts that greenhouse gasses associated with it will triple by 2020. (33)  Another environmental drawback associated with cloud computing is that the institution could simply be displacing its carbon use from one location to another thus resulting in no net carbon reduction globally.

Furthermore, evidence suggests that until now cloud data centres have been, by and large, environmentally in-efficient.  A Greenpeace comparison of seven significant cloud data centres in the US showed that only one retrieved more than 50 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Furthermore, the largest data centres looked at in the study, built by Apple and Microsoft, utilised only 3.8 percent and 1.1 percent of renewable energy respectively. (34) That said, a considered and well planned use of the cloud, that takes into account these factors can potentially result in a net reduction in the carbon footprint of digitisation. 

4.3 Thin Architecture

The production of digital resources, particularly image and video rich data, tend to require the use of high powered desktop PCs with large processing and file storage capability.  One method of reducing the carbon footprint of this type of digitisation within institutions would be to explore the potential suitability of what is known as a thin architecture.  Thin architecture has the potential to minimise the processing and storage capability of PCs by using centralised facilities to host commonly used software and data.  These facilities could be located within the institution itself, or indeed, outsourced to the cloud.  The result of this shift from thick to thin architecture is that individual PCs require less data storage capability and processing power, which in turn means that they can be smaller and lighter and require less energy to run and cool.   This can lead to a lower environmental impact in production, a better use of space, as software is updated centrally, less disposals, and an overall reduction in energy requirements.  Estimates show that by 2020, 74 percent of all PCs in use will be laptops as opposed to desktops.  And while thin architecture can result in increased processing loads at the centre, more network energy consumption and may not be suitable in all digitisation scenarios, it can lead to net carbon savings and enable more efficient and targeted management of the sectors’ ICT energy consumption. 

5.  Conclusion

Policies, directives and guidelines as well as initiatives by the Education and Cultural Heritage sectors themselves indicate that there is broad agreement on the need to reduce carbon emissions.   However there is also the potential for a rise in emissions brought about by the demand for more  ICT.  These two trends are not contradictory.  Increasing the use of ICT can enable significant net carbon reductions throughout the economy.

Moreover, increasing digitisation and the availability of digital resources has unarguable benefit for education.  Resources are more easily accessible to more people, there is increased flexibility as to when and where researchers, learners and teachers use resources, new avenues and methodologies for research and teaching can be realised, institutions can promote themselves through their resources and expertise, attract and retain students and staff, and potentially increase funding.   These benefits may be enough in themselves to justify the environmental cost of digitisation.  However, in the context government driven carbon reduction targets and the will of the sectors themselves to reduce their emissions, digitisers and those responsible for digitisation services have an obligation to ensure their efforts are as environmentally efficient as possible.

It is extremely difficult to assess digitisation's environmental efficiency.  The extent to which digitisation and its growing demand for data storage contributes to the burgeoning digital universe is simply unknown.  Attempts to assess digitisation's size and use have uncovered a worrying lack of planning for digitisation at an institutional level, and a lack of expert user analysis at the resource creation stage.  This could result in environmental inefficiency and leaves digitisation open to accusations of wasted resources.  More research is required into the environmental cost of digitisation, and greater emphasis amongst those responsible for providing funds and services for digitisation should be placed on planning and the strategic development of digital materials.

As we have seen, various methods of reducing the environmental impact of digitisation can be deployed – such as more efficient running of servers, a careful use of cloud computing and the deployment of thin architectures.  These methods for reducing the carbon emissions associated with digitisation seem eminently achievable and are already underway at many institutions.  However, a key finding of this article is that digitisation and the use of digital resources do not automatically lead to the dematerialisation of carbon intensive physical products.  In the case of e-learning there are a range of potential implementations of ICT ranging from courses carried out entirely online to those that use a small proportion of digital components, and the available research currently points to an equally wide range of carbon reduction capability. 

Furthermore where dematerialisation is thought to be more obvious: in less printing and use of article and in less travel, the available evidence indicates that printing and article use in HE and FE is on the increase, and technologies like VC which have potential to reduce travel requirements are, as yet, to realise their full potential.   To some extent changes in user behaviour over time will compensate for this.  For example, as users become increasingly content to consume digital materials on screen as opposed to on article.  However as things stand currently, it seems that more could be done to increase potential for dematerialisation.

Thus digitisation remains vital across education and beyond, but it could do more to meet its environmental obligations.  And it must, in order to continue its role in providing significant drivers for educational enhancement and opportunity across the world, while also contributing to a truly sustainable future.

Case Study: Making the Case

The Department of Russian at the University of Bristol has long enjoyed a reputation among students and academics as one of the UK’s top Russian departments, rating third in the Independent's Complete University Guide in 2011 and described as a ‘model for other Russian Departments to follow’ in a recent external review.

Following an unsuccessful application for a research grant, which was rejected on technical grounds, the department approached JISC Digital Media to re-work the technical aspects of its project proposal.

The department wanted to ensure that, in the notoriously competitive funding landscape for humanities research, it could present the best possible case for the money and retain its position at the forefront of its field through the ensuing project.

Rationale

The research team within the department, led by Professor Offord, planned to embark on a three-year project to examine the development of the French language in Russia during the period from c.1700 until the October Revolution of 1917.

The team had an exciting opportunity to study in depth an important subject about which no detailed or comprehensive account had previously been written. This was chiefly because the use of French by the Russian nobility, as an aspect of elite culture, was of less interest to Soviet scholars working within a Marxist framework than were the phenomena that tended to break down that culture.

Funding was requiredfor two post-doctoral research assistants and a PhD student to be involved throughout the three years of the project and, although the AHRC has commended the ‘excellent’ academic content of the initial funding proposal, the measures described to preserve and make the data sustainable were felt to be inadequate.

This rejection endangered the success of the entire project and so addressing the defect by seeking out appropriate technical expertise became a priority before the proposal could be re-submitted.

Objectives

Using the University’s Content Management System (Expression Engine), the research team (i.e. the Principal Investigator, the two Post-Doctoral Research Assistants and the Postgraduate Student) sought to create, develop and maintain an online project resource which would contain three basic elements:

1. Information about the project and news about events
2. Materials that disseminate and develop the findings of the project, including a discussion forum
3. Interoperable digital assets of lasting use to the academic community. These assets will include bibliographical information, a description of the total corpus of primary sources used by the team and a small sample of these sources or of extracts from them.

The bulk of the sample of sources (at least 95% of it) would consist of material that has been transcribed and edited, but the sample also needed to allow the inclusion of a small amount of digitised material (e.g. photographs of hand-written letters). The website was to provide a secure hosting for these assets although they would potentially be independent of the site itself.

Overall, the aim was that the project would promote interdisciplinary dialogue, throwing light on the extent to which the theories, models, methods, and insights associated with different disciplines can prove valid and useful for scholars in other disciplines.

Outcomes

JISC Digital Media provided advice on the technical content of the revised bid, specifically: project management of technical aspects, data development methods, infrastructural support, data preservation and sustainability, access and copyright and intellectual property issues.

Via face-to-face meetings and email contact each of these aspects was addressed and systematically developed. Solutions were found which supported the research team’s intentions without detracting from their core business of conducting effective research.

Byre-thinking the notion of the website as inseparable from the data itself and instead considering it as one (of many) potential platforms for that data, the team increased the reusability of its research data considerably.

This meant that, by the submission stage, the technical appendix was extremely strong and all of the project’s technical aspects were viewed in a very positive light by the AHRC’s technical assessor.

The project’s W3C/WAI (Web Content Accessibility) compliant website is now in the process of being launched and will be freely available and managed by the University with guaranteed access without the need for passwords or registration. This means that other related disciplines will in future have access to hitherto inaccessible first hand documentation, drawn directly from archival sources.

Following the support of JISC Digital Media and a subsequent resubmission of their bid the Department secured the necessary research funding for the three-year project ensuring it continues to build upon its already excellent reputation as one of the UK’s top Russian departments.

Support from JISC Digital Media

“I cannot over emphasise the importance of the advice that I received from Stephen Gray of JISC Digital Media as I attempted to raise the quality of the technical aspect of my application for a research grant to a level consistent with the academic level expected of a project for which funding in the region of £688k was being sought. This advice proved invaluable in enabling me to turn a technical appendix that was of patchy quality in the original submission into one that was commended by the funding council’s technical reviewer as exemplary.”

- Professor Derek Offord

Case Study: Arts and Social Sciences Digitisation Project

Credit: JISC Digital Media

The Arts and Social Sciences Library at the University of Bristol undertook to centralise the digitisation of published course material held on its shelves in order to make key subject texts available to a wider range of students, whilst staying within the terms of its Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) licence.

Whilst improving its learning and teaching credentials by enhancing students’ ability to access vital published material, the project also enabled the Library to gain increased organisational efficiency through the centralised management and monitoring of the process.

Rationale/motivation

The Library recognised that, for many of its key course texts, the book to student ratio was quite low. In contrast, digitisation of the texts and delivery via a Virtual Learning Environment (within the terms of the CLA licence, which limits the amount  of pages captured per specific purpose to five per cent or one chapter, whichever is the greater)offered an effective way of providing wider access to relevant sections of a given book.

Furthermore, any previous digitisation had been carried out on an ‘ad hoc’ basis by the teaching staff and, whilst this was normally carried out within the terms of the licence it was difficult for the library staff to monitor the process effectively.

Objectives

In light of these challenges and opportunities, the aims of the digitisation project were therefore defined to:

• increase and encourage access to the key texts
• reduce demand on the limited number of physical books
• ensure compliance with the CLA licence; and
• audit the digitisation for the annual report to the CLA

In order to achieve these aims, it was essential that the chosen method of digitisation was easy to use, with the operator able to capture a section of a book in a repeatable way and with a minimum of fuss or technical knowledge. 

The digital images only had to be of sufficient quality for screen/online delivery or low resolution print and no specialist handling was required since the books are of little historic or material value.

Solutions

While traditional flatbed scanners are capable of scanning bound volumes, the process is slow and inefficient and can damage books. In addition, using this method means it is not always possible to capture detail deep in the gutter between pages.

Dedicated book scanners, on the other hand, are designed to support the book in a more natural position, placing less strain on the spine. Some models are even supplied with specialist software which can reduce image distortion due to the curvature at the centre of the book.

Even now, these types of book scanners are still quite specialist devices and can range in price from several thousand pounds for a simple greyscale model to tens of thousands for a large format, high-resolution colour system.

The Arts and Social Sciences Library therefore engaged the JISC Digital Media team’s expertise to help it review and select the appropriate equipment to meet its needs, opting eventually for the greyscale e-Scan book scanner made by I2S.

Benefits

This I2S product delivers images of the quality required by the Library as well as a user-friendly touch screen interface.

The users of this scanner can employ a range of simple solutions for keeping the pages flat during the scanning process, including using flat metal bars and elastic bands (see image).

The original pages, which normally consist of text and simple diagrams are then easily captured as greyscale images and stored as PDF files which can then be uploaded straight onto Blackboard, the university’s VLE, access to which is controlled by the course staff.

While it is possible to connect this scanner to a network, at the time of writing the Library has opted to use the scanner in isolation whereby scanned documents are saved to USB devices and then loaded onto a networked PC for optimisation and delivery.

The price was a major factor in choosing the scanner and the I2S offered one of the more affordable models on the market whilst still fulfilling the requirements of the brief.

For example, higher specification book scanners normally have integrated lighting systems, which are important for colour-critical work. However, for the greyscale images the Library required, this was not deemed to be a necessity. Instead, the chosen model makes use of the available ambient lighting and an orange panel behind the scanner which ‘bounces’ coloured light back onto the book (see image 1).

Support from JISC Digital Media

In addition to helping the library select the appropriate hardware to meet its needs, JISC Digital Media also provided support on how to use the equipment to digitise and provided software training such as how to use Adobe Acrobat Professional to convert captured images into PDF files and, potentially, to convert scanned text into readable type (OCR) (although the Library is not doing this at present).

While the project is now well underway the scanner may be relocated shortly and JISC Digital Media may be consulted on setting up the scanner in a new location with appropriate neutral decoration and subdued lighting to optimise the quality of the output.

Case Study: Screencast Assistance at the University of Bristol

Among other roles, the Education Support Unit (ESU) at the University of Bristol provides support and training in the use of Blackboard, the University's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Following the implementation of a new version of Blackboard the ESU approached JISC Digital Media for help in creating a set of screencast resources to support their users in the transition.

Having tried screencasting a few times before with mixed results, ESU asked JISC Digital Media to assist them in planning, producing and delivering the project, including developing templates and providing training for future projects to ensure sustainability.

