Itsnotaboutdigitisingspecialcollections,stupid,itsabout.docxVIP

Moving the Past into the Future: Special Collections in a Digital Age 2010 RLG Partnership European Meeting, St-Anne’s College, Oxford University, 12-13 October 2010 It’s not about digitising special collections, stupid, it’s about research Kurt De BelderUniversity LibrarianDirector Leiden University Libraries Leiden University Press Digitisation of special collections (#1) What do our digitisation projects/programs usually deliver? Digital images with metadata (incl. EAD records) on a static website, and in the best circumstances the metadata is harvested through aggregators. What is the value of making special collections available this way? Visibility. Identification accessibility. Availability 24/7 and beyond library walls. What perspective on research practice is implied by this approach? The scholar does research by reading source materials. Digitisation of special collections (#2) Do large, searchable corpora such as EEBO (Early English Books Online), ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) and Google Books reflect a change in research practice? Yes Testing hypotheses against a body of texts (even unknown ones) QA that before were almost impossible to pose obtain Increase in speed of research Reproducibility of research results Digitisation of special collections (#2) Do large, searchable corpora such as EEBO (Early English Books Online), ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) and Google Books reflect a change in research practice? But Translating concepts/ideas into words (history of ideas) Static/fixed environment No additions, corrections, enrichment by scholar No ‘massaging’ of the data Limited tool kit One state of the corpus for all disciplines Digitisation of special collections (#2) Keith Baker, Inventing the French Revolution history of ideas / analysis of concepts such as ‘opinion publique’ used the ARTFL database le public l’homme sans caractère les gens le peuple le désordre l’insecurité terreurs l’opinion anarchie l’anarc