futureArch

For many years the University of Oxford has been storing and archiving many items trying to preserve these materials. However, many of them cannot really be ‘indefinetely preserved’ unless a new form of preservation is applied. The project futureArch came along to help the long-term preservation of digital materials (and others). Read more about it. Check the project’s blog or the main description on the Bodleian page.

Idea is to preserve as a permanent feature (not for 5-10-50 years, but ‘forever’).

Bodleian has special collections and there are many self-archive collections of politicians, historians, etc. that are born-digital.

When and how preserve, check the authenticity of a document.

Project to preserve not only the document itself but the applications that allow the document to be opened/viewed. Versions of software, emulators/simulators can be used but also need to be preserved for the future access of that individual document.

Project to also cathegorise the many documents types and if there is a document it can be retrieved from the repository.

An example of classification can be viewed on the Sir Isaiah Berlin collection.

Blockbooks

There is the Centre of the Study of the Book that, at the moment, house the page of Blockbooks, creating a page with series of other pages linked to collections.

The idea is to create a web presence for Blockbooks, and maybe other collections in a central area. Image collections at the moment are in LUNA and a few ideas for the project came to life:

central page for 4 collections: Early printing in Europe (blockbooks), Oriental collection, Greek collection and Medieval collection
transcription of the text in each image so the user can view the text in its original language and the English transcription simultaneously
a geographical mapping of the collections pin-pointing where and when they occur

The zoomify tool is provided by Luna. There are a few complex descriptions (created in PDF) that will be linked from the website as needed.

Examples of LUNA implementation outside University: David Rumsey and NASA images.

Development

At the moment I created an initial website idea for the Blockbooks and it will evolve including the new collections as possible. The page can be found at http://www.odl.ox.ac.uk/digitalimagelibrary/

Update [Feb 2011]: the final (and modified version) of Blockbooks now is a complete image library and hold more items. However, I still prefer my initial design… http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

One of the possibilities of the pin-pointing time and place that the manuscripts were created will be created using the timemap code and a similar idea of what I’m planning for the geographical mapping is here.

Blockbooks on trac system: http://damssupport.ouls.ox.ac.uk/trac/blockbooks/ (internal to University of Oxford only)

Dorothy Little can point me to the correct Bodleian logo direction.

Links to collections

John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera: http://johnjohnson.chadwyck.co.uk Many of the items have only a description and title, but many of them have images and that’s very intersting.

The Centre for the Study of the Book http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/csb/index.html has some special collections. This link will allow you to browse some images of the manuscripts: http://is.gd/nZYB

I quite like the oriental collection (http://is.gd/nZZL). One of the many beautiful paintings in this collection: http://is.gd/o05o

The Oxford Digital library has some other manuscripts. You can select which collection from the home page http://is.gd/nZVb then on the left menu you can choose “title” to open the series available. Once you see the page you can also zoom it to the tiny details.

More manuscripts and digitised images (Blockbooks): http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/csb/blockbooks_background.html

Something quite interesting… the internet biblia pauperum: http://www.amasis.com/biblia/index.html

And this is just another new feature in Google maps, Oxford is finally on the way to be virtually navigated: http://is.gd/o0b8