Objectives

ESU wanted to create a set of screencast user guides and FAQs which would help orientate users to the new environment, and supplement their existing written guides and Helpdesk service. After discussing and defining the scope and outputs of the project together, the project team summarised the immediate aim as follows:

"…to produce a set of video guides in screencast form to address common enquiries and support requests made to the BlackBoard Support Team helpdesk, and thereby to improve Blackboard support resources, while reducing the number of helpdesk calls."
extract from ESU Project Brief

Solutions

As both teams were based in Bristol, JISC Digital Media and ESU took the opportunity to work closely together to plan and develop the screencasts, with the client team providing all the subject matter for the resources, and JISC Digital Media helping them find innovative and efficient ways of presenting the information in the most effective form possible.

Importantly, JISC Digital Media also provided guidance and training to allow the ESU team to maintain and develop these resources beyond the initial phases of the project: an initial mentored production phase allowed the joint team to work together on the development of the workflow and the production and editing phases, whilst also giving ESU some informal training to allow them to work independently on future screencasts.

ESU decided on the topics to be covered based on common queries received, and also areas where Blackboard's own videos either did not cover the topic or were not appropriate.

Of the ten suggested topics, JISC Digital Media advised concentrating on the longer ‘Staff Introduction' and three shorter FAQ screencasts during this first phase of the project. By addressing two slightly different types of resource in this way, it would be possible to define the particular needs of each, and work out which elements of the screencast template and workflow were common to both, and which would need to be tailored to a particular purpose. It would also allow ESU to learn how to re-use common elements and styles whist still maintaining a consistent output quality.

Outcomes and Benefits

1. Planning

During the planning phase, a number of practical decisions were made about the format, length and scripting of the screencasts.

It was crucial to ensure access for all users, so step-by-step audio instructions clearly describing the on-screen procedures (i.e. no "click this button" instructions) were provided throughout, and transcripts of the scripted content synchronised to the audio as Closed Caption subtitles. Because of the time spent in thorough planning and scripting, this text could be imported and used almost unchanged for the captions, saving time transcribing voice-overs. You can enable the captions in the examples below.

Before starting production, the master video resolution was decided at 1280x720 pixels, a popular HD widescreen format, offering good clarity, especially for dense text. Early establishment of the destination format allowed all screen capture to be made at the correct resolution, and all additional video and graphic materials to be optimised for this resolution, thus minimizing the often harmful effects of cropping and rescaling.

2. Production - the Recording sessions

To ensure tight synchronisation and minimal editing, voice-over would be captured at the same time as screen capture. While necessitating slightly more preparation and rehearsal, the time savings made in post-production vindicated this approach.

All voice-over materials were scripted, and all processes to be demonstrated were decided in advance, and rehearsed, enabling recording in a single afternoon. There were many advantages to this approach, most notably the time saved in only needing to set up the recording equipment once, as well as consistent quality of results.

After an introduction to the recording workstation and requirements, ESU's presenters were left to record at their own pace, generally saving two or three complete takes, and discarding unsatisfactory ones, and thereby allowing elements of the best takes to be selected when editing. Longer episodes (e.g. the Staff Introduction) were scripted and recorded in short segments, which not only simplified editing, but will allow updates to be made in the future as and when procedures change, without the need for wholesale re-recording.

3. Post-production - Editing and enhancement

Because of the careful planning, only a few corrective edits were required and so this stage could focus on elements such as screen annotation and enhancement of the mouse pointer, as well as zooms and highlights, captions and indexing - all of which are intended to clarify and elucidate the screen action.

An important aspect of the project was making the screencasts look and feel polished and professional. This can help not only to frame the content and engage the audience, but to promote the image and brand of the producer, and the project team spent some time developing the visual identity, which forms a large part of the template used for future productions.

4. Outputs

The final master video files were output in MP4 format, at a suitable fidelity for what we anticipate to be the most demanding potential uses for this type of content (1280x720 MP4 video with 128kbps AAC stereo sound).

Also generated at this stage were the additional files used to present this MP4 video within a Flash player, necessary for additional features such as the index and subtitles. MP4s are tagged with suitable embedded metadata, naming the authors, contributors and copyright holders, along with additional production and catalogue information.

The final master of the ‘Staff Introduction' was 6 minutes long, and all FAQ masters were around 1 minute, which were close to our initial target lengths. These are a couple of the results:

click on the image above to open one of the project FAQ screencasts in its custom player

click on the image above to open 'Staff Introduction' screencast within its custom player

Future plans

At present, delivery to the core audience is via the University’s Blackboard VLE, which includes a module allowing the embedding of a Flash player to stream the videos on demand to users.

Future delivery, on the other hand, is likely to involve many potential channels including public video repositories like Youtube or Vimeo and educational repositories like iTunesU or Jorum. The combination of Flash elements and High Definition MP4 master outputs is anticipated to be compatible with all of these and other current online video delivery mechanisms, or suitable for transcoding as necessary.

Through tools such as templates and a well defined workflow, ESU is now able to maintain a consistent look and feel to future productions, and the training and good practice they have received from JISC Digital Media will be disseminated to the rest of their team as well as other colleagues as they work together on other projects.

The project outputs themselves should require minimal or no maintenance for continued use in their current form but because of their modular nature, are easily updatable. Furthermore, all original material is archived, should it be needed for re-editing, rendering in a different format or for a new device, or for reuse in a different form.

ESU is already developing the resource with the aid of the template, and finding it both saves time and improves quality and consistency, and there remains the potential for widening the use of these materials and standards by customising them to the needs of other departments and users throughout the University of Bristol.

Testimonials

The project provided the solution to a problem we had struggled with for several years - how to quickly and easily create a bank of multimedia support materials with minimal investment in either staff training or equipment. Given the range of skills within the ESU team, we needed a way to simplify the production process for multimedia resources, allowing all team members to develop multimedia guides and tutorials while ensuring a consistent and high quality output.

Through the initial work with JISC Digital Media the ESU team gained important insight into best practice when planning, recording and deploying screencasts, as well as three completed screencast guides for staff which addressed key staff support needs.

Initially we envisioned creating a limited number of screencasts simply to answer the most common questions sent by staff to the eLearning Helpdesk, however Gavin’s help with the template and best practice advice allowed us to rapidly expand this remit, partly in response to the positive feedback from academic staff. As a result screencasts have been developed to support the deployment of a key new module of Blackboard (the Content System), and expand our support materials to include guides for students, and also to house short videos of staff recorded using an HD flipcam.

- The Education Support Unit

We were pleased with the recommended style, which suited an academic audience, and the ease of development enabled by the template.

- Professor John Davis, the University of Bristol’s Academic Director of e-Learning

Case Study: Video Assist at the University of Nottingham

A team at the University of Nottingham used Video Assist consultation to gain expertise in creating a series of videos for a Masters programme in contaminated land management. This was accomplished by JISC Digital Media providing:

• Telephone advice about equipment purchases
• On-site, hands-on tutorials in using equipment and editing techniques
• In situ analysis of the suitability of lecture theatres for shooting videos

The Lady in Red - photo by D-Kav.  Used under a Creative Commons licence.

Background

At the University of Nottingham, Professor Paul Nathanial runs a uniquely vocational part time hybrid Masters (MRes) programme in contaminated land management. Because the course is intended primarily for practitioners and regulators, it is necessary to employ remote learning, delivering the course partially on the Internet. Professor Nathaniel wanted to increase the distance learning element of the course to further accommodate the constraints placed on distance learners. As a result, Sally Hanford, the Audiovisual Media Development Officer in Information Services, and Claire Chambers, the Web and E-learning Coordinator at the School of Geography, were given two tasks: to create additional video learning materials and to find out how to improve the quality of these materials.

Challenge

These tasks were complicated by the fact that there were two different types of videos that were needed for the course with two different sets of requirements and challenges. The first videos were recordings of lectures, both of Professor Nathaniel himself but also of visiting guest lecturers. The second videos were to be records of example land management projects which would be filmed at off-campus locations. It was particularly important in a course of this type that this second set of videos be made at a reasonably high quality, as otherwise it would be necessary for students to make field trips to the areas of the country being used as representative examples.

The team had already taken advantage of JISC Digital Media’s collection of online advice documents and had practiced filming a number of lectures as well as shooting footage for a test version of a land management project. However, the team felt that they had not yet developed sufficient skills to create video content that approached the desired quality. When they heard about the Video Assist programme, they felt that its bespoke nature would provide a means for them to rapidly develop the expertise they desired, and so they applied for a place in the programme’s first round of consultation.

Funded by JISC, Video Assist was a programme providing advice and instruction tailored to an institution’s specific needs. This included not only telephone and email consultation, but also site visits where a representative of JISC Digital Media would meet the people involved in the project and work with them. Not only did the site visit give JISC Digital Media a better insight into the needs and constraints of the institution, it allowed for a more intensive, hands-on approach to instruction and troubleshooting.

Response

As soon as they received news that they had been selected for Video Assist, Sally and Claire wasted no time in presenting a plan for JISC Digital Media's involvement in their project which made it very clear where their abilities currently lay and what guidance they could most benefit from. They had already selected equipment and planned familiarisation sessions and test shoots. These test shoots would then be shown to JISC Digital Media to obtain feedback about their strengths and weaknesses, which information would then be carried forward into further shoots. “The focus and drive with which Sally and Claire threw themselves into the Video Assist consultation made it much easier to give them the assistance they needed,” said Steve Hull, the Video Assist consultant for the project. “They had a good sense of where they wanted to be and had already made what steps they could unassisted to get there. It then remained for me to give them constructive feedback on their progress thus far, to provide instruction in areas where they needed more knowledge and to point them in the direction they needed to go to achieve their aims.”

The consultation process began with telephone and email communications. JISC Digital Media gave the Nottingham team feedback about their equipment choices. Sally and Claire had made some wise purchases and recommendations were made for additional equipment which they could purchase to increase their capabilities. Just as importantly, Sally and Claire were given the whys as well as the whats: they were told just why their equipment choices were felt to be good ones, and the reasons for the recommendations and how they would fit in with the plans for the course were discussed. The importance of this should not be underestimated: JISC Digital Media’s mandate extends not just to giving FE and HE institutions good recommendations but also to giving them the knowledge to make their own decisions: to be self-sufficient creators and users of digital media.

Telephone and email consultation was then followed quickly by a site visit. “This had several distinct advantages over emails or the phone,” said Steve. “First of all, I was able to inspect the equipment they had purchased and to discuss its operation with them. Second, I could observe them using the equipment and give them feedback on shooting technique. And thirdly, I could inspect the lecture theatres where they intended to record videos.”

The site visit proved beneficial in other ways as well. Steve brought some of JISC Digital Media’s equipment with him and was able to demonstrate its use and compare it with the Nottingham team’s equipment. The Nottingham team did not yet own their own tripod, but the JISC Digital Media one was used to demonstrate what the characteristics of a good one were. Such things as the importance of a large enough battery and the usefulness of a toplight were also discussed.

Sally and Claire were concerned about their videoing technique and how it affected the quality of their videos. Steve was able to give them a tutorial about good practice in shooting video which included such topics as:

• Using a tripod, including correct techniques for panning and tilting
• Determining and setting the correct exposure
• The importance of white balance
• Using depth of field
• Understanding the importance of the concept of ‘crossing the line’
• The advantages of using the manual controls for focus and exposure
• The advantages and disadvantages of shooting in HDV

As mentioned above, it was important to look at the conditions under which the videos would be shot and so a tour was taken of the four lecture theatres in their building (one quite large, perhaps 200 seats, the other 3 smaller and identical, perhaps 100 seats each). Steve then made recommendations about the best way to film a lecturer in each space, looking at different styles of lecturing, different ways of recording a lecturer’s voice and different ways of incorporating AV materials into the finished video. In addition to discussing how to shoot in the lecture theatres, the theatres themselves were analysed and suggestions presented about how best to use the existing lighting in the theatres and what changes could be made to the lighting to make them more practical places in which to shoot video.

After the site visit, the Nottingham team kept themselves busy, arranging for changes to be made to the lighting in the lecture theatres and shooting some video material for the course. Having shot this material, the next step in improving the creation of resources at Nottingham was naturally to critique this footage and discuss how best to edit it. As a result another site visit was arranged.

Twelve weeks after the first visit, JISC Digital Media made another trip to Nottingham. During this visit the video material Sally and Claire had shot was looked at and discussed, as were the changes that had been made to the lecture theatres since the first visit. Steve then gave a short tutorial to the Nottingham team about editing techniques and how they could be used to make the best use of the footage that had been shot, covering such topics as:

• The importance of editing sound before picture, particularly in interviews and lectures
• Various ways of hiding edits, including quick dissolves, dips to black, cutaways and noddies
• The usefulness of J-cuts and L-cuts in creating a seamless flow from shot to shot

After Video Assist

By the end of the second site visit, Sally and Claire had received consultation on all aspects of the task that had been placed before them. Equipment, locations, production and post-production techniques had all been discussed and examined and had left them with the knowledge they would need to support the contaminated land management course and ensure an excellent outcome. As Claire put it, “I found their advice sound, down to earth and easy to follow. Their encouragement has helped me to feel more comfortable with recording video in different situations and has helped me to improve considerably the quality of the recordings I have made since our sessions.” Sally and Claire are now carrying out the task they were assigned, recording lectures and making videos to support the remote learning aspects of the course.

