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e-Research Resources for Ireland: Opportunities and Challenges Paul S Ell Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis Queen’s University Belfast [email protected]
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SCA Scotland Forum 210508 Paul Ell

Nov 22, 2014

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Sca Scotland Forum 21.05.08: Paul Ell: View from Northern Ireland
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Page 1: SCA Scotland Forum 210508 Paul Ell

e-Research Resources for Ireland: Opportunities and Challenges

Paul S EllCentre for Data Digitisation and AnalysisQueen’s University [email protected]

Page 2: SCA Scotland Forum 210508 Paul Ell

Summary

• Introduction

• Focus on DLCMI – what, why, how, and then…

• Other key strategic datasets developed by CDDA

• Challenges from a Northern Ireland perspective

• Future developments

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CDDA background and objectives

Research unit based at Queen’s University Belfast with 20 staff, bespoke accommodation, and specialised data capture hardware and software

Fully grant-funded with an income of around £7,000,000 over the last 7 years

Aims to develop strategic humanities e-resources Aims to use these resources in its own research and publish

scholarly books and journal articles Aims to develop methodologies that assist in the

management and interrogation of the source materials to produce new perspectives and scholarship

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Digital Library of Core Materials on Ireland exemplar

• £620,000 grant from JISC to digitise journals, monographs and manuscripts relating to Irish Studies and create the foundations of a digital library resource

• Initial archive of around 470,000 pages

• 100 journals covering 200 year period and about 400,000 pages

• 2,500 pages of manuscript

• 205 key monographs

• Machine-readable text for all journals and monographs and some manuscripts

• Detailed ‘object’ level metadata

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Project Partners

• Driven by the Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis at Queen’s University Belfast with long track record of key e-resource development

• Analogue Content Partners – Queen’s University Library, Linen Hall Library, Robinson Library, journal publishers, Royal Irish Academy

• e-Content Partners – AHDS (Centre for e-Research), CDDA, University College Dublin, Digital Humanities Observatory

• Dissemination Partners – JSTOR, QUB Library

• Preservation Partners – AHDS, JSTOR

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Project Imperatives

• Access to rare resources without visiting Belfast

• Resource discovery – use of less common journals

• New, complex searching using detailed metadata and semantic searching

• Serendipity

• A one stop shop for journals – and more

• Enhanced research developing from better access

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Content Selection

•Consultation patterns

•Site usage statistics

•Academic recommendation

•International Advisory Panel

•Journals prepared to sign licence (or out of copyright)

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Technical challenges

• Sheer amount of material to be digitised in two years – Initially set at 470,000 pages to be digitised, now 670,000 (and in fact 830,000 pages of journals now on desirable list)

• Very highest image quality required following JSTOR-set standards - post-printing annotations removed, optimal scanner settings required

• Use of historical journals which JSTOR has almost no experience with

• Very detailed metadata requirements: not just journal level, issue level, but article level including editorials, book reviews, notices and announcements

• Reference Linking implemented

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Why the DLCMI project works

• Diaspora of Irish Studies• Content chosen by academics for academics• Provides basic research materials - humanities scholars

not required to change the way they work - a model suggested by the British Academy

• Critical mass: Significant body of material which will continue to be augmented – it won’t be a dead archive with new journal issues added, and new journal titles

• A fully working technical solution in place with CDDA and JSTOR

• Sustainable business model with JSTOR with subscriptions outside Britain and Ireland and free access within

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And experience

• CDDA people (+20), hardware and software. QUB investment of £300,000 in buildings and equipment outside the project. Capacity built

• Outstanding analogue content partners – 600 Irish Studies journal titles held by QUB Library augmented by holdings of other libraries. No better collection anywhere

• Robust dissemination partnership completely sustainable building on JSTOR experience and established infrastructure

• Use of AHDS archiving experience – now group of Expert centres of which CDDA is a part

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Ongoing development

• Adding additional materials within the JSTOR collaboration - manuscripts and monographs now, e-publications, datasets, images, video in the future?

