Digitisation provides a range of opportunities for libraries (image c/o bookgrl on Flickr)

After an anxious wait, today was the day that the event I had put together on digitisation finally went live.  The event was called Sync or Sink: Opportunities for libraries in the digital age and comprised four speakers talking about different aspects of digitisation in libraries.  The outline for the day was as follows:

Simon Tanner – The impact and benefits of digitisation.

Christy Henshaw – Managing digitisation and preservation at the Wellcome Library.

Geoff Browell – Creating a smartphone application.

Nick Hiley – The British Cartoon Archive.

I was really pleased that each of these speakers agreed to take part in the afternoon, not least because I was personally interested in hearing each of them talk on the different aspects of the topic. I guess I curated the event on fairly selfish grounds, but if you can’t curate an event that you are interested in, what’s the point!?

Putting together the event was fairly straightforward.  The only real issue I had in putting it together was that I knew I wanted a contribution from someone involved in the creation of an iPhone app (or smartphone in general) and had a little difficulty in tracking someone down. After trying a couple of options I was pointed in the direction of Geoff Browell at King’s who had recently put together an app called Navigating Nightingale.  Luckily Geoff agreed to take part and I was really pleased that he did so as I was really keen on something a little bit different from the ‘regular’ digital collection.  When thinking about particular collections that could be discussed I was eager to get speakers who could talk about unique or innovative examples.  I was fortunate then that I was able to secure both Geoff and Nick (who curates the British Cartoon Archive at UKC – the only collection of its kind in the UK).  As I said at the event, I felt like I was putting together a personal event for me more than anything else such was my interest in both Nick and Geoff’s collections.

In preparation for the event I also tried to promote it in as many ways as I could.  I tweeted about it regularly (sorry followers!), sent the event outline to the JISC mailing lists (more than once) and even created a Facebook Event to raise awareness.  Certainly this seemed to do the trick as we had around 24 bookings for the day which was really pleasing.  As I guess is the same for everyone, when you put together your first event you do worry if people will be interested, particularly at a time when budgets are being restricted.  Of course, I should have known I was onto a winner with the speakers who had agreed to take part.

First up was Simon Tanner talking about the benefits of digitisation (see below).  As with all the other speakers, I was really pleased Simon agreed to present at the event.  I had come across his name many times in the past, particularly when working on my digitisation assignment for the MSc ILS.  Consequently, it was great to get to hear him talk about digitisation and share his knowledge and expertise on the topic.  One of the things I took away from Simon’s presentation (alongside the emphasis on the need to measure outcomes) was that the digitisation process should be about encouraging creativity from an item that has been digitised.  In other words, taking the digitised item and creating something new and building from it so that the process is more than just about discovery.  Simon also argued that the purpose of digitisation is ‘to educate, enlighten, entertain to promote, disseminate and to preserve culture’. Finally, Simon finished on a thought-provoking phrase: “Is the value in the wine, the glass or the drinking” in relation to digitisation.  I had never really thought about it in that way before but that certainly got me thinking about the digitisation process and the different elements that make up a programme of digitisation.

Next up was Christy Henshaw.  Christy talked about managing the digitisation process at the Wellcome library (presentation below).  The Wellcome library is a major resource for the study of medical history and contains a variety of items on the history of medicine from the earliest times to the present day.  Christy talked about how they managed the process, using tools such as Goobi – a web-based, open source workflow system that is used in a number of other libraries across Europe.  Christy also advised that when engaged in a digitisation process, it is best to minimise the amount of space which is occupied to reduce the amount of time spent digitising items – keeping the process as compact as possible.  The more spread out the digitising team, the more time that will be spent creating digital content which, if you are digitising 300,000 images, is very much not a good thing!  Of course, such a process isn’t without its difficulties but, as Christy underlined, most difficulties that are experienced are down to a breakdown in communication more than anything else.  Clearly when digitising items and following a methodical process an error in communication can cause serious problems for the project.

After a short break for tea and coffee, Geoff Browell stepped up to talk about his experiences developing the Navigating Nightingale app for the iPhone.  Geoff was keen to stress early on the importance of considering why it is you are developing an app.  Are you doing it just to be seen as cool and trendy or is there actually a purpose behind it?  Apps should be distinctive, practical, useful and they should certainly add something new to the collection.  As he pointed out, there is no point in developing an app if it is simply a port of a website, in very few cases is this actually a worthwhile pursuit.  There is a very real danger of going through all the time and effort to create an app simply so you can say that you have one.  Geoff also quoted some interesting statistics to demonstrate the value of creating a practical app.  For example, 27% of people now say that their first choice device in accessing the web is through a mobile device – which I find a fascinating statistics.  In terms of the content of a cultural app, Geoff recommended the avoidance of gimmicks (AR is apparently very tricky and time consuming to get right, and there are issues from the user perspective).  They should be image rich containing appropriate and high quality images.  They should mix media and they should have a strong narrative structure.  Churn rate also needs to be kept in mind.  The rate for Android devices alone is 37%.  Finally, the importance of marketing was underlined as was the need to factor in research into your costings (an important factor in any digitisation project).

Finally, Nick Hiley presented on the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent.  Again, I was really pleased Nick was able to share his collection as I was keen to have someone talk about a unique collection a little different from the usual digitised collection.  And of course, when it comes to cartoons, there is plenty of interesting material available.  Nick pointed out early on that before digitisation, people had often asked why the collection was housed in Canterbury rather than in London.  Of course, with such an important collection it does seem odd that it is housed in a small, not necessarily easy to access, city in Kent rather than in the capital where you might expect.  However, Nick went on to point out that since digitisation that question is no longer asked.  The digitisation process means that location is immaterial and collections no longer ‘need’ to be centralised in London they can be housed anywhere and it doesn’t really matter.  Certainly the statistics Nick shared on access to the collection demonstrate the great advantages of having such a collection available online.  Since going online, the collection now receives well over a thousand (virtual) visits per month, far in excess of the number of visits before the digitisation process began. At present there are an amazing 154,316 cartoons from 1790-2011 in the digital collection covering everything from political cartoons to saucy seaside postcards (for which it gained a lot of attention in the press recently).  In terms of the digital process, Nick advised that as much work as possible should be done in-house as it makes it much easier to manage the overall process. It was also pointed out that copyright in terms of orphan works should not be seen as a barrier to digitisation.  Very few people have come a cropper due to the digitisation of orphan works and, provided you have a rigorous process in place for dealing with any issues, there should not really be a problem.  This is good to hear as I think this is often a barrier that is put in place of many digitisation projects and I think it is important to note that there is very little risk in digitising such materials.

Overall, I really enjoyed the whole experience, from putting together the event to the actual presentations themselves.  I was also pleased to see overwhelmingly positive comments on attendees’ feedback forms which gave me a nice warm glow when I sat down to read them last night.  It was good to know that people had felt the event covered a good variety of aspects of digitisation as it was something I was very conscious of when putting it together.  After all the worries about whether the event would meet the objectives of the audience or whether I had made any organisational errors (I can’t tell you how many times I checked to make sure I had told everyone the same date and place!), it was great to get my first event under my belt.  Hopefully my experiences in putting together this one will be of great benefit in putting together future events.

Incidentally, I have also curated a series of links related to yesterday’s event which are available here. I also tweeted from the event using #synclibs so worth checking that out too.