We opened the day, after welcomes, chat and coffee, with short introductions from our panel of representatives from the National Library. Up first was Jennifer Giles who as Curator (Scottish Communities & Organisations) General Collections is also a committee member of LocScot. Jennifer and I introduced our panel.
Ines Byrne outlined her role and highlighted the National Library’s wider digitisation strategy – Jennifer and Ian Scott then took an opportunity to throw some light on collections and material we all have but asking the question – what might be digitised? What’s most useful to us all? How can we make these collections accessible? Graeme Hawley took us through aspects of licensed digital collections and then Fred Saunderson gave us a whistle-stop tour of copyright – we all wish we had Fred on hand to answer our every question on this subject! Craig Statham rounded up with some information on the map collection ahead of the afternoon demo!
The accompanying slides are available on slideshare.
We then had an open forum for discussion and the main themes to emerge were:
- Where do we start with digitisation? Which collections – Graeme said the target is to cover NLS collection BUT they don’t want to miss opportunities-digitisation could also happen from microfilm – there are options to do clever things like format capture and faceted searches. Ines suggested there are precedents for digitising gaps in National Library of Scotland collections using other institution’s material, for example like the Post Office directories.
- Newspapers – after Ian’s intro we were all thinking about a ‘new’ Newsplan – how do we go about digitising small, unique newspapers we all have in our collections OR will the newspapers themselves and big websites overtake efforts we might make?
- Income generation – The NLS map website is about making maps available for free and their experience is that charging more just limits what people will actually look at. Map images are used differently e.g. local history viewing is very different to commercial use, e.g. conveyancing – we need to recognise these differences. Sustainability of monetisation is highly questionable. NLS approach is to assume that materials have rights attached to them – Intellectual Property Office said that digitised copies are not sufficiently original to have new rights invested in them. NLS works with other academic libraries on a collaborative basis through SHEDL; could public libraries do this too?
- A portal – what would this look like? how can we make it different from other, existing portals! It could be an information resource or a repository. The former could be achieved quickly and be a pointer to ‘who has what, where, and who to contact’? SLHF interested in having this information. Further discussions could lead to an actual repository portal being developed. If we have engaged in digitisation where do we ‘put’ these things? Edinburgh Collected as a model for other parts of the country?
Action Points for the day (and we have actioned some of these already!)
- Guidance wanted, and interest in having other workshops with NLS on ‘outputting’ digital content’ to make it accessible.
- Portal scoping – information resource, repository, or both? What would be useful?
- 2017 year of history – could be a good time to launch a resource.
- Sound Archives. (info coming out from Scotland’s Sounds)
- Send everyone a copy of the slides. (done!)
- Set up a LocScot group and/or an email list to discuss this further. (done!)
- NLS to think about e-legal deposit publisher portal, which is in its final stages of development. This could work as a repository for newly digitised items, as they would have been ‘published’ and so claimable.
- Interest amongst the audience for other authorities to replicate ‘Edinburgh Collections’. (yes)
- Interest amongst the audience to work with NLS and to discuss all of this further. (Yes!)
After a very nice lunch at Vittorias we all returned ready to be amazed – and amazed we were! – by Chris Fleet’s map demo. We all use the NLS map website but Chris really opened up the possibilities by demonstrating the variety of uses the site really has. So many of us can do standard searches but this session gave us an insight into what this resource can actually do and we were a hugely impressed audience by the end of the day!
Our other group enjoyed a back stage tour of the library and they all welcomed this opportunity to see how our national library looks and operates behind the scenes. We were all invited to use the café and take in the current exhibition – our friends from the National Library of Scotland were great hosts for this Locscot event, many thanks!
LocScot 