Intute Arts and Humanities Blog

All Christian nations have carols, some of pagan origin but adapted in the early days of Christianity. As well as the traditional Christmas carols, mostly hymns celebrating the birth of Christ, there are popular songs about the festivities. Some of the websites devoted to carols which Intute has reviewed are highlighted here in the latest Intute: Arts and Humanities online Advent Calendar post:

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Carol singers 1767

In England in medieval times, a carol was probably a round dance with musical accompaniment and was connected to the French ‘carole’, a dance-song popular from the 12th to the 14th centuries. Carols then devloped into songs usually referring to the birth of Christ. One of the oldest printed carols is the Boar’s Head Carol (1521), sung at Queen’s College, Oxford on Christmas day, but this is one of a group associated with good cheer in the celebration of Christmas. During the 17th century, when particular religious festivals were objected to by Puritan reformers, carols were banned from churches. Only in Victorian times were they fully popularised again.

In the 19th century, as Christmas declined as a communal celebration and began to be seen as a family event, carol collections were published which served the domestic market as well as church choirs. One example is Bramley and Stainer’s Christmas Carols, New & Old (1871). The term ‘carol’ was also applied to Christmas folk songs and carol collections of the 20th century owe much to composer-collectors of the folk music movement. One example is the Oxford Book of Carols (1928).

It is customary to give money to carol singers singing outside people’s homes and it is believed this tradition goes back to the middle ages when beggars would sing holiday songs in return for food, drink and money. It may also derive from the period when carols were banned from churches. In some parts of England the traditional period to sing carols was from St Thomas’s day (21st December) until the morning of Christmas day.

Carol singers 2008

Throughout Advent (until the 24th December) Intute will point to an eclectic mix of the Internet, with reflections drawn from the position of our academic expertise and our cultural background. Links in these articles will lead you to online academic resources reviewed by Intute, or directly to relevant sources on the Internet. A new post every