Because the Nottingham team received not just information but actual face-to-face training, they have acquired not just the ability to carry out their duties but the confidence to pass on their skills. Now that their Video Assist consultation has concluded, Sally and Claire are planning a series of workshops to disseminate the information they have acquired amongst colleagues in the Schools of Geography and Economics and other schools at the university, thus helping to embed the skills they have acquired in both faculty and staff.

Benefits

Sally Hanford and Claire Chambers were set a very ambitious task when they were asked to create a variety of video resources for the contaminated land management course at the University of Nottingham. With the help of JISC Digital Media’s advice documents they were on their way to achieving this, but the opportunity to get a Video Assist consultancy as well gave them a significant amount of extra assistance. “The value of having JISC Digital Media take an in-depth look at the issues we have encountered when producing video cannot be overestimated,” said Sally. “The depth of their knowledge and their patience in guiding us to improve our practices have been benefits that we have greatly appreciated and will now be able to pass on to others in the institution.”

While Sally and Claire could doubtless have acquired many of the skills they needed without Video Assist, the accelerated learning that it provided and the teaching and feedback specifically tailored to their needs and abilities meant that they learned much more quickly, their learning was much more in-depth and that they gained the confidence to pass on their learning to their peers at Nottingham. “Video Assist really is the next best thing to having a full-time media specialist on your team,” says Steve. “You get the knowledge, you get the feedback, you get a critical eye and ear and you get advice which you can take ownership of because it is generated specifically in response to your situation and your goals. The learning is defined by what you need and delivered when you need it.”

Case Study: iTunes U in practice

With a handful of universities in the UK starting to use iTunes U for delivering their audio and video productions online, Barry Cornelius from Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS) has shared this account of Oxford University's use of iTunes U. Oxford started using iTunes U in October 2008 and now hosts links to a wealth of audio and video resources, the most popular ones being downloaded 2500 times a week!

This paper, Time for iTunes U, is from a presentation given in July this year and covers all the aspects of using iTunes U, including copyright issues, iTunes functionality and optimising delivery and has information on creating a workflow for producing online content. An essential read for anyone considering using iTunes U.

 

Case Study: Helpdesk and training provide expert guidance

A case study reveals how we have been of help to our FE colleagues.

The JISC Service Case Study on JISC Digital Media highlights how our guidance helped Barony College's Learning Materials Development Unit to produce a variety of visually rich learning and training materials.

JISC Digital Media's free Helpdesk Service provided expert information and guidance on capturing and formatting images, managing resources and copyright issues.

In addition, our hands-on training courses in Photoshop skills and image management were invaluable:

"I found the day so useful, very intense, but very good. I understood things that had never struck me before, like why it might be better to use black and white images rather than colour in our workbooks. Colour can be a distraction when you are trying to illustrate something very detailed and specific. It's also cheaper if you are going to print the document."
Christine Dudgeon (Learning materials development unit manager, Barony College)

The JISC website has a series of JISC Service Case Studies that demonstrate the expertise available to learning providers in the FE sector.

Case Study: Good Newts / Bad Newts

A representative scenario, designed to help address common areas of interest regarding the audio and screen capture of PowerPoint presentations in lecture theatres.

Presented to us as a fictional scenario, designed to incorporate typical real-world issues and key areas of interest.

Original enquiry

[quoted with permission - our thanks to Jules Cook - ESU, University of Bristol, and Suzi Wells, Faculty of Science, University of Bristol]

Scenario 1: Amanda records her newt lecture

Amanda would like to record her lecture about newts this Friday. She wants to capture the PowerPoint presentation along with the audio so that the students can use it for revision at exam time (several months from now). The lecture contains technical language and she's particularly aware that some students have English as a 2nd language, so audio must be clear.

She plans to make it available via Blackboard so that the students can access it from home as well as on campus. She thinks that some of the students will want to download it onto their personal video players. The head of department would also like to be able to view it on his iPhone.

She'll lecture for 40 minutes, then have a 10 minute question and answer session, which she is also keen to include in the recording. There is often only about 5 minutes changeover time between lectures.

Her PowerPoint presentation contains text (with animations), some diagrams she scanned from a book and two 1 minute videos of newt mating rituals, which she filmed in the field.

She uses the lecture theatre's PC, next to the podium, and the projector provided. There's a stick microphone on podium which is connected to PA system (its output can be picked-up by PC but isn't by default). The back of the PC isn't accessible. The only inputs accessible are the 2 front USB ports. She could borrow a radio mic. Amanda tends to pace back and forth while lecturing, coming back to the podium to change slides.

She doesn't have permission to save to the lecture theatre machine, but she does have a 1GB memory stick (with some files already on it) and access to network file storage area of 50MB only (and part of this is already taken). The PC has internet access. The PC is managed by the Estates department, and new software can only be installed on it over the summer but it already has the latest version of Camtasia Studio.

Some background noise is expected. There will be about 200 students in the large echoing lecture theatre. There is sporadic building work next door and a squeaky door (so the inevitable late-comers always briefly disturb the flow of the lecture). When the day comes Amanda has a stinking cold. She would very much like to edit out her coughing, and an interruption due to the building work next door, if possible.

She has the grudging agreement of the department's over-stretched computing officer that he will process the recording to make it available online. He doesn't have experience with video-editing software.

Analysis

1. Amanda would like to record her lecture about newts this Friday. She wants to capture the PowerPoint presentation along with the audio so that the students can use it for revision at exam time (several months from now). The lecture contains technical language and she's particularly aware that some students have English as a second language, so audio must be clear.

Camtasia Studio is a PC application used widely in education, which allows the user to record the output of their computer's display in real time, as a video file. Additionally, the software can simultaneously record the computer's audio input. Camtasia will therefore allow Amanda to record her PowerPoint presentation on the lecture theatre PC as it is delivered, along with the audio input from her microphone. This will ensure correct timing of slide transitions to synchronise to the audio soundtrack. Camtasia can also simultaneously record live video from an external camera if required (though this is not a specified need in this scenario).

The ability of Camtasia to offer support for audio and/or video capture, in addition to screen capture, will depend on the capabilities of the PC in question, and the availability of suitable peripherals [see below]. Camtasia is a relatively simple piece of software to use, and a minimal training period should be required for most technically aware users to feel comfortable with its use.

The clarity of the voice recording will depend primarily on the combination of microphone and the computer's audio interface - be it an internal soundcard, as found on most PCs, or an external USB audio device (a separate box with audio connections on it, which connects to a USB port) - and their correct set-up. It is recommended that both the microphone and a separate USB audio interface are supplied by the recordist (Amanda or her assistant), to avoid relying on the unknown audio capabilities of the onsite PC, which may well not have been specified with audio capture in mind. The recommended additional equipment for audio recording is therefore a simple clip-on radio mic (Sennheisser Freeport Presenter Set or similar) and a USB audio interface (soundcard) with microphone input, such as the Tascam US122 or Edirol UA25.

A training/familiarisation period is strongly recommended before using the recording system in a ‘live' situation. Familiarity and technical confidence will ensure smooth and stress-free set-up on the day, and will allow Amanda to be comfortable with the sensation and sound of having her voice amplified and recorded. As much as any technical detail, this will help her to capture a good recording.

2. She plans to make her lecture available via Blackboard, so that students can access it from home as well as on campus. She thinks that some of the students will want to download it onto their personal video players. The head of department would also like to be able to view it on his iPhone.

When it comes to exporting her edited 'master' [see section 4] for delivery to her students, it is possible to specify different framerates, codecs and settings, suitable for different playback devices. Recordings can be exported as Flash, Quicktime or Windows Media movies, suitable for download, email and web streaming, or as AVIs suitable for CD and DVD media. Camtasia includes a 'wizard' which chooses suitable file compression settings based on the answers to a few simple questions, which ascertain nature of the content and the intended delivery method. These settings can be further manually refined by the more advanced user, but offer a very useful starting point.

NB: Care should be taken when planning presentations, and when choosing compression settings, to consider reproduction - especially the clarity of written text - on devices with small screens (iPods etc).

If Amanda's institution also intends to support Camtasia Relay (the new network version of Camtasia) then this offers the facility to compress recordings automatically for a variety of devices, and upload to Blackboard as a learning resource for one of her specified courses. [Note for Blackboard Administrators: These preferences can be managed centrally, and stored as part of a user's network profile, subject to suitable expansion of the LDAP schema].

3. She'll lecture for 40 minutes, then have a 10-minute question and answer session, which she is also keen to include in the recording. There is often only about 5 minutes changeover time between lectures.

A second room microphone would be required to pick up questions from her audience. However, a common technique used by professional broadcast interviewers etc is simply to repeat the question before answering. In this way, Amanda's microphone will serve as the single point of contact, greatly simplifying the setup process.

Amanda's familiarity with the setup procedure of her microphone will be paramount, and it is recommended that she or her regular assistant is trained in setting up for some representative situations. If she uses the same venues on a regular basis, then this procedure can be further simplified by correct installation of any necessary software drivers onto onsite computers.

4. Her PowerPoint presentation contains text (with animations), some diagrams she scanned from a book and two 1-minute videos of newt mating rituals, which she filmed in the field... Some background noise is expected. There will be about 200 students in the large echoing lecture theatre. There is sporadic building work next door and a squeaky door (so the inevitable late-comers always briefly disturb the flow of the lecture). When the day comes Amanda has a stinking cold. She would very much like to edit out her coughing, and an interruption due to the building work next door, if possible.

Camtasia will capture the presentation as it appears on the screen, either in a specified window or by capturing full-screen (chosen when commencing recording). This recording will be captured in a proprietary format (.camrec), for use while working within Camtasia Studio - recording, compositing and editing. Video remains at full resolution until exported from Camtasia using the 'Produce Video' wizard, which assists in choosing video and audio compression settings for the final output file(s). It is recommended that she saves her 'onsite' recording to her memory stick as a Camtasia project (a .camproj file), and copies this to her own PC, to allow her to choose compression settings, and to carry out any necessary editing at her own pace.

Both video and audio tracks can be edited within Camtasia Studio. In simple terms, if Amanda wishes to remove sections of the recording, she can define a region by clicking and dragging across the Timeline in Camtasia, then choosing 'Cut Selection' to remove it. Similarly, unwanted sounds can be removed without disrupting the flow of the video by selecting the offending section and using the 'Replace with Silence' editing command. Audio fades, and more sophisticated editing and compositing techniques are also available to the more advanced user, all of which will contribute towards a more polished final product.

5. She uses the lecture theatre's PC, next to the podium, and the projector provided. There's a stick microphone on podium which is connected to PA system (its output can be picked-up by PC but isn't by default). The back of the PC isn't accessible. The only inputs accessible are the 2 front USB ports. She could borrow a radio mic. Amanda tends to pace back and forth while lecturing, coming back to the podium to change slides.

Connecting the microphone to the computer's built-in soundcard is - in the absence of an alternative - an acceptable solution. If the back of the PC is inaccessible then some PCs offer a mini-jack microphone input to the on-board soundcard on the PC's front panel, though this should not be relied upon (nor is it specified in the given scenario). However, many onboard PC soundcards are low-gain, low A/D conversion quality, and noisy, and a dedicated external USB audio interface is strongly recommended. In practice, this means Amanda providing an external USB audio interface, in addition to the microphone itself [see section 1] .

The audio input device (soundcard) should be adjusted to suit the microphone to be used. Input gain levels should be set to peak at around 75% on louder passages. As a general rule, this should allow headroom for the louder signals, but ensure that quieter ones remain audible.

If Amanda is to be free to move about as she wishes, then a fixed podium microphone is not suitable for recording her voice, and in any case it cannot be relied on to give acceptable clarity or definition. Also the variations in level and the room acoustics will lead to unusable audio. The solution would ideally be a clip-on radio microphone and receiver, which will give clarity and freedom of movement.

Once a suitable pairing of radio microphone and USB audio interface has been decided upon, Amanda should be assisted/trained in finding appropriate levels of input gain (ie mic input level/volume) for their interaction. This will have a significant effect on the recorded volume and quality - insufficient or excessive input gain will result in audio that is either too quiet or distorted (respectively). Once this level is set it should be noted down to enable recall for future events.

If sound reinforcement (ie amplification) is required in the theatre to ensure audibility, then a monitor feed can be taken from the audio interface and fed to the PA system in place of the podium microphone. It should however be borne in mind that there is a trade-off between amplified volume and recording quality, as an amplified signal will tend to be more reverberant, and may also lead to issues with feedback, as the microphone picks up the sound of the P.A, all of which artefacts will be present in the recording. Additional amplification of Amanda's voice should therefore be kept to the minimum acceptable level, and if she can speak more loudly, rather than relying on the PA, then she will get a better recording in 99% of cases.

