Francis Poole. See Yourself In The Eyes Of Others. Rights: Francis Poole. Collection: National Fine Art Education Digital Collection

Last week Leigh Garrett, Director of VADS, presented a session titled ‘Joining the dots: funding and sustaining digital collections’, at the ARLIS/UK & Ireland annual conference, University of Edinburgh. VADS have been conducting research into the sustainability of a wide range of public, commercial and education digital collections as part of the JISC-funded Look-Here! project.

The session participants were invited to consider the state of the national digital art collection; to examine the current state of funding as well as methods adopted to sustain and grow collections; and to reflect upon how this knowledge can be applied to develop practices and policies to ensure our collections survive and prosper whatever the future of public sector funding may hold.

Links:

• ARLIS/UK & Ireland Annual Conference 2010, University of Edinburgh, 14th – 16th July 2010
• Joining the dots: funding and sustaining digital collections, Leigh Garrett, VADS, the online resource for visual arts (PDF)

The fifth workshop in the JISC-funded Look-Here! project focused on digitisation, and was held on the 9th July at the University of Brighton. The workshop included a practical introduction from JISC Digital Media and a presentation on innovative 3D digitisation technologies for cultural artefacts from the Cultural Informatics Research Group at University of Brighton. Each of the partners gave presentations on their top tips and tools for digitisation projects, and the day ended with a tour of the Design Archives at the University of Brighton.

Forlorn, the knitted poodle. Image courtesy of Linda Newington.

Forlorn, a knitted and stuffed white poodle, was produced by Linda Newington, Head of Faculty Services: Law, Arts and Social Sciences, and Head Librarian at Winchester School of Art, the University of Southampton. Forlorn received an astonished welcome from the workshop participants and illustrated Linda’s top tip very well as a consequence. Linda’s top tip was to ‘keep sight of your objects’, this is because community and collaboration is essential. It is important not to lose sight of your users; objects are one of the things that get people talking and involved with your collection. Linda also mentioned the need to engage students in working with objects as part of developing their research skills.

Links:

• University of Southampton’s Knitting Collections
• JISC-funded Look-Here! project