How to evaluate the worth of a community archive initiative?

Posted on April 9, 2010 by Alun Edwards

RunCoCo has just had an interesting meeting with a Phd student from UCL (‘We think, not I think’: Harnessing collaborative creativity to archival practice; implications of user participation for archival theory and practice [PDF]). Links to draw between ideas we’ve both been considering about how to measure the success of a community archive initiative – the worth or the value to the organisation that led it, to the community, and – primarily from an academic point of view – how do you know you can trust the information contributed by ‘amateurs’? Lots to think about as we consider a toolkit for evaluating and improving community collections and crowdsourcing initiatives.

In passing I mention again that the costing and other strategies and processes behind The Great War Archive are explained in detail in an article in EDUCAUSE Quarterly If You Build It, They Will Scan: Oxford University’s Exploration of Community Collections, written by the project’s managers Dr Stuart Lee and Kate Lindsay.

All comments welcome, as we ponder these issues.

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Update Mar-Apr 2010

Posted on April 9, 2010 by Alun Edwards

In March we have…

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JISC announces Community Content Call: Strand I winners

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Alun Edwards

Congratulations to the five projects that will be funded under the JISC 13/09 call for Community Content, Strand I (rapid innovation for existing resources):

  • Digitizing data for disparate communities: Naval history and climate science, Dr Chris Lintott, University of Oxford
  • galericymru, Tudur Evans, Coleg Harlech
  • Mass Observation Communities Online (MOCO), River Jones, University of Sussex
  • Co-FAST – Community Flood Archive enhancement through Storytelling, Professor Lindsey McEwen, University of Gloucestershire
  • Addressing History, James Reid, EDINA, University of Edinburgh (conditional award)

There is more detail about the call and these projects in Alastair Dunning’s blog post. Alastair, (the JISC programme manager), expects to announce the Strand II projects late April 2010, marking was delayed (like a lot of plans) by the threat of industrial action on the railways this week.

RunCoCo will be in touch with these new projects to offer assistance if required, and any projects may contact RunCoCo, and we will try to help – whether JISC-funded or not.

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Meeting of Oxford-based Community Collections

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Alun Edwards

Weds 5 May 2010

RunCoCo will host a meeting of projects based in and around Oxford who share an interest in community contributed digitisation, crowdsourcing and community enriching of an existing collection with tags or comments.

This meeting is free of charge and open to anyone based in the University of Oxford or from the education/public sector near Oxford. Registration for this event is now open (closes 22 April 2010).

If you are interested in community collections (like The Great War Archive) or working to harness a community to enrich an existing collection with tags or comments (like Galaxy Zoo) then we would like to invite you to take part in the meeting which has a number of purposes:

  • This is a chance for managers and others from community collection projects in and around Oxford to share best practice and exchange knowledge;
  • This will be an opportunity for Oxford projects with some shared interests to meet face-to-face. The OUCS project, RunCoCo, will launch an online ‘community of interest’ for those involved in community collection or working to harness a community to enrich an existing collection with tags or comments. In the past OUCS has done this successfully for other subjects (like teaching First World War literature). However, these ventures have a better chance of working well when participants have met in person;
  • RunCoCo will also disseminate the processes, open-source software and results of The Great War Archive, a pilot community collection project based at OUCS and the English Faculty, which ran for 3 months in 2008. RunCoCo will capture the results of any discussions from the day and use this to ensure our resources are correctly focussed on what projects need to run this kind of initiative;
  • RunCoCo will highlight three training workshops we will hold during Spring-Summer 2010 to disseminate resources and software for community collection projects. We hope to encourage other community projects to present at one or more of these workshops, and to encourage newer projects like those funded under the recent JISC calls for developing community content to attend. The workshops will be free of charge and open to anyone from the education/public sector. The first is on 26 May at OUCS.

Places are limited, so please register your interest by completing our form on SurveyMonkey by 1700 on 22 April 2010. Confirmation of your place will be sent ASAP.

