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)

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.

]]> http://vads.ac.uk/news/?feed=rss2&p=70 http://vads.ac.uk/news/?p=69 http://vads.ac.uk/news/?p=69#comments Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:12:47 +0000 Marie-Therese http://vads.ac.uk/news/?p=69

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.

Ditchling: a Craft Community, is the latest feature from the Archives Hub, a JISC-funded service which provides a “gateway to thousands of the UK’s richest archives”.

Jean Vacher, Collections Manager at the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts, writes: “In 1921, the letter-cutter, sculptor, artist and writer Eric Gill founded an arts and crafts colony in Ditchling, East Sussex. Known as The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, it was a unique experiment in communal life in the early twentieth century, and survived until 1989.”

The images are available from VADS here: http://www.vads.ac.uk/collections/CSC.html

The feature is available here: http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/ditchlingcraftcommunity/

Images from the London College of Fashion’s College Archive appear in an article in the latest edition of LCF’s flagship publication Pigeons and Peacocks.

Reference: Dolan, Maggie. 2010. The Rag Trade/The Studio: Then & Now. pp. 66-69 in ‘Pigeons & Peacocks’ Issue 3 Fashion.Thought.Human Interest. Story. LONDON: London College of Fashion.

The London College of Fashion College Archives images are available from VADS here: http://vads.ac.uk/collections/LCFCA.html

To request the Pigeons and Peacocks magazine: http://www.fashion.arts.ac.uk/courses/magazine.php

The University for the Creative Arts has awarded a Learning and Teaching Research grant to Marie-Therese Gramstadt, Projects Officer at VADS. The proposal for the 6 month project is to locate innovative image presentation technology within existing visual pedagogic practice.

This project seeks to support academic staff in making decisions about which image presentation software to use by providing a toolkit; and seeks to discern their pedagogic needs and design image presentation software that is a reflection of their teaching practice rather than requiring them to adapt their teaching to the technology. In-depth case studies will also lead to dissemination of best practices in visual e-pedagogy across the visual arts sector.

This research is an extension of earlier work carried out by the Visual Arts Data Service (previously known as AHDS Visual Arts): the Digital Picture survey (2005) (http://thedigitalpicture.ac.uk/); and the recent Enhancing the VADS image collections user survey (2009).

The project blog is available at: http://teachingwithimages.wordpress.com/

VADS is to lead the creation of a national community of experts in digitisation across the creative and visual arts higher education sector, after securing funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).

Knitted elephants from the Montse Stanley Collection, courtesy of the University of Southampton Library

The Look-here! project will bring together, facilitate and build upon the existing skills of the six institutional partners to enhance and embed digitisation skills across the sector. Partners include the University for the Creative Arts, University of Southampton, The Arts University College at Bournemouth, University College Falmouth, University of the Arts London, and University of Brighton.

Knitted beaded purse from the Montse Stanley Collection, courtesy of the University of Southampton Library

The project will see the creation and publication of a digitisation model developed upon the national collection of knitting patterns and related objects held by the University of Southampton. The model will then be tested and refined by the partners. This will result in the digitisation of a wide range of artefacts including books, journals, magazines, patterns and personal papers, and also a number of more unusual objects including clothing, knitting tools and ephemera. These collections will be made available freely for educational use to the arts and wider community through the national online hosting service provided by VADS (http://www.vads.ac.uk).

The knowledge, skills and experience acquired by the partners through the modelling process will be shared with the education and heritage sectors and VADS will provide information, advice and guidance to institutions interested in engaging in their own digitisation projects. The project will also see a series of workshops and seminars which will be open to the education and heritage sectors, and the creation of a series of case studies and practitioner guides.

Leigh Garrett, Director of VADS said: “This is an exciting and pioneering project which will bring a wide range of arts education providers and collection holders together to use a digital platform to make collections more widely available to students and staff across the education sector”.

Linda Newington, Faculty Librarian, Law, Arts and Social Sciences, University of Southampton said, “we welcome this exciting opportunity to promote and engage staff, students and the wider community from across the globe with the important and unique collections held here at Winchester”.

The home knitter, 1876, Richard Rutt Library (part of the Knitting Reference Library), courtesy of the University of Southampton Library

The project will run from October until February 2011. For further information please contact Amy Robinson (amy@vads.ac.uk or 01252 892723).

Established in 1996, the Visual Arts Data Service provides a national online image hosting service, which now consists of approximately 100,000 items from over 300 collections – these images can be used freely for educational use. The collections can be found at: http://www.vads.ac.uk.

This project is one of 11 projects funded under JISC’s e-Content programme which is running from September 2009 to February 2011. Projects are aligned under two strands, some looking at the skills and strategies required in universities to embed digitisation as a core part of its remit, whilst others are creating enhanced digital resources by bringing together disparate collection of related digitised material.