New datasets onlineIn the last six months, the following
datasets have gone live:
It's public knowledge This year NDAD undertook its first
large-scale publicity campaign, timed to coincide with the redesign
of the website and the rebranding of its identity. Our smart new
logo, whose 'Russian Doll'-like concentric lettering reflects two
key elements - storage and context - of the NDAD project, was
created by the design consultancy Clinic. They also came up with
the snappy strapline above, and designed posters, bookmarks and
informative leaflets which have been sent to universities, libraries
and archives in the UK and Ireland. A mailout to corporate
libraries, aimed at commercial users of data, is planned for the New
Year. If you would like to help unburden us of these promotional
packs and posters, please email us and we will put
some in the post to you. |
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Open Day 2002
On Monday May 27th we held our very first Open Day. Targetted at
anyone who is invloved with datasets from their creation to
transfer, it saw a wide range of people attending. Many came from
central and local government to see what happens when their data is
transferred to us and to learn a little of what goes on here at
NDAD, as well as the important why it is that we do what we
do.
Demonstrations were given of how to browse data and
documentation using the NDAD online interface, and our guests were
shown a sneak preview of the new-look website (still a work in
progress). The day was well-attended, and we received very positive
feedback from those that came.
Following on from this
success and in response to increasing calls for a repeat
performance, another NDAD Open Day has been scheduled for Spring
2003. Check back here for information nearer the time.
NDAD joins Digital Preservation Coalition This year NDAD,
or more precisely, ULCC's Digital Archives Department (which
operates NDAD on behalf of PRO) became a founding member of the Digital
Preservation Coalition. This is a major collaborative body
amongst whose aims is to facilitate compatible digital preservation
policy across institutions and to raise the profile of digital
preservation among stakeholders and funding bodies. It is rich in
resources and information which are shared by member institutions.
Kevin Ashley represents ULCC and NDAD on the board of this Coalition
and attends its events and seminars.
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DLM Forum
The triennial DLM
Forum, held in Barcelona between 7-8 May 2002, was attended by
five staff from NDAD: Kevin Ashley, Peter Garrod, Patricia Sleeman,
Richard Davis and Silvia Arango-Docio. This was the third DLM Forum,
an international conference which attracts leading experts in the
field of digital preservation from the EU and beyond. At this
conference, the meaning of the abbreviation 'DLM' was confirmed to
have changed from the French 'Données Lisibles par
Machine' (in English, 'Machine-Readable Data') to 'Document
Lifecycle Management' which indicates a slight shift in focus of the
conference as a whole. This, the third DLM Forum, tended towards
talking shop rather than deciding on the future management of
electronic records, and ideas did not seem to have evolved from the
previous meetings in 1996 and 1999 as expected, which had set down a
framework for managing computer software. Despite this and some
rainy weather, everyone enjoyed themselves.
Digital Resources in the Humanities
Peter Garrod gave a paper entitled "The Schools' Census and
'Digital Archaeology'" at the DRH conference , held this
year at Edinburgh University, which was very well received. It
concerned 'archaeological' research which NDAD has undertaken at
Hertfordshire County Record Office to discover vital information
about Schools' Census
datasets which had been transferred to us with information about
the meanings of many codes and fields actually lost or otherwise
missing. You can download Peter's Powerpoint presentation here
.
Kate Bradford, Alison Heatherington and Tamsin Bookey also
went along for moral support, (wo)manning the first ever NDAD stand
to feature the new NDAD logo and branding. They much enjoyed the
variety of topics up for discussion and hearing all about the
digitisation efforts of other organisations.
Speakers
included Bernard Smith, head of DigiCult,
the European Commission's Digital Heritage and Cultural Content
programme, who talked about European funding initiatives aimed at
preservation strategies to sustain the multitude of digitisation
projects; and Theodore Nelson, who gave a talk on his project, Xanadu , a revolutionary way of
using the internet, which stores files in multiple dimensions
according to a zig-zag structure, rather than hierarchically as has
become the norm.
HEDS conference
June this year saw Silvia Arango-Docio, Kate Bradford and Alison
Heatherington spending a day at the British Library at a conference
on 'Developing
the Digital Collection' organised by the Higher Education Digitsation
Service based at Hertfordshire University. Several presentations
were given by staff from digitisation projects currently under way
at British universities and other institutions. All of these
presentations are available to read on the HEDS Conference website
.