6. She doesn't have permission to save to the lecture theatre machine, but she does have a 1GB memory stick (with some files already on it) and access to network file storage area of 50MB only (and part of this is already taken). The PC has internet access. The PC is managed by the Estates department, and new software can only be installed on it over the summer but it already has the latest version of Camtasia Studio.

Camtasia is able to save as it records, to a temporary location on the local drive, and then export the final recording to the external USB memory stick. However, even leaving aside the various choices of frame rate and audio codec, Camtasia's output file size can vary enormously for the same length of recording, depending on the degree of motion in the screen capture area. In practice, this can affect file size by a factor of 50 or more. Assuming light use of video elements in Amanda's presentation, mp3 audio, and a resonable framerate (10fps or so) then her 1Gb stick should be sufficient for her recording. This however cannot be guaranteed, and a dry run on a similar machine, to allow experimentation with Camtasia's recording preferences, is highly recommended. Given the relatively low price of USB memory sticks, a larger capacity (4Gb+) would be preferable.

System requirements : There must be sufficient free space on the PC hard drive for temporary buffering of Amanda's recording; USB sticks are not suitable for direct streaming of audio or video files (even as a temporary cache), and though the file will not be permanently stored on the PC drive, it must reside there temporarily (at least for the duration of the lecture). For a media-rich presentation, we would recommend her requesting that at least 4Gb of free drive space be available for this purpose, which we would anticipate giving sufficient room for the vast majority of presentations.

7. She has the grudging agreement of the department's over-stretched computing officer that he will process the recording to make it available online. He doesn't have experience with video-editing software.

As described above, Amanda should be able to edit her recording to her satisfaction within Camtasia and compress it to a number of final file types and sizes, using either the built-in wizard or specifying her own preferred settings. If the computing officer can specify a target filesize and format, Amanda should be able to provide her recording in a suitable format, given some basic training on Camtasia.

At time of writing, a suggested video size for delivery on Blackboard VLE might be 320x240 pixels, which gives reasonable clarity without excessive storage needs. However, please note that Blackboard's current maximum allowed file size is 50Mb per file, which does not allow for a very large or high resolution video file. Amanda may therefore be required to chop up her video file into small ‘bite-sized' chunks, to cirumnavigate this limitation of Blackboard.

An additional caveat regarding Blackboard is that the backup/archive service provided within the control panel on Blackboard does not include video resources within its archive, so independent archiving of these course materials should be addressed (ideally at or before the time of uploading) if an archive is desired.

Known Assets:

• Lecture theatre PC with Windows XP, built-in soundcard, and accessible USB ports (x2).
• Projector
• PowerPoint
• Camtasia Studio
• In-house Public Address (PA) and podium microphone [not used]

Requirements:

• Camtasia audio/video capture of PowerPoint presentation with live audio.
• Full quality screen capture suitable for editing/export to a variety of final file types/sizes for delivery by Blackboard VLE/mobile devices
• Good quality audio capture from wireless microphone
• Simple setup procedure

Additional Equipment - Recommended:

• Wireless lapel microphone + receiver
• Low latency USB audio interface with microphone input and direct monitor output
• 4Gb+ USB memory stick (fast access)

 

 

Case Study: Learning Lessons from Other Digitisation Projects

This document proposes a number of potential challenges associated with the digitisation of a collection. It then examines the value of lessons learned from previous projects when attempting to meet those challenges. It is intended to be of use to resource management staff considering the digitisation of all or part of their collection.

Introduction

When planning a digitisation project it's important to avoid the extremes of thinking that either (a) your project is so unique there is nothing to be learned from previous projects, or (b) so many projects have gone on that there must by now be an easy-to-use template you can apply. The truth lies between these extremes: there is a lot to be learned from other projects, but their lessons must be evaluated against the particular characteristics and context of your project and applied and adapted as appropriate.

This paper provides a selection of lessons that have emerged from various digitisation projects. The list does not claim to be exhaustive, but should provide some insight into issues commonly encountered by digitisation projects and the staff who work on them. Note that the list here is generic; drawn from many digitisation projects. You may also find it useful to look at individual projects and the particular lessons they learned. Published case studies provide a very useful way to do this, and JISC Digital Media and others have made several available online:

• JISC Digital Media case studies
• AHDS case studies
• JISC Digitisation Programme

In addition to published case studies, it can also often be useful to talk directly to those involved in projects. They may tell you additional things that they would be reluctant to commit to print. One way to find projects is to send messages to mailing lists, such as:

• JISC Digital Media list
• Association of Moving Image Archivists list
• International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives list

 

Project planning and management

• Do your homework before launching into the project – it's vital to carefully assess both your users' needs and your available resources
• Make sure you have sufficient institutional backing: ensure that the key stakeholders are on your side and that your project is a good fit with your institution's mission and strategic aims
• Be sure to involve those with knowledge of the collection as well as those with a technical knowledge of digitisation
• Set clear and achievable objectives and get them down on paper to avoid being diverted or pushed into doing other things ('scope creep')
• The use of professional project management techniques (e.g. PRINCE2) will help to keep things on track
• It is important to undertake a risk assessment to help you in monitoring and managing your project's risks
• Don't underestimate the time required to recruit and train staff, or presume that your staff will stay till the very end of your project

Working in collaboration with others

• Collaboration with other departments or institutions can be beneficial to all concerned, but it will require careful management
• Meetings are particularly important at the beginning of the project to determine common objectives and methodologies and establish strong working relationships
• You must be very clear about financial arrangements and the ownership of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
• Frequent meetings and good channels of communication throughout the project will help the collaboration to run smoothly

Procurement and outsourcing

• Make sure you allow plenty of time to procure products or services, especially if you have to undertake procurement via OJEU (Official Journal of the European Communities)
• Where you are outsourcing work you must still have sufficient grasp of the technical details and standards to ensure that you get what you need
• Be absolutely clear about what the price covers and how it breaks down – you need to ensure that everything you require is included and you may discover some elements of the work that you could more cheaply undertake yourself
• When outsourcing, make sure you put in place proper agreements with agreed timescales and penalty clauses, quality assurance standards and procedures, and reporting requirements
• Be very clear about who owns the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) for any work being undertaken by an outside organisation – ensure you are given an appropriate licence or assignment of rights

Involving your users

• Identify your users and their needs – you may find it useful to make a distinction between core users/needs and more peripheral users/needs so you can establish some prioritisation
• Involve your core users in all stages of the project: planning, development and delivery – you could include them in an advisory group or involve them in the testing of your collection and its interface
• Once the collection is released make sure you provide opportunities for your users to give feedback
• If you're digitising resources that may be unfamiliar to some users (e.g. sound or moving image resources), it will be useful to provide guidance on how they can make use of that material

Selection of material for digitisation

• You will need to decide at the beginning of the project whether you will undertake a selection process and what criteria you'll employ
• In addition to user needs, copyright status and the condition of the original material are likely to be important factors affecting your selection

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and other legal issues

• Identify the copyright status of your collection as early as possible, since clearing rights can prove time-consuming and expensive
• Make sure you're clear about institutional policies and practices (e.g. does your institution claim copyright in academic's work; does it have an insurance policy that could cover you for material you're unable to clear?)
• Bear in mind that there may be other IPR issues to consider than just copyright (e.g. moral rights or performer's rights), and other legal considerations (e.g. data protection)
• If you're licensing content from rights owners make sure you're realistic about any protection you promise – you can put measures in place to minimise copying, but cannot absolutely guarantee that no one will misuse your digital collection

Quality assurance (QA) and evaluation

• Establish clear and well-documented quality assurance procedures, using automated and objective measures where possible
• Try to be realistic in establishing acceptance criteria – for many things you will want to establish very high standards; but for others it would be unreasonable to expect 100% accuracy
• Make sure you allow adequate time to undertake the QA and any corrective work that might be required
• When delivering the collection, try to provide a mechanism for your users to alert you to any errors they spot in the digital content or metadata, and to provide you with evaluative feedback
• Build evaluation into your project: both formative evaluation (i.e. as you go along, to inform the project's development) and summative evaluation (at the end, to capture some of those lessons you've learned)

Digital capture

• When estimating capture timings, do not make your calculations on the basis that someone will be able to digitise 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks...
• Ensure that all your equipment is kept in good working order and is fit for the task – it may be worthwhile spending a bit more if this will provide better efficiency
• Where possible, use an automated means of managing quality and consistency (e.g. prefer objective colour/sound calibration to the subjectivity of judging things by eye or ear)
• It's important to give some thought to the digitisation environment: make sure you consider ergonomics, space and lighting
• Identify any special handling requirements for the original materials and put in place appropriate guidelines and training
• Be aware that digitisation can reveal 'noise' (e.g. dirt or scratches) that was not previously apparent in analogue versions
• Agree on systems for unique identification and file naming before you begin digitisation

Metadata creation

• When estimating cataloguing/indexing timings, do not make your calculations on the basis that someone will be able to catalogue 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks...
• Metadata creation can be very time-consuming: it will usually take longer than the time required to capture and edit the digital content – especially if you're indexing sound or moving image files
• Define your metadata schema and vocabularies at the beginning of the project considering, particularly, the needs of your users and the way you want your collection to be searched and displayed
• Take care in adapting formal metadata standards, making sure you balance your user's needs against any interoperability requirements (i.e. the need for your collection to be integrated with, or searched alongside, other collections)
• Make sure you agree on any special metadata requirements with external suppliers

Collection delivery

• Give thought to your digital management system and end-user interface at the beginning, since these may affect some of the decisions you make about digitisation and metadata creation
• However, try not to let your management system/interface be too constraining on the quality of your digital content and metadata, since your content/metadata will need to outlive any current management system
• Make sure you involve your users in the design and testing of your interface
• Make sure you identify and address issues of usability and accessibility – consider offering suitable alternatives (e.g. textual descriptions of visual resources, transcription of voice recordings, synopses of videos)
• Give some thought to how you will promote your collection: it might be useful to develop a 'brand', have an advertising strategy, or open up your content for discovery by search engines or other search services (e.g. via the Z39.50 or OAI-PMH protocols)

Preservation and sustainability

• Give thought to the preservation and sustainability during your project planning – make sure you ask the "what if..." questions and have consulted or involved all the key people (e.g. those who will have to manage your file storage or upgrade your software)
• Put in place a strategy for preservation, identifying how often your collection should be backed-up, checked, or migrated
• Make sure your project is fully documented so that those coming along afterward can understand every aspect of the collection (e.g. digitisation standards, copyright status, system architecture)

Conclusion

The things you learn while undertaking your own project will be useful for those who follow. So while you're undertaking the project, it can be useful to maintain a "lessons learned log". Consider writing these up more formally once the project is finished, perhaps in a final report for project funders/sponsors or, if you can, as a public case study. It's important to remember that the lessons you learn are not just the things that went wrong – but also the solutions you tried and the aspects of the project that went very well!

Case Study: University of Bristol Theatre Collection

How the collection digitised its documents and photographs.

Prepared by the Theatre Collection

Theatre Collection website and search facility.

Contents

1. Aims and objectives of the digitisation project
2. The process
3. The Visualising Theatre Project
4. The Grand Designs Project
5. Illumination: The Magic Lantern Slide Project
6. Project funding and acknowledgements

1. Aims and objectives of the digitisation project

Since its foundation in 1951 the University of Bristol Theatre Collection has become a fully registered museum and research centre dedicated to the study of British theatre history, holding a vast collection of original documents, photographs and artefacts from theatres, actors, designers and much more.

The Collection's acquisition policy focuses on British theatre history and a large proportion of the holdings come from donations and bequests from enthusiasts and professionals who share the desire to preserve a record of theatre in Britain.

The key aim of the Visualising Theatre Project was to unlock various collections within the Theatre Collection's archive using digital technologies to provide an accessible online picture library for educational use.

Building on the success of the existing online catalogue and search facility, this project has digitised a selection of the visual holdings (photographs, designs, artwork etc.) so enabling students and other users to view these items via the internet.

Researchers of many disciplines have benefited by having easier access to an important resource for education and research uses. This online resource has been made be available to promote inter-departmental discussion, facilitate greater use and encourage new research projects.

Following the success of the Visualising Theatre Project which enabled over 1000 images to be displayed online, two additional projects were developed: Grand Designs and Illumination, all of which are covered in this case study.