The meeting will be held 10.30am – 4.30pm, at OUCS, 13 Banbury Road, Oxford OX26NN. Lunch and other refreshments will be provided free-of-charge. Further details will be available soon. Email runcoco@oucs.ox.ac.uk if you would like to discuss anything about this meeting.

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Update Feb-Mar 2010

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Alun Edwards

In February we have…

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Job opportunity

Posted on March 2, 2010 by Alun Edwards

RunCoCo is recruiting a Project Officer (part-time, fixed-term). Details and an application form are available from Oxford University Computing Services, where the job will be based. Completed applications must be received by 12 noon on 26th March 2010, and interviews will be held on 7th April 2010. The work involves:

  • running a communication campaign and developing engaging Web content to successfully promote the RunCoCo project and support its user community
  • managing project events and overseeing the production of training materials
  • providing advice to a number of community digitisation projects

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Europeana.eu

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Alun Edwards

RunCoCo is working with Europeana.eu, an EU-funded portal to digital objects, images, text, sound and film on the Internet. Europeana are moving ahead with plans for user-generated-content and community collections.

  • Initially, we will meet their developers to try to ‘brain-dump’ as much good practice from The Great War Archive and about the CoCoCo software for Europeana work which may be launched for the public to contribute to later in 2010;
  • We are also working alongside institutions and projects from across Europe (including UKOLN) to write a proposal to Europeana [PDF of the call for proposals] for a digital storytelling project (2011-2012) to include an element of publicly contributed digitised content. Our suggestion is, of course, the First World War 1914-1918, but there are many themes being discussed;
    • This could lead on to working in a number of European countries as a test case to build on The Great War Archive. Oxford’s goal, which Europeana appear interested in, is to extend The Great War Archive across Europe in time for the 2014 anniversary.

If you are part of an education or public sector organisation in the EU and are interested in being involved in the user-generated-content proposal for 2011- please email runcoco@oucs.ox.ac.uk. We would also love to hear from anyone interested in being involved in a pan-European Great War Archive, or even a truly worldwide initiative to include all the countries involved in the First World War.

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Woruldhord first moot

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Alun Edwards

This month RunCoCo met with Dr Stuart Lee, the lead for the exemplar – Project Woruldhord – who will be trialling our training material, our training workshops and user-testing our processes and most importantly the CoCoCo software.

Bayeux-feast01_v1

The feast of William the Conqueror, detail from the Bayeux Tapestry

It’s an interesting challenge meeting a new project team. Getting to know their vision, managing expectations and answering challenging questions we had not thought would come up. Stuart has written about the meeting in his new project blog, where he’ll be reflecting on the exemplar project’s work with RunCoCo. I think the meeting was made more simple in some ways, Stuart was PI for The Great War Archive community collection initiative, so knows what he’s talking about. However, this also meant that I approached the discussion with more trepidation than I think I would normally feel before meeting a new project lead. Stuart is also director of our department. Always best not to screw up in front of the boss!

Image: from Wikimedia Commons.

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JISC funding reinstated for ‘co-developing’ community content

Posted on February 8, 2010 by Alun Edwards

The details are a little sketchy but JISC announces today that the formerly stalled invitation for proposals for Co-development of Content is open again, closing date 15 March. This is the Strand II of the Grant 13/09: BCE, e-Content & Digitisation programmes: Developing community content for “building new digital collections, or transforming existing collections through genuine co-creation with specific external communities.” RunCoCo is a new project to support with training etc. anyone interested in bidding for this or already having submitted proposals for Strand I of that call.

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Update Jan-Feb 2010

Posted on February 1, 2010 by Alun Edwards

The RunCoCo project began this month. We’re going to train other institutions in the experiences of The Great War Archive, part of the First World War Poetry Digital Archive, and show them how they can replicate the process for community collections in their own research areas. We’ll use this blog to let you know about our training documentation and workshops.

In January we have…

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