• Complex searching of the archive - the semantic web. Search by place, person and subject in context with UC Berkeley thanks to an NEH grant

• Requirement of funding to demonstrate a step-change in Irish Studies research. As a result QUB will work with leading US institutions including UC Berkeley, IUPUI, Notre Dame, with RIA, and others

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Other e-resources we have and have made available

• Act of Union Virtual Library: www.actofunion.ie £250,000 from NOF-Digitisation

• Historical Hansard: www.stormontpapers.ahds.ac.uk £303,000 from AHRC• GIS e-Science: £20,000, spatial searching• US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS): $400,000 with UC

Berkeley for context sensitive searching • Database of Irish Historical Statistics: £250,000• British and Irish Historical Census Project: www.histpop.org.uk, £900,000• Parliamentary Papers referring to Ireland with BOPCRIS:

www.bopcris.ac.uk £300,000• Hart Diaries Project: £25,000 ongoing• RASCAL, PADDI• Basic Historical Geographical Information System for Ireland thanks to a

£130,000 AHRC award in October 2007.

Page 13: SCA Scotland Forum 210508 Paul Ell

Act of Union Virtual Library

• 60,000 digital objects 1798 - 1803

• Parliamentary Papers

• Pamphlets

• Newspapers

• Manuscripts

• In-house solutions to cut costs

• www.actofunion.ac.uk

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British Parliamentary Papers on Ireland

• Led by the University of Southampton

• Image scans of key papers linked to the BOPCRIS database

• CDDA has digitising 10,000 pages of numeric data

• www.bopcris.ac.uk

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Page 17: SCA Scotland Forum 210508 Paul Ell

Stormont debates

• £303,330 Arts and Humanities Research Board Resource Enhancement Grant

• 90,000 pages of ‘Hansard’ from the House of Commons and the Senate from 1921 to 1973

• Full text and page image searchable by MP, place, date, subject and free text

• Will link to texts of contemporary debate www.oireachtas-debates.gov.ie and www.niassemby.gov.uk

• Official launch November 2006

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The Database of Irish Historical Statistics - Project Aims

• To construct a relational database for the period 1821 - 1971

• To facilitate regional, national and comparative research on Ireland

• To act as an information clearing centre

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Historiographical imperatives

• Restricted availability of published census returns

• Technological advances make possible large scale database projects

• Opportunity to further the quantitative study of Irish history

Page 22: SCA Scotland Forum 210508 Paul Ell

The Database of Irish Historical Statistics

• 32,934,018 data values from 1821 to 1971, and then linked to contemporary digital sources

• Mostly census data but also annual agricultural statistics, civil registration information, crime statistics . . .

• Topics include population statistics, crop and stock data, language, literacy, religion, occupations, employment, housing, emigration, industry and industrial structure, trade and commerce, wages, pauperism etc

• www.qub.ac.uk/cdda/iredb/dbhme.htm

Page 23: SCA Scotland Forum 210508 Paul Ell
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Challenges for the future

• Interlinking QUB e-resources and then using the Data Grid to associate disparate Irish Studies resources - early exemplars ECAI and Vision of Britain

• The need to demonstrate advancement of an Irish Studies research agenda

• Challenge of managing the ‘data deluge’ and the implications it has for metadata and contextual searching

• Sustainability – How do we maintain what we have and build on it

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And in a Northern Ireland context

• Vagaries of DENI funding within a devolved government: subscription to JISC programmes, viring of budgets

• Lack of cohesive data management structure in Northern Ireland. In terms of educational resources work conducted by QUB, NISRA, NMNI, Education and Library Boards, PRONI

• Lack of all-Ireland data archive worsened by withdrawal of funding from AHDS and challenged by significant investment in academic e-resources in the Republic

• Reinvention and revisiting of basic issues relating to e-resource development

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Integrating e-resources by place and chronology: Irish Studies Research Resources: statistics, maps, photographs, text, manuscripts, existing e-resources, websites, museum objects . . .