2. The process

The workflow of the digitisation project was carried out as follows:

1. Retrieval of collection boxes from archive strong room
2. Material layout
3. Selection of material
4. Notes made (references, dates, content)
5. Scanning
6. Optimisation
7. Saving digital versions
8. Re-insertion of materials back into boxes and the archive
9. Copying files for web using catalogue database

A number of different collections within the archives were selected for digitisation. The decision to choose these specific collections was based on a number of factors, which included:

• Whether the Theatre Collection owned or could easily obtain copyright for online publication
• Whether it would be of interest to wide range of researchers
• The size of the collection given the time allocated
• The quality, format and media of the images

Via Adobe Photoshop CS2's import option scanning was carried out using Epson Scan software in professional mode to ensure control over all settings. Various adjustments (such as cropping, rotation, tonal and contrast levels, and sharpness) were then carried out and versions saved to make the image ready for web delivery.

Diagram 1. Screenshot of the Epson Scan scanning software - click image for larger version

Three versions of each image were saved during the digitisation process:

• A master of the original scan with no edits made other than cropping and rotation to ensure optimum file sizes (TIFF format -longest edge 3600 pixels). This acts as an archival copy of the image for use by Theatre Collection Staff or researchers visiting the Theatre Collection. It can also potentially be supplied to publishers; hence the need for a high resolution scan.
• A display image - this would be the highest quality copy available to users on the web. Adjustments to make it as close to the original as possible could include: cropping, rotation, adjusted tonal and colour levels and sharpness (high quality JPEG - longest edge 500 pixels).
• A thumbnail image - a smaller, lower quality version of the display image (medium quality JPEG - longest edge 150 pixels).

The decision not to save a high quality optimised TIFF image was made based on the following factors:

• Space - Saving two large files per item on the faculty server would take up twice the server space
• Future use - Publishers and researchers requesting the image for use would more than likely apply their own settings to match their own requirements, there was no point in second guessing this.

The existing searchable online catalogue (text only) was used to deliver the newly scanned and formatted images. The access database which held the active information for each item was expanded to include an image data entry section. It was set up to search for the formatted thumbnail image which appeared on the database page. Copyright information and reference details were entered (e.g. the image description field holds the full catalogue reference number) and then both the thumbnail image and display image get copied from the faculty server over to the web server.

Whilst scanning was in process (for larger detailed colour items this could take up to 3 minutes) a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet was used to note the information about each file - original catalogue reference, photographer / artist, production title, any queries regarding artist or photographer. This spreadsheet was then later used to copy and paste details needed to accompany the image on the web; it was also useful in checking numbers and highlighting errors.

Extensis Portfolio was used as a visual cataloguing system to keep track of the number of items scanned and allowed for an easy to access filing system. Through Portfolio we also added metadata to each image which was used to search for specific files, e.g. the number of photographs taken by Desmond Tripp. The metadata is not currently in use in relation to the web delivery but it has been retained for future reference.

Diagram 2. Screenshot of the Extensis Portfolio cataloguing system - click image for larger version

The final stage of the process was to use Microsoft Access to enter image details into the Theatre Collection catalogue database and copy across the display and thumbnail image versions from our faculty server (where the master TIFF file is held) to the web server. The process is complete when the image appears, successfully linked into the online catalogue on the Theatre Collection Web site.

Diagram 3. Screenshot of the Theatre Collection Web site's Search Results page - click image for larger version

3. The Visualising Theatre Project

The Visualising Theatre Project digitised a selection of photographs, prints and artwork from the following collections:

• The Bristol Old Vic Company
• The Richard Southern Collection
• John Elvery and Frederick Crooke Design Collections

The Bristol Old Vic Company

With this collection of production photographs we aimed to show the breadth and variety of theatrical productions spanning from 1946 to 1986. This was achieved by choosing one photograph from every production over the 40 years totalling over 780 selected images; ensuring that within each yearly season the key elements of performance were covered, i.e. stage design, costume, actors, lighting, and atmosphere. For the digitised collection to be of most use to the greatest number of researchers it was important to have a range of key elements featured. Above all the chosen image had to portray the 'essence' of each production.

We were fortunate in that the collection contained photographs taken by only two photographers, but challenges faced during selecting and scanning included:

• The different photographers styles
  Photographs by Desmond Tripp (1946-66), contain fine detail, subtle lighting and are more often than not staged images with close-up portraits of the lead actors, thus providing less variety to choose from. The scans of these images needed relatively little tonal or sharpness adjustment.

Production Photograph - 'Volpone', Bristol Old Vic Company. Black and white photograph by Desmond Tripp (BOV/P/000104)

• In comparison, photographer Derek Balmer (1963-86) took high contrast images that had very little tonal variation between the pitch black and pure white, but he provided more variety in the type of shots, most of which were of the live production. For these photographs the tonal adjustments needed to replicate the original as closely as possible: this took a lot of concentration and time as the scanner's levels tended to further increase the contrast of the image.

Production Photograph - 'It's A Two Foot Six Inches Above The Ground World', Bristol Old Vic Company. Black and white photograph by Derek Balmer (BOV/P/000271)

• Time
  Selecting 786 images to digitise from a collection of over 11,000 photographs within a time frame of 6 weeks required a clear and organised work schedule which was broken down into a cycle: retrieval, laying out, selection, noting references, scanning, optimisation, saving digital versions and re-insertion of the photographs back into the archive. This cycle was repeated twice a day resulting in the digitisation process averaging as 15 minutes per image.

The Bristol Old Vic Company: Scan details
Format:	Black & white photographs
Size:	A6 (105 × 148mm) - A3 (297 × 420mm)
Image type:	8-bit grayscale
Scan resolution:	300dpi
Scan target size:	3600 pixels on longest edge

The Richard Southern Collection

This collection documents the history of theatre and is particularly strong in the areas of 18th and 19th Century theatre architecture and backstage information. It includes about 22,500 plans, photographs, cuttings, as well as scenery and costume prints. Our aim was to provide an example of each type of catalogued material, particularly those with unusual or rare elements; this might include very well preserved 18th century prints, hand coloured one penny sheets, autographed cabinet cards or original lithographs.

Besides the most obvious task of carefully handling sometimes rare and fragile items, we also found challenges in:

• Textured surfaces
  A good example of an item that was important to digitise accurately was a well preserved penny plain sheet that had been 'tinselled' (decorated with small shiny elements) sometime between 1835 and 1850. The high resolution scans we were using to make our master copies ensured the detail was captured effectively and can therefore be used to view the item on screen, preserving the original for longer.
  
  
  Print - Twopence coloured portrait print entitled Mr [Thomas Potter] Cooke as Goyoneche in 'The Warwoolf of Tlascala'. Published by M & M Skelt. Image as displayed online (RS/A31/0019)
  
  
  Detail of tinselling from TIFF file
• Moiré patterns
  Moiré patterns, more usually associated with scanning items created with modern printing techniques, have previously posed a problem in relation to scanning some of the etchings and engravings in the collection. These interference patterns are caused by the scanner's fine sampling grid registering the halftone (or finely etched) pattern in the original image. This can be recognised by chequered or herringbone patterns appearing across the image.
  
  Areas of crosshatching were so dense and fine that moiré patterns would have appeared had we not treated the prints using de-screening.
  
  
  Print - Line Engraving entitled Mrs [Charlotte] Goodall as Sir Harry Wildair [in] 'The Constant Couple' Act V, Scene 1. De Wilde (pinx), Leney (sculp), 1792. Image as displayed online. (RS/A32/0041)
  
  
  Image displaying moiré interference pattern
  
  
  Detail from TIFF of engraving cross hatching

The Richard Southern Collection: Scan details
Format:	Black & white and colour photographs and prints
Size:	A7 (74 × 105mm) - A3 (297 × 420mm)
Image type:	8-bit grayscale/24-bit colour
Scan resolution:	300dpi
Scan target size:	3600 pixels on longest edge

John Elvery and Frederick Crooke Design Collections

The John Elvery Collection contains original artwork for costume and set designs for over forty productions, including set models, production photographs, as well as personal photographs. The Frederick Crooke Collection is a comprehensive set of original theatre designs, illustrating his work for London Old Vic, Sadler's Wells and touring productions. In making these designs accessible on the web, our aim was to demonstrate the range of media and techniques employed by Elvery and Crooke in their work.

The key challenges we faced in digitising these 2 collections were:

• Scale
  Some of the pieces were larger than the A3 flatbed scanner we used for the project. Whilst we had the option to photograph the larger pieces, we were concerned we would not get the same level of detail that we had so far achieved with the other collections. We undertook a test to see how scanning the larger formats in 2 parts and digitally stitching them together would work. This method of overlaying the two scans and matching them up along a common line worked well enough to display the whole image online whilst retaining the detail in the master TIFF file.
  
  
  Scanned in 2 parts arrows indicate joining point, Costume Design - The Alchemist (John Blythe as Subtle) by John Elvery, Leeds Playhouse. Image as displayed online (TCD/C/000541)
• Colour
  Some designs were drawn or painted onto a variety of coloured paper and card. Due to subtle shades and textures, the scanner had trouble balancing the tones for an accurate digital copy particularly for those papers with a yellow hue. A lot of time was spent adjusting the colour and tonal contrast using the curves and variations tools whilst referring to the original archive item to make a more truthful representation of the design.

Top half of image after adjustments, bottom half as originally scanned. Set Design - 'Something's Afoot' (staircase) by John Elvery, Bristol Old Vic. (TCD/S/000453)

John Elvery and Frederick Crooke Design Collections: Scan details
Format:	Black & white and colour drawings and paintings
Size:	A6 (105 × 148mm) - A3 (297 × 420mm)
Image type:	8-bit grayscale/24-bit colour
Scan resolution:	300dpi
Scan target size:	3600 pixels on longest edge

4. The Grand Designs Project

As part of the Grand Designs Project a selection of photographs, artwork and documents were digitised from the The Julia Trevelyan Oman Archive.

Designer Julia Trevelyan Oman's archive, which includes work for television, theatre, ballet and opera, provides us with an insight into a way of working that was thoroughly researched and highly detailed. This uniquely detailed archive gave us an opportunity to take an in-depth approach to the process of design. The 'Merchant of Venice' was chosen for its mass appeal; the quality and quantity of the supportive work and also it clearly demonstrated the design method.

Challenges faced when selecting and scanning designs for this production included:

• Variety of materials on any one item
  Getting the best digital copies of an array of materials ranging from subtle watercolours to fabric samples, fine pencil drawings to typewriter text required constant checking of the settings. The selection procedure included consideration of the visual quality of the material in relation to how it would eventually display on screen to ensure consistency when viewed as a collection online.
  
  
  Julia Trevelyan Oman, designer for 'The Merchant of Venice' (National Theatre): Original photocopy of design with fabric samples attached. Image as displayed online (JTO/016/001)
• Fragility
  Due to the way in which Julia displayed and mounted her designs the decision was made by the archivist to retain the original A3 design boards, staples, tape and all. Each of the boards were inserted into individual melinex pockets to ensure that the various attached elements would remain in place in the event of handling. Despite this precautionary measure, there were still instances where samples, photographs or sketches had come loose from the backing board and it was for this reason we decided to scan each image through the plastic sheet to prevent further damage.
  
  The result of this was the scanned images had a very obvious yellow hue. Through making various adjustments to the colour balance and saturation we were able to treat each image with the same settings to make it as close to the original as possible.

TIFF before adjustments (JTO/016/050)


After adjustments - Julia Trevelyan Oman, design for 'The Merchant of Venice' (National Theatre): mounted display boards showing watercolour for Jessica's costumes and jewellery. Image as displayed online (JTO/016/050)

The Julia Trevelyan Oman Archive: Scan details
Format:	Black & white and colour drawings, paintings, photographs and text
Size:	A7 (74 × 105mm) - A3 (297 × 420mm)
Image type:	8-bit grayscale/24-bit colour
Scan resolution:	300dpi
Scan target size:	3600 pixels on longest edge

5. Illumination: The Magic Lantern Slide Project

Illumination: The Magic Lantern Slide Project digitised all of The Magic Lantern Slide Collection.

The magic lantern slide show was used to educate, entertain and mystify audiences in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The Illumination Project has enabled their conservation, cataloguing, digital preservation and created part online and part off-line access to this amazingly important visual resource. This project was funded by the Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts (BIRTHA) and Arts Faculty Research Directors Fund.

The Theatre Collection archives contain 400 magic lantern slides which until now have been un-viewable. The slides within this collection cover a remarkable range of subject matter; drama and performance, history of art, classics, archaeology, geography, social history and theology.

Slides fell into two categories:

• Sets of story slides, mostly photographs that had been hand-coloured, dating from 1880 - 1900

Lantern Slide - 'The Life Boat'. From life models. Produced by Bamforth. Hand-coloured photograph. Photographer: unknown. Image as displayed online (TCP/LS/000005)

• Black and white reference and lecture slides dating from 1910 - 1950

Lantern Slide - Celtic crosses in Kells and Monasteboice, Ireland. Possibly c.1910s Photographer: Unknown. Copyright holder: Untraceable, contact the University of Bristol Theatre Collection. (TCP/LS/000021)

The construction of a lantern slide consists of two sheets of square glass between which the photographic image is sandwiched. The glass is bound together by tape around all four edges.

