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Developing a digital archive for symbolic resources in urban environments - the Latina Project

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posted on 2018-04-19, 10:38 authored by Robert G. HarlandRobert G. Harland, Antonia Liguori, Gareth ColeGareth Cole
The project described was funded to establish the foundation for a digital archival resource for researchers interested in how people interact with urban environments through graphic communications. The research was internally funded by Loughborough University as part of its Research Challenge Programme and involved two members of academic staff and two library staff. [1] Two PhD students also participated. The archive consists of a small number of images and acts as a proof of concept for this project and for future funding applications. It is hoped that an extended archive will be useful not only to visual communication researchers, but also historians, architects, town planners and others. This paper describes the data collection process, challenges facing the project team in data curation and data documentation, and the creation of the pilot archive. The creation of the archive posed challenges for researchers and Library staff. For the researchers:  Choosing a small number of images as a discrete collection that demonstrated the utility of the project to other disciplinary areas;  Acquiring the necessary knowledge and skills to enable good curation and usability of the digital objects, e.g. file formats, metadata creation;  Understanding what the technical solution enabled, where compromises would have to be made. For library staff:  Demonstrating the utility of the Data Repository;  Understanding the intellectual background to the project and the purpose of the Data Archive within the project;  Clearly explaining the purpose of metadata and documentation. The Latina Project has demonstrated the value of a true partnership between the academic community and the professional services. All parties involved have learnt from the creation of the pilot archive and their practices have evolved. For example, it has made the researchers think more carefully about data curation questions and the professional services staff identify more closely with the research purposes for data creation. By working together so closely and sharing ideas from our different perspectives we have also identified potential technical developments which could be explored in future projects. All members of the group hope that the relationships built during this project will continue through other projects. [1] Academic staff: Drs Harland and Liguori. Library staff: Gareth Cole and Barbara Whetnall.

History

School

  • University Academic and Administrative Support

Department

  • University Library

Published in

International Journal of Digital Curation

Volume

12

Issue

2

Pages

136 - 145

Citation

HARLAND, R.G., LIGUORI, A. and COLE, G.J., 2018. Developing a digital archive for symbolic resources in urban environments - the Latina Project. International Journal of Digital Curation, 12(2), pp. 136-145.

Publisher

© The authors. Published by The Digital Curation Centre

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2017-01-23

Publication date

2018-04-02

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by The Digital Curation Centre under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 12th International Digital Curation Conference

ISSN

1746-8256

Language

  • en

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