The Royal School of Needlework occupy some of the ‘grace and favour’ rooms at Hampton Court Palace, this view shows a basket used by previous residents. Image: VADS 2010.

The sixth workshop in the JISC-funded Look-Here! project focused on funding and sustainability, and was held on the 20th August, hosted by the Royal School of Needlework at Hampton Court Palace. The workshop included presentations by Andrea Stern from V&A Enterprises Ltd, Alastair Dunning, JISC Digitisation Programme Manager, and Joanne South from Arts & Business. The sustainability research, that has been conducted by Leigh Garrett and Carlos Silva as part of the Look-Here! project, was also disseminated and discussed. The day ended with a behind the scenes tour of the Royal School of Needlework.

View outside the window in the workshop venue. Image: VADS 2010.

Some of the issues discussed included working with businesses in a two-way relationship based on collections with unique selling points and specialist skills; and also to look to benefit from external expertise not only financial support. We also discussed image licensing and the benefits of having several sources of funding in terms of sustainability. A summary of the workshop will be available on the Look-Here! project website in due course.

An example of the material held by the Royal School of Needlework, and a glimpse of some of the threads. Images: VADS 2010.

During the tour of the Royal School of Needlework we viewed: an upholstered and embroidered chair that Queen Victoria used; restoration of goldwork in progress; and some of the many examples of works in the collection, from designs by William Morris to a crewel-work screen in the training room.

Links:

• Royal School of Needlework website
• V&A Images: Image Licensing at a Cultural Heritage Institution (PDF)
• Look-Here! project website

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 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
• Look-Here! project

Palacio de Congresos de Madrid, the venue for OR2010. Image: Stewin

On Thursday 8th July, Carlos Silva, VADS Planning and Development Manager, gave a presentation titled ‘Kultivating Kultur‘ as part of the EPrints User Group sessions at the international Open Repositories conference 2010 in Madrid, Spain. Stephanie Meece, Institutional Repository Manager of University of the Arts London Research Online, demonstrated their institutional repository as part of the presentation on the Kultur project. The JISC-funded Kultur project ran from 2007 to 2009.

Translucent blue alarm clock, circa 1998. Collection: Museum of Design in Plastics, Arts University College at Bournemouth (AUCB). The AUCB are one of the partners on the Look-Here! project.

Amy Robinson gave a presentation about VADS and the Look-Here! project at the University for the Creative Arts in Canterbury on the 25th June. This event, titled ‘Preserving today for tomorrow: digitisation projects and problems’, was organised by the Kent Information and Library Network (KILN). KILN facilitates collaboration and co-operation between information professionals.

Detail of the Spinnaker Tower, Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK
Image: Bernie Condon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Last Thursday Marie-Therese Gramstadt gave a presentation titled ‘From VADS to VADS’ at the Architecture Librarians Annual Conference, held from the 7th to the 9th July at the University of Portsmouth. The theme of the conference was ‘Reflections’ and the presentation reflected on VADS’ past as well as looking to current work and projects, with a focus on collections relating to architecture.

The Art Libraries Society (ARLIS) Visual Resources Committee and Cataloguing and Classification Committee jointly present a study day aimed at both library cataloguers of print and electronic publications, who need or wish to find out about how to adapt their skills to visual resources, and at ‘ACADIans’, visual resources curators and anyone responsible for the management and discovery of digital images, whether in HE, art colleges, museums, galleries or art collections.

It will explore approaches to the business of cataloguing images, looking at different metadata schemas, data standards and controlled vocabularies and how these have been applied to real life resources including digital image collections, the moving image, art websites, material in digital repositories, and even primary art objects. Speakers include representatives from the museums world, Higher Education, JISC Digital Media, and VADS.

Venue: The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 16 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3JA
Date: Wednesday 9 September 2009
Booking and programme: http://www.arlis.org.uk
or contact Clare Hemmings at: C.Hemmings@soton.ac.uk

Members of the VADS team attended the Art Libraries Society Conference in Cambridge last week and presented a workshop on the ‘Enhancing VADS’ project at the project showcase event on 16 July.  The conference was held at Clare College in Cambridge and took as its theme ‘Tradition & Transformation: roles in a changing world’.

VADS Director Leigh Garrett led a workshop about the Visual Arts Data Service at this week’s Creative Practice Learning and Teaching day, organised by the Higher Education Academy’s Art, Design and Media Subject Centre. The workshop posed the question “why do we do it?” and looked at the case for digitisation in the arts and how we effectively engage and promote the use of digital images within learning, teaching and research.

The conference held at Southampton Solent University on 9 July, covered a broad spectrum of issues and concerns across the art, design and media sector with innovation and creativity as the overarching theme.

The process of digitisation is fraught with difficulties and obstacles, including: funding, licensing, commercial considerations, quality, decisions regarding what to digitise and about metadata, presentation of digital assets, preservation, and usability.

Librarians, Academic Staff Developers, Researchers, Academic staff, Collection Holders, Academic Managers, and Learning Technologists are invited to consider the case for digitisation in the arts.

Venue: London College of Fashion, 20 John Princes Street, London W1G 0BJ
Date: Tuesday 22 September 2009
Booking and programme: http://vads.ac.uk/digitalimagery/

Funded by: JISC ITT: Workshops & Seminars: Achievements & Challenges in Digitisation & e-Content