To enable us to record the slides accurately we purchased a flatbed scanner that could scan both opaque documents and slides. Slide scanning was achieved by removing a panel in the lid of the scanner which contained a backlight for transparent image capture.

Challenges faced included:

• Scanning Object/Image
  When scanning a sample of the lantern slide collection for the first time using the newly purchased scanner with the backlight in operation we discovered that only the image as projected was captured. Whilst the image was good, it didn't reflect the slide as an object. Magic lantern slides hold many clues in the way in which they are made, labels and titles adorn the glass, taping can vary from one collection to another and we wanted to ensure this information was recorded. The decision was made to take 2 scans of the hand-coloured slides; one using the scanner with flatbed panel in place, thus producing a scan of the 'object' and the second with the panel removed using the backlight (to shine through the transparent areas of the slide), giving a copy of what would be the projected image.
  
  The 'object' scan gave a clear idea of the slide's construction, condition and labelling. However, the slide's photographic image became fuzzy due to the scanner light penetrating the 2 layers of glass and causing a shadow effect against the panel in the lid.

'Object' scan of Lantern Slide - 'Nellie's Prayer'. From life models. Produced by Bamforth. Hand-coloured photograph. Photographer: unknown. Image as displayed online (TCP/LS/000006)

• The fuzziness was resolved and the image became clear when using the backlight to scan the slide.

'Projected Image' scan of Lantern Slide as above. Image as displayed online (TCP/LS/000006)

• In the cases of the black and white historical reference slides, as they were very similar to one another, we opted to produce 2 example 'object' scans for each run. Time restraints would not allow for the whole collection to be processed in the same way as the colour slides and there was nothing to be gained from this anyway, given the conformity of the slides and lack of labelling.
  
  The slides were kept in the same position on the scanner screen for both scans to ensure limited handling. Scanner settings were changed for every set of 4 slides and the panel in the lid removed and then replaced according to which scan type we were making.
• Vulnerability of the media
  Such is the construction and age of the magic lantern slides that additional precautions had to be taken to ensure the safety of the collection when scanning. Due to the size of the scanner screen slides could only be scanned in small batches of 4 using a film area guide. Archival gloves were used to handle the slides at all times, preventing further grease and dirt from building up on the scanner and slides. In cases where the tape had worn away, so exposing sharp glass edges (or indeed chipped / broken glass edges) we were concerned they would scratch the scanner screen. To avoid this we laid the slide down tape edge first, and wearing gloves at all times, gently rested the slide onto the screen.

'Object' scan shows worn tape exposing sharp edges. Lantern Slide - 'Rare Metal: A Story of City Life'. From life models. Produced by Bamforth. Hand-coloured photograph. Photographer: unknown. Image as displayed online (TCP/LS/000004)

Unlike any of the other collections, the magic lantern slide files were batch processed to create the web display and thumbnail images. This was due to the fact that no optimisations were made, the very high resolution gave sharp copies and we left the tonal and colour levels as they were when scanned. Without a lantern slide to view a genuine projection of the images, we had no way of knowing whether the levels were true or not. Photoshop's image processor script was used to batch process the files and therefore provided a timesaving shortcut to this part of the digitising cycle.

The Magic Lantern Slide Project: Scan details
Format:	Black & white and colour lantern slides
Size:	82 × 82mm
Image type:	8-bit grayscale/24-bit colour
Scan resolution:	300dpi
Scan target size:	3600 pixels on longest edge

6. Project funding and acknowledgements

The Visualising Theatre Project was implemented in 2006. It was funded by MLA South West Programme Development Fund, the University of Bristol Alumni Foundation, the Vice Chancellor's Strategic Fund and the Faculty of Arts Research Director's Fund. The project was carried out as an Arts and Business skills bank scheme.

Vital input was provided by our project partners: Institute of Physics Publishing, particularly Kerry Hopkins' contribution to the skills bank scheme, JISC Digital Media for technical and professional advice regarding digitisation and University of Bristol Information Services for implementation; without all of which the project would not be possible.

Theatre Collection website and search facility.

Case Study: History of Art, University College Cork

This short case study looks at how the newly established History of Art department at University College Cork went about building a collection of images to support its teaching. Although it would have preferred to create an all-digital collection, the constraints of time, money and copyright led the department to take a hybrid approach, using a mix of formats, drawn from several different sources.

Prepared by JISC Digital Media with assistance from .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), University College Cork

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Background
3. Finding and Making Images
4. Coordinating the Image Collection
5. Delivering the Images
6. Future Plans
7. Conclusion

1. Introduction

 This study highlights the role of the Visual Resources Officer in coordinating the resources, and the delivery of images via 'Visuallab', a website for undergraduate students, and the 'Virtual Visual Literacy Project', which delivers some of the same content to participants in the university's continuing education programme.

2. Background

The University College Cork (UCC) is one of four constituent universities that make up the National University of Ireland. In 2001 UCC brought in Professor Alistair Rowan, recently retired from the Edinburgh College of Art, to establish a new department to teach the History of Art. Once this was achieved he retired and was succeeded, in 2003, by Professor James Elkins from the Art Institute of Chicago. History of Art is a small department affiliated to the college's Department of History. Currently, it has a part-time professor (Elkins), two full-time lecturing staff, a few part-time lecturers and tutors, and a secretary and visual resources officer (both part-time). Undergraduate students number about 110 in the first year, 50 in the second, and 25 in the third. There are eight postgraduate students.

3. Finding and making images

Since History of Art is such an image-intensive discipline, an important early task was to gather together a collection of teaching images. The department would have preferred to create one large digital collection, but this was not possible, due to the constraints of resources and copyright. As a result, the department was forced to rely on several different sources and formats.

The university had an existing slide collection of about 12,000 images, which were brought out of storage and sorted through. The majority had been purchased from Scala, an Italian-based publisher of slides and art history books. To these were added several thousand more slide images from Professor Rowan's own personal collection. The latter were largely architectural images, since Rowan is a notable architectural historian. Further slide images have been added since by staff making overseas study trips, particularly to Italy, since Italian art and architecture has been an important focus of the department's teaching.

The department has begun digitising its slide collection, but this has been limited to images for which they have or can obtain copyright permission. Out of a total slide collection of about 20,000 images, approximately 3,000 have been digitised.

By the time the department was established there were already some good collections of art available on the web, so it was clear that these could play a useful part in meeting the department's image needs. Where the department has been unable to produce its own digital images, it has located and linked to images from online collections and websites. The department also took out a trial subscription to the AMICO collection but found that it didn't offer sufficient coverage for UCC's courses. They are still investigating other subscription options.

Professor Elkins' appointment in 2003 led to a greater emphasis on new media (i.e. born-digital) art works. As a result, the production of new slides ceased and the digitisation of existing slides was wound down, with most of the resources being put towards the development of online materials and the purchase or licensing of new digital media works. The department is intending to buy a digital camera, which will enable direct-to-digital capture of historical art works and architecture when staff go on overseas study trips.

So, although the department would have preferred to have a large electronic collection suitable for all its needs, it is currently having to make do with a mixed collection, including the following formats and sources:

• Printed books
• Commercial slides
• Slides taken by department staff
• Images digitised from slides
• Image linked-to on the web
• Licensed digital images
• 'Born-digital' images

This pragmatic mix is common to other History of Art image collections and is likely to persist until there are 'digital slide licenses' (ie licenses enabling educational copying and distribution of images) or suitably comprehensive subscription collections available.

4. Coordinating the image collection

When the department was formed in 2001, a half time (16.5 hrs) post of Visual Resources Officer (VRO) was established to coordinate the development and use of an image collection for the department. This post is currently held by James Cronin, who provided most of the information for this case study. Cronin came to this new role from a broadcasting and teaching background, with qualifications in the arts (English, History and Iconography) and in broadcast media. In addition to coordinating the image resources for the History of Art Department, he coordinates an Art History diploma course for UCC's continuing education programme (discussed further below).

The Visual Resources Officer's job description is extremely broad, including: photography, slide mounting and digitisation, website creation and management, supervision of slide borrowing, preparation of exam papers and the use of AV and multimedia equipment. As the students and department have expanded, an increasing amount of time has been taken up in providing user support. A recent challenge has been meeting the image needs of several History of Art students with visual impairments.

With limited time and the need to build up a teaching resource quickly, Cronin has had to take a fairly pragmatic approach to getting things done - including relying on teaching staff to help with the organisation and labelling of slides related to their subject interests. As the digital images are solely intended for screen delivery or digital projection, most of the slides are scanned at a fairly low resolution (250-300 dpi to give 640 x 480 pixel images), although higher resolutions are used where details of an artwork are required. Slides are scanned directly into Adobe Photoshop using a Canoscan FS4000US film scanner.

The slides are organised and labelled using a scheme devised by Dr Flavio Boggi, one of the department's lecturers. It records Place, Name of the work, Artist/Architect, and Date. The digital images are currently being catalogued using Extensis Portfolio with a simple metadata schema based on the Dublin Core standard. In the future the department hopes to develop an Intranet-based image repository.

At least half of the Visual Resources Officer's time is spent developing the department's 'Visuallab' website, to which we now turn.

5. Delivering the images

The Visuallab website complements the department's teaching programme. Web pages are put up the week following each lecture. They are used to reinforce the teaching and develop the students' visual literacy, and as preparation for slide tests, which form an important part of each course's assessment. In these tests students are shown unlabelled art works and required to identify and interpret them.

On Monday mornings the VRO prepares a selection of images and texts relating to the previous week's lectures. These are captioned and coded up for the website and are made publicly available by the end of Wednesday. The Visuallab's pages include a mix of digitised images, links and pdf texts, with the site organised by year, then course, then week. Of the images in Visuallab, approximately 80% are digitised from the slide collection or other sources, with the remaining 20% linked to on the web. Images are typically of a modest size (350 pixels across the longest edge), and are given full captions. They are presented within templated, hand-coded HTML, using frames and thumbnails to provide navigation (see the screenshot below).

Visuallab (images courtesy of UCC History of Art)

In addition to its History of Art degree courses, the University College of Cork offers a Diploma of European Art History through its Centre of Adult Continuing Education.

Alongside his role as Visual Resources Officer, Cronin works within the Centre of Adult Continuing Education as Coordinator of the Art History Diploma. In this capacity he has created and maintains another website for diploma students called the Virtual Visual Literacy Project (VVLP) . This draws on the same images and links collected for the History of Art Department, but includes a lot of additional material to support the teaching of the course (lecture notes, assignments etc). It contains more web links than digitised resources (80% links to 20% digitised images, compared with the 20/80 split for the Visuallab).

The VVLP used to be delivered using the Blackboard Virtual Learning Environment. However, as little of its functionality was being used and students found it difficult to manage the passwords and navigate the resources, the VVLP was transferred to a simple website along similar lines to the Visuallab. The screenshot below shows the VVLP's introductory page.

Virtual Visual Literacy Project (images courtesy of UCC History of Art)

The VVLP has been well received by students and was given an award for Research on Innovative Forms of Teaching and Learning from the Irish Higher Education Authority's Targeted Initiatives Scheme. This award has provided funding to investigate the VVLP's teaching potential and to further develop the resource.

Online learning and teaching has been a new experience for some of the Art History Diploma lecturers and has yet to be fully embedded within their teaching practice. While they recognise the administrative advantages, staff have been concerned that students would become overly reliant on the Internet and neglect to use other resources. This fear has not been borne out by student surveys.

6. Future plans

As the Virtual Visual Literacy Project develops, it is likely that workshops will be offered for staff and tutors to enable them to use online resources more effectively. Ultimately it is hoped that all lecturers on the course will have the skills - and the images - to deliver their lectures entirely in PowerPoint.

The History of Art Department has similar goals: to provide its staff with training in using digital images and to ensure they have all the images they need to deliver their courses digitally. This is going to be a challenge as the department teaches more courses covering post-modern and contemporary art, since these images are well within copyright and are only available on the web as small or poor quality reproductions. The university has recently established a new gallery, the Glucksman, with a focus on contemporary art and new media. The History of Art Department hopes that its links with the gallery might provide it with a good source of high quality images for use within its teaching programme.

7. Conclusion

The Cork experience illustrates some of the challenges departments face in trying to provide teaching images within this transitional phase. 'Transitional' in the sense that useful images exist in both analogue and digital forms, with the lack of suitable copyright licenses making digitisation difficult, and digital subscription collections not adequate or affordable enough to meet all teaching needs. While this case study is from Ireland, the UK experience is similar - although there are efforts underway to address both the copyright licensing issues and the provision of art image collections.

Faced with these challenges, UCC has adopted a simple and pragmatic approach: digitising or licensing images where it could and supplementing these with analogue (slide) images and with web links. The development of this image collection is demand-driven, with resources sourced or scanned as they are needed by teaching staff. Delivery is similarly pragmatic, using web technologies in a simple, yet effective way.

