How are new online media environments changing the way users engage with, and learn from, the collections of cultural institutions? This question underpins a new research project being undertaken as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Beyond Text research programme.
'Taking forward a participative 21st Century Inventory' is a project which builds on the research being undertaken by Beyond Text Collaborative Doctoral Award student Michela Clari. Entitled 'In the hands of the user’, Michela’s work looks at changing patterns of participation and learning through the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) digital collections.
The purposes of this project are to:
• test three new social media developments of RCAHMS existing services to improve how users can access, interact with and reuse those records
• consult with the public, professionals and academics to actively develop and implement two of these proposals
• enable testing and gain feedback on the beta developments to incorporate further improvements
The three proposals are:
1. Image tagging – to enable users to add their own keywords to Canmore images and to search for these tags, turning Canmore into a browsable image bank
2. Thesaurus – to enable users to nominate Canmore images to represent each site type definition
3. RCAHMS Data Service – to enable members of the public to search for data and export the results to develop new interactive resources, for example Apps
Users can complete an online questionnaire to offer feedback on these proposals and offer advice on how they would like the online resources to develop.
Mock-ups of each of the three proposals can be viewed by downloading the Beyond Text proposals PDF.
http://www.rcahms.gov.uk/rcahms_media/files/news/beyond%20text%20proposals.pdf
Views on the proposals can be offered via the SurveyMonkey online questionnaire http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/beyondtext
The closing date for completing the questionnaire is Friday 16 December 2011.
If you require any further information about this Beyond Text project please contact philip.graham@rcahms.gov.uk.
ENDS
AHRC Media contact: Jake Gilmore, Communications Manager, 01793 416021; j.gilmore@ahrc.ac.uk
Notes to Editors:
The Beyond Text research programme aims to support a multidisciplinary community of scholars and practitioners drawn from Higher Education, museums, galleries, libraries, business, policy, media, technology and the law to explore the ways in which communication is articulated, transmitted, received and controlled. It also aims to enhance the connections between those who make and preserve works, and those who study them. Beyond Text centres on five thematic, interdisciplinary areas: Making and Unmaking; Performance, Improvisation and Embodied Knowledge; Technology, Innovation and Tradition; mediations; Transmission and Memory. These themes provide a framework to investigate the formation and transformations of performances, sounds, images, and objects in a wide field of social, historical and geographical contexts, tracing their reception, assimilation and adaptation across temporal and cultural boundaries. The programme has a budget of £5.5 million over 5 years and runs from 2007 to 2012. www.beyondtext.ac.uk
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Each year the AHRC provides approximately £100 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes hundreds of research awards ranging from individual fellowships to major collaborative projects as well as over 1,100 studentship awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.