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Records Management in Government
The annual RMG
conference for UK government Records Managers and Departmental
Records staff was attended by Patricia Sleeman, Kevin Ashley and
Silvia Arango-Docio this October in Bristol. It was a great
opportunity for networking and compounding working relationships
with existing Client Managers and DROs. Talks given by the Lord
Chancellor and David Thomas of the PRO were found very
interesting, and new NDAD promotional leaflets and bookmarks proved
popular.
SMSMA secondmentsThanks to Sharing
Museum Skills Millennium Awards (SMSMA), Patricia Sleeman spent
six weeks on secondment in the Flinders Petrie Museum of
Egyptology, where she worked on the famous
archaeologist's papers. In return, Gillian Mapstone from the National Archives of Scotland
visited us folks down south to spend time at NDAD processing
datasets. Both archivists agreed it was a great learning
experience.
Society of Archivists conference
In October Jim Jamieson attended the annual conference of the Society of Archivists in
Jersey. The theme of this year's conference was Relative Values: the
Power of Working Relationships, and focussed on the supportive
networks which are being built by archivists with librarians, museum
curators, IT technicians and so on. Topics discussed included the
difficulty in accessioning digital material (such as emails) from
subjects who are still alive and the relative preservation value of
such records.
CODATA conference
NDAD was represented at the Committee on Data for Science and
Technology conference in Montreal, Canada, by Project Manager
Kevin Ashley. This was the first time NDAD had attended this
conference and we will be sure to go again in 2004. It was aimed at
people involved in generating or using scientific databases, and
covered topics ranging from preservation to the legal issues of
information-sharing. Kevin gave a talk on the archival preservation
of scientific data. Other speakers dealt with confidentiality,
copyright, and other issues relevant to NDAD such as providing
meaningful data from poor technical documentation.
XML as a Preservation Strategy
Lucky Richard Davis spent a few days in October at the ERPANET workshop 'XML as a
Preservation Strategy' at the University of Urbino, Italy. Presentations and discussion covered many
fascinating XML-oriented projects across Europe, including
the work of the Swiss Federal Archives, the Digital Preservation Testbed in the Netherlands,
and the Italian project Norme in rete.
Richard also reviewed "Building an Electronic Resource
Collection: a practical guide" by Stuart D. Lee, for the autumn
edition of the Journal of the Society of Archivists.
HATII Digitisation Summer School
NDAD sent two members of staff to the annual Digitisation
Summer School at the University of Glasgow's Humanities Advanced
Technology and Information Institute in June this year. Patricia
Sleeman and Tamsin Bookey went along to this 5-day intensive course
which focussed on pretty much every aspect of digitisation - from
choosing a scanner to funding a project. They came away big fans of
Glasgow, especially Oxfam Music and Tinderbox on Byres Road.
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Babies
Data Specialist Jo Marsh left on maternity leave early this year,
but recently she has been back to show off baby Sam, born on 14th
February at 9lb 13oz. We look forward to having Jo back on a
part-time basis in the New Year.
Senior Archivist Jim
Jamieson's newest accession Owen was born in February and he too has
made a personal visit to us here at NDAD HQ.
Goodbye
A year ago we said Adios to Karen Connolly, who spent a year as
Archives Assistant at NDAD. She has gone to Barcelona to teach
English and is reported to be having quite a good time.
HelloSince the last Newsletter several new recruits have
joined NDAD.
Silvia Arango-Docio is our
Assistant Data Specialist from Oviedo in Asturias, the most
beautiful region in northern Spain, famous for its cider .
She studied Economics at Oviedo
University where she specialised in Statistics. After
graduating, she worked for a consultancy in Madrid, validating
government surveys. A year later, Silvia decided to come to London
to learn English. She is now in her last year of an MSc in Applied
Statistics and Operational Research at Birkbeck College . Her main
interests are sailing, cycling and cinema, especially modern Latin
American and European 60s films.
Mina
Creathorn also works as a Data Specialist part-time.
Rory McNicholl, our new Programmer and
all-round computer whizz was born in UCH just
around the corner and studied Artificial Intelligence at Middlesex
University. He worked in the city before coming here, dealing with
stock data for a financial website. Rory throws himself
off buildings for charity and is growing a beard.
Tamsin Bookey, Archives Assistant, joined
us from Bart's
Hospital , where she worked in the Medical School
Library . Prior to Bart's, where she was honoured to be working
on the 450th annual View
Day of the ancient hospital, Tamsin did a degree in Classics at
Bristol
University, followed by an MA in Classical
Heritage in the same department. She likes pop
music, literature, and the Middle East.
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