For more information about the Visuallab and Virtual Visual Literacy Project, please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Case Study: Staffordshire Past Track

Staffordshire Past Track is a web-based multimedia archive related to the history and cultural heritage of Staffordshire. The bulk of the collection is comprised of photographic or printed images from the past 150 years. Noteworthy features of the Past Track project are its bespoke content management system and a user interface that provides, among other functions, map-based searching, an image zoom facility, and user-annotated albums.

Prepared by JISC Digital Media with assistance from Andy Holt, Staffordshire Past Track Project Manager

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Project Outline
3. Creating the Content
4. Content Management and Delivery
5. Conclusions

1. Introduction

Like many digitisation projects, the Staffordshire Past Track project is not a simple project funded from one source and neatly time-bound. Although most of the work took place between 2000 and 2004, funded under the Lottery's New Opportunity Fund digitisation programme (NOF-digitise), Past Track built upon previous digitisation work and is likely to grow and be sustained through future projects and funding bids. This case study will concentrate on the NOF-funded work, but also seek to place it within the context of the wider programme.

The NOF work itself had two main parts: (a) the digitisation of content relating to Staffordshire; and (b) the development of a content management system (CMS) capable of storing and delivering the Staffordshire content and the content of several other West-Midlands NOF-funded projects. Each of these aspects is covered in some detail below (sections 3 and 4). The next section provides a context for the project and an overview of its history.

As this study describes a publicly accessible resource, you are strongly recommended to visit and familiarise yourself with the Staffordshire Past Track website before reading this case study.

2. Project Outline

The table below summarises the timetable for the Past Track project.

Project initiation, fundraising and early piloting phase (1999 - 2001)

In August 1999, the Heritage Lottery's New Opportunity Fund announced £50 million of funding towards the digitisation of UK cultural heritage resources in a programme called 'NOF-digitise'. (For a detailed background to this programme, see the article by Paul Miller and Sally Criddle in Cultivate Interactive 5).

Staffordshire Council already had some experience of digitisation: its Arts and Museum Service had previously digitised several thousand images for an interactive kiosk project. They were keen to gain NOF-digitise funding to build a more substantial, web-based resource. A partnership was formed to put together an initial bid. This was led by the council's Education Department, with membership drawn from several council departments and a number of other institutions and organisations from throughout the county.

In preparation for its application, the bid team examined the feasibility studies of other digitisation projects. The team also made a visit to the Hulton Getty image library in London to look at the way they had managed their digitisation and content delivery and to see how they were handling the digital rights management issues.

The council's initial 'outline' bid, submitted in early 2000, asked for £80,000 to build a 'Staffordshire Multimedia Archive' (see the summary of bid below).

Summary of the initial NOF-digitise bid

Main goal

• To digitise some of the disparate collections within Staffordshire, creating a substantial new electronic resource that reflects the rich cultural and community heritage of the county, provides enhanced access, and effectively exploits the potential offered by new information and communication technologies.

Specific Objectives

• Provide universal accessibility to regionally important learning resources
• Increase cultural awareness and identity
• Promote an understanding of community history
• Create a major sustainable resource
• Provide opportunities for community involvement

Audience

• Lifelong learners (a priority for NOF-digitise)
• Educational users
• Researchers
• Anyone with an interest in Staffordshire's past

Deliverables

• 20,000 digital images
• 200 video/audio files
• 20 themed web exhibit

While they were waiting for a decision from NOF, the council put together a prototype database, using staff and technical resources from its Education Joint IT Unit and two thousand images from the interactive kiosk project. This working prototype was regarded as the pilot or first phase of the Past Track project and was launched online in December 2000. It offered a browse and search, but lacked the sophisticated functionality that would be added during the NOF-funded phase (mapping, zooming and personalisation, described below). The main purpose of the prototype was to provide something tangible for its users to look at and comment on. It was by no means fixed and would change significantly over the next few years.

Staffordshire's bid was one of nearly 350 received by NOF-digitise, representing a total of £140 million. Given the high number of proposals, NOF chose to group similar bids together into consortia and ask them to submit revised bids based on shared resources. In early 2001 they grouped the Staffordshire bid with six other West Midlands applications to form the Sense of Place West Midlands consortium.

As five of the other consortium members required a content management system, Staffordshire Council offered to develop its prototype system into something the others could also use. This shared CMS formed a second part to the main consortium bid and was priced at nearly £170,000.

Work done during the pilot phase had suggested to the Staffordshire team (and to the other consortium partners) that their initial digitisation costings were unrealistic. As a result, the amount Staffordshire requested for its digitisation was more than doubled for the consortium Sense of Place bid: i.e. £164,000 for the same deliverables.

The main Sense of Place West Midlands consortium bid, which included Staffordshire's digitisation work, was accepted by NOF in mid-2001. The second part of the bid, the shared content management system, was not finally approved until September 2001. This made planning difficult and put more time pressure on the developers once work began.

Both parts of the project initially received less funding than requested, although there were further allocations as the project progressed. Although Staffordshire had asked for £164,000 for their digitisation work, NOF awarded them £80,000 in 2001. However, by the end of the NOF-digitise phase (January 2004), NOF had contributed a total £131,000 towards the digitisation work, to which the Staffordshire County Council had added a further £19,000. The final tally for the content management system was £183,000, all funded by NOF-digitise.

The NOF-digitise funded phase (late 2001 - early 2004)

Once the NOF funding had been approved, the programming team worked apace on the new version of the content management system. While this was proceeding, three new fulltime staff were recruited to form a digitisation team.

These two teams were divided between two sites and institutions. The CMS team were based within the Education Joint IT Unit in Stafford and the digitisation staff, at the County Museum at Shugborough Hall. Project management was shared between Andy Holt, an IT Manager within the Education Joint IT Unit, and Chris Copp, Museums Officer with Staffordshire Arts & Museums Service. Andy managed the development work in Stafford and provided line-management for the staff in both teams. Chris provided the Shugborough-based digitisation team with professional support and supervision. The PRINCE2 project management system was used as a framework for managing the project.

Staffing the Past Track Project

Project Management

Andy Holt, IT Manager (about 0.25 FTE)
Chris Copp, Museums Officer (about 0.1 FTE)

Digitisation team

Chris Copp (see above)
Howard Dixon, Digitisation Technician (Full Time)
Heather Dowler, Researcher/Data Coordinator (Full Time)
Alison Copeland, Researcher/Data Coordinator (Full Time) replaced by Jacqui Barker

Content Management System team

Andy Holt (see above)
Mark Gee, Senior Programmer (about 0.5 FTE 08/01-12/03)
Ian Dodds, Programmer (ad hoc)

The CMS developers were an established team who worked on this project over a concentrated period alongside other projects and responsibilities. The digitisation team were especially recruited for the project and worked on it full time from March 2002. Staff from each team were in regular contact, with full team meetings taking place each month to discuss progress and resolve any issues. These monthly meetings proved effective in addressing many of the issues related to project design and workflow. The larger issues the project faced included the following:

• Loss of staff member
  In mid-2003 the project lost one of its researcher/data coordinator staff members, who was, understandably, attracted by a permanent post available elsewhere. This can be a common problem faced by digitisation projects, which often have to hire staff on temporary contracts. As a result, the project incurred additional costs in recruitment and delays in the production as a new staff member was recruited and trained for the post.
• Repetitive nature of digitisation work
  The digitisation team became very bored towards the end of the NOF project, as a result of the highly repetitive nature of their work. As a result, members of the team sought and were given a more varied workload, which included some promotional work and educational and community outreach. While this lowered the number of resources being produced, it made for a happier working life.
• Delays in production of content
  The digitisation work was initially intended to run for 12 months, but faced delays - larger due to incomplete metadata and copyright information, and the difficulties of working with a large number of contributing organisations and individuals. NOF provided additional funding, which extended the digitisation phase to 21 months - until the beginning of 2004.

The development of the CMS proceeded with fewer hitches, but was complicated by the need to consult and agree the work with other consortium partners, some of whom had more limited experience with the technologies involved. In hindsight, the project developers felt they should have had more communication with the consortium partners earlier on in order to draw out their requirements and also to make it clear what was or wasn't feasible. For example, fairly late in the development phase, one of the partners asked if they could have a multilingual interface. While it might have been possible to build this into the project at an early stage, the requirement came too late for anything to be done without radically altering the structure and design of the content management system.

The project paid for some specialist consultancy, largely to confirm that they were on the right track and hadn't missed any requirements (and opportunities) from the standards and technologies they'd chosen. Metadata advice was provided by Stuart Holm (formerly of the mda and actively involved in the development of the UK Social History and Industrial Classification, SHIC) and Simon Tanner (then of the Higher Education Digitisation Service, HEDS). GIS/mapping consultancy was provided by ESRI (who supply the system's underlying mapping technology) and from Portsmouth University (specialists in historical mapping).

The team attended free NOF-digitise workshops and paid for hands-on training from JISC Digital Media. They also drew on several web resources, particularly:

• JISC Digital Media
• W3C
• NOF Digitise (no longer current)
• HEDS
• UKOLN

As the project timetable indicates (see above), the piloting of the web prototype continued into the NOF-funded phase. As the development work proceeded, new functions were added to the system and tried out on users. Workshops were held with a wide range of potential user groups at different locations and institutions throughout the county. These included local history clubs, teachers, school children, library users and the staff of libraries, archives and museums. Workshop participants were given an introduction to the website, allowed to explore it, and then asked to complete a questionnaire. More than 200 responses were gathered in this way and were influential in shaping the development of the system.

The project was formally launched in March 2003 although some of the development work and a large proportion of the digitised content was added after this date. As mentioned above, the NOF funding for the digitisation was extended until January 2004. Since February 2004 the digitisation team has continued to be funded by the Staffordshire County Council.

NOF-digitise deliverables

By the end of the NOF-funded project (January 2004), Staffordshire Past Track had publicly delivered:

• 10,000 digital images (7,000 photos and 3,000 art images)
• 75 video files and 3 audio files
• 10 virtual exhibits

This is less than the original estimates (see table above), especially as 5,000 of these images had been imported from previous projects. However, it is difficult to make direct comparisons, since the project did not receive all the funding it requested, and in January 2004 a further 2,500 images were being held back from the public while their metadata was finalised or copyright cleared.

Beyond NOF, sustaining the resource (2004 - )

Staffordshire County Council are continuing to fund the digitisation team because they value their work and the Past Track resource. However, the council's goal is to secure further external funding for digitisation. In addition, the project team are approaching other organisations to fund further development of the content management system.

Although there would seem to be some potential to sell the content management system to others, Staffordshire County Council haven't really tried to do so, citing issues relating to the funding of the original development and the need to ensure that all of the Sense of Place West Midlands consortium are considered. However, the team has tried to find other West Midlands organisations to join the existing partnership. Since the development work has been done and paid for, they are willing to set up a new partner for as little as £2000 plus a share of the running costs. These costs currently amount to £16,000 per annum for a 3-server platform, including hardware and software replacements and upgrades, and are split equally between the six consortium partners.

3. Creating the Content

This section summarises the workflow and the standards adopted for the project.

Some of the Past Track's contributing institutions refused to allow the material to leave their sites. In this case the Past Track team would do the work on site and, where possible, in 'one hit'. The researcher/data coordination staff would move in first, make the selection and begin entering data, working closely with museum staff. The technician would then come in with the scanning/photographic equipment, set up in an available space, and work through the material that had been selected. Depending on the amount of material, these visits might take several days or several weeks. Approximately 40% of the capture was done within partner institutions, with the remaining 60% brought in to the work space at Shugborough. While there are clear advantages to doing the digitisation work in a dedicated space, the visits provided some variety for the team and made the task of filling in the metadata gaps easier, since the relevant experts were on hand.

The project manager has, in hindsight, estimated that the project could have done with 1 scanning technician to 5 or 6 metadata and copyright officers. When the technician wasn't busy scanning he was taking digital photographs of objects, helping to code the static HTML pages on the site, providing general IT support and assisting with the transcription of metadata. In addition to filling in the slack time in image capture/processing, this helped provide some variety to his post.

Digital Capture

A proportion of Staffordshire Past Track images were inherited from previous projects. Some were of a lower standard than the Past Track project had set (i.e. they were of smaller pixel dimensions and saved in the lossey JPEG format). Some of the other imported images were at the other extreme, having been scanned full-size at 600dpi. The project reprocessed the imported images to integrate them with the new content as best as they could.

A small amount of large format scanning, such as maps, was outsourced to the University of Central England's Electronic Library service (UCEEL). UCEEL have Zuetschel large format book scanners, capable of capturing A1 (and above) at 800dpi.

The bulk of the Staffordshire Past Track content was captured during the NOF-digitise phase of the project using new equipment. Of these images, about 92% were captured using a flatbed scanner; 5% using a slide or transparency adaptor; 2% with a digital camera; and 1% were scanned and contributed digitally by others (e.g. website users). Like the imported images, these contributed images varied greatly in quality.

The digitisation team used the following equipment was used, chosen on the basis of independent reviews:

• Scanners
  Two flatbed scanners were used by the Past Track Project: the Epson Expression 1640xl, an A3 scanner with 1600x3200 samples per inch optical scanning resolution and 42-bit colour; and the professional version of the Epson Expression 1680, an A4 scanner with the same scanning resolution and 48-bit colour. The A4 scanner came with a transparency hood, which was used to capture negatives and slides.
• Digital Camera
  A Nikon D100 Digital SLR camera was also used for the project. This was capable of delivering 3,008 x 2,000 pixels, the equivalent of 6.1 megapixels. The camera was attached to a copy stand for large format overhead work and a tripod to capture works hung on walls. Three photographic lamps were used to light the works being captured. The camera was used to capture material that could not be scanned, due to its size, shape or fragility.

Scanners were calibrated and characterised using a Silverfast Ai IT8 Calibration kit, which had come with the scanners. This was done at approximately 6-monthly intervals and often resulted in the gamma settings being adjusted. ICC profiles were also created, which were used when the images were optimised. The white balance on the camera was checked and adjusted before capture.

The project used the following guidelines in capturing their images. Note that the outputs are expressed in terms of file sizes rather than scanning resolution or pixel dimensions (which might have been alternative approaches). These were guidelines rather than rigid rules: where the original held a lot of small detail, higher resolutions were used; where the originals were poor quality reproductions a lower resolution was sometimes chosen.

Media Type	Size of original	Bit depth*	Output Guide
Black and White Prints	6x4 inch	8-bit greyscale	4MB TIFF file
	8x6 inch	8-bit greyscale	5MB TIFF file
	A4	8-bit greyscale	7MB TIFF file
	A3	8-bit greyscale	10MB TIFF file
Colour Prints	6x4 inch	24-bit colour	12MB TIFF file
	8x6 inch	24-bit colour	15MB TIFF file
	A4	24-bit colour	21MB TIFF file
	A3	24-bit colour	30MB TIFF file
Glass Negatives (Black and White)	-	8-bit greyscale	10MB TIFF file
Black and White 35mm negative or slide	-	8-bit greyscale	5MB TIFF file
Colour 35mm negative or slide	-	24-bit colour	15MB TIFF file
Black and White Medium Format	-	8-bit greyscale	7MB TIFF file
Colour Medium Format	-	24-bit colour	21MB TIFF file
Note: *Where images contained fine detail within dark areas they were scanned at 12-bit grey or 36-bit colour and then downsampled to 8-bit/24-bit. Where a black or white original had developed colouration due to chemical changes, the image was scanned in greyscale. Where it had been deliberately tinted or coloured (e.g. Sepia), it was treated as a colour image and scanned in 24-bit colour.

Images were scanned into Photoshop via the SilverFast Scanning Application that came with the scanners. White and Black points were adjusted using prior to completing the final scan. Once in Photoshop, adjustments were kept to a minimum and generally limited to cropping. Occasionally rotation, deskewing, dust removal, brightness/contrast or levels adjustments were made. Optimisation was usually done immediately after scanning, so the original was available for comparison.

The raw images (directly from scanner or camera) were not kept. The optimised master images were saved to a server and backed up to magnetic tape as uncompressed TIFF v6.0 files. These files were write-protected to avoid them being overwritten when the surrogates (delivery images) were generated.

Digital surrogates, for screen delivery, were batch-generated in Photoshop some time after the scanning. Three images were created at this stage: a 110 pixel thumbnail image, a 500 pixel screen image, and a large 1500 pixel image which was used to generate a zoomable image file. These dimensions refer to the longest edge: height or width, depending on the orientation of the original work.

The only optimisation done to surrogate images was the application of Photosho's 'unsharp mask' filter which was used to compensate for the softening that naturally occurs when digital images are resized.

All of the surrogate images were batch saved as JPEGs using Photoshop. A quality setting of 40 was used for the thumbnails and screen images, with a better setting of 60 for the larger 1500 pixel image. Since this larger image was going to be delivered in a streamed zooming format, quality was more important and file size less crucial. Each item was given a unique number, which was included in its filename.

Someone other than the technician - usually the project manager or someone independent of the team - would check samples of the images to ensure their quality. This was generally done within a month of capture. A small number of images (less than 5%) required further correction or re-scanning.

Metadata Entry

The two 'Researcher/Data Coordinator' posts in the digitisation team took responsibility for the metadata and copyright clearance. They had professional experience in museums and archives and some experience with a previous digitisation project. As noted above, it took a lot longer to complete the metadata than was expected, mostly due to the incompleteness of the information accompanying the original images. The larger institutions involved tended to have card catalogue systems that were only beginning to be moved onto electronic systems. For many of the smaller collections, metadata consisted of little more than a hand-written or typed caption accompanying the image or artefact. Almost all of the metadata included in the final resource was re-keyed or created from scratch by the data coordinators.

The project developed its own metadata schema based on the Dublin Core standard. This schema was finalised through a series of workshops with project contributors and consortium partners. The schema was kept fairly simple and was focused on describing the original item (e.g. the photograph and, especially, the scene or content it depicts) rather than trying to make any complex distinction between the original work and the digital reproduction of that work, as some other metadata standards do.

In the absence of a suitable subject classification or thesaurus, the project devised its own hierarchy of subjects (these are the 'Themes' in the Interface). This was done in conjunction with two other members of the West Midlands consortium.

The metadata was stored in a relational database structure, with a main table for the 'Resource' and several linked tables which contained, for example, information about the donor of the item or the individual or organisation responsible for the digitisation work. The cataloguing interface screen shot (below) provides some sense of the metadata fields and tables.

In conforming to Dublin Core, Staffordshire Past Track has opened up the possibility of interoperating with other collections, through cross-searching or contributing records to other Dublin Core-compliant databases. With six projects sharing the same metadata and database structures, an obvious first stage of interoperability would be to enable a West Midlands cross-search. Although this is feasible, to date there has been no demand or interest in such a project. Nor has there yet been any demand from institutions with automated catalogues for links to be made with the Past Track. It seems likely, however, that cross-searching and catalogue-linking will be requested in the future.

4. Content Management and Delivery

Public Interface

The public interface is best experienced by looking at the site. The key functions to explore are the Theme Explorer, Map Explorer, advanced Text Search, User Album, and Zoom. The first four are accessed from tabs on the home page; the Zoom, from an individual item record.

The Theme Explorer enables users to browse through the collection by subject. Unlike many such browse interfaces, Past Track's retrieves the entire collection on the first click (it begins by displaying the first page, with a dozen items). Users can potentially browse through the entire collection page by page, but can also narrow down a topic of interest using a hierarchical tree, which operates like the Microsoft Windows Explorer.

The Map Explorer provides a clickable map with five levels of detail (from county to street). At any level the user can retrieve associated resources. Alternatively they can do a place or postcode search. The main mapping is Ordnance Survey data but the two most detailed levels offer additional historical mapping from 1775, c1900 and the late 1940s. Squares on the map grid are tinted in shades of yellow or orange to indicate the concentration of resources.

Level 2 of the Staffordshire Past Track's Map Explorer - click image for larger version:

Past Track's Text Search supports full Boolean searching (AND, OR, NEAR, NOT), phrase searching and "wildcards" (in this case, right-end truncation). Users can search on a date range or a broad historical period (when selected, these will automatically fill in the appropriate date range). Users are also able to limit the search to resources available for purchase (currently about 25% of the collection).

Once a resource is found (via the search, browse or map interfaces) users are able to view a screen-sized image and the associated descriptive metadata. From here they can 'place' the resource in their own personal album, adding their own annotations, or they can 'zoom' into the image to look at it in more detail. Users are also invited to correct any errors they see or supply further information about the resource or the scene it depicts. The project receives a couple of responses each day, which has led to richer metadata and the discovery of new collections within the community.

Behind the Scenes

The project's content management system is based on standard Microsoft software: Windows 2000 Server (operating system); SQL Server 2000 (Structured Query Language relational database); IIS (Internet Information Server, web server) and ASP (Active Server Pages scripting language). For security, Check Point's FireWall-1 is used. These technologies were chosen because of their widespread use and the developers' familiarity with them.

The mapping functionality was provided by ESRI's ArcIMS (Internet Map Server) product and the zooming functionality by Zoomify, both new technologies for the developers. These are discussed further below.

The CMS - and the content for Staffordshire Past Track and five other Sense of Place West Midlands projects - sits on three servers managed by Staffordshire's Education Joint IT Unit and connected to the Internet via the West Midlands Educational Broadband Network.

While the web-based system was being developed, the Past Track digitisation team (and other consortium projects) were given an offline application with a Visual Basic interface at the 'front end' and an Access database at the 'back end'. This had limited functionality, but served the purpose of enabling the projects to begin recording their metadata. Some consortium members became quite attached to this offline application and continued to use it once the online interface had been launched. However, with the addition of key functionality such as the mapping, zooming and thematic classification, the web version soon proved its worth.

The content management system supports three basic roles, each with different options and levels of permission:

• Administrators can create and manage collections (groups of resources), edit the themes (subject thesaurus), set permissions and access the user database.
• Editors can catalogue resources and manage several resource-related databases, such as the details of creators or donors, or the lists of resource formats
• Moderators can check and approve resources that have been created and edited by others

The screen shots below (click to enlarge) show the main cataloguing form and two of the additional cataloguing tools. The hierarchical theme tool is used to assign the resource to one or more subjects areas. This was originally built as a Java applet, but posed problems with firewalls so was re-written in Macromedia Flash.

First page of the cataloguing interface - click image for larger version:

Theme selection (Flash interface) - click image for larger version:

Map pop-up (based on ArcIMS software) - click image for larger version:

A map pop-up window enables the cataloguer to drill down through maps of various scales to 'pin-point' a location or area for the resource. Underlying the Map Explorer is GIS (Geographical Information System) software available from ESRI. The Ordnance Survey data was used within the terms of the County Council's licence at no additional expense to the project. Some of the historical mapping was licensed from Landmark and some was especially digitised and georectified for the project by the development team.

Like the metadata and copyright permission, the geo-referencing sometimes held up the delivery of resources, since a decision was made not to release an item until all the data and functionality had been included. Grid references were not available in any of the pre-existing metadata, so fresh coordinates had to be assigned to every resource.

Another technology the developers bought rather than made was the zooming functionality. The project users Zoomify, which is increasingly being seen in cultural heritage projects (e.g. the British Library, Getty, US National Gallery of Art). Zoomify takes in standard JPEG images, chops them up into tiles of different resolutions and then places them in a folder. A proprietary PFF file uses these to deliver a streamed, zoomable image, via a special viewer.

The extent of enlargement is generally 3 times (since the screen image is 500 pixels long and the zoomable image is generated from a 1500 pixel long image). However, where appropriate or useful larger images were sometimes included. The map shown in the example below could be enlarged by about 10 times (1000%) - enough to read all of its detail.

The full screen version of a resource - click image for larger version:

The same resource, enlarged with Zoomify - click image for larger version:

5. Conclusions

As this case study has suggested, large digitisation projects can prove challenging. They can be expensive and time consuming, subject to shifting technologies and standards, require many different types of expertise and many decisions.

Although the output of a digitisation project is standardised digital content, the inputs are far from uniform and can require a lot of work to be adequately captured and described. Although the technologies and much of the workflow are automated, many of the processes are not - nor are the human operators, who have their own needs and motivations. Digitisation projects become even more complex when they involve working with partners or collaborators, serve a broad user base, or, as in this project, additionally develop their own content management and delivery systems.

The Staffordshire Past track project encountered many of these issues. There were particular challenges in dealing with multiple partners (contributors and consortium members), in gathering metadata and securing copyright permission, and in motivating staff. These issues affected timetables and deliverables.

Given the project again, Andy Holt, the Past Track's project manager, said he would do much the same, but would put more effort into communication with partners and ensuring a variety of work for the digitisation staff.

He thought that time spent early on understanding the requirements of partners and discussing the limitations or consequences of these choices was time very well spent. He recommended having frequent face-to-face meetings and documenting them thoroughly, so you have something to fall back on. He felt that commercial partners could pose particular problems, since their salespeople were quick to say 'yes' to requirements and then worry about the practicalities later on.

It is essential, he said, that staff are given some variety in their work: "doing a digitisation project is not about setting up a production line, but about developing people as human beings." He felt that one way to provide some variety was to involve the digitisation staff in marketing the resource; useful since, in the course of their digitisation work, they will have acquired a great deal of knowledge about its content.

In a case study like this it is only possible to touch on a few aspects. If you would like more information about the Past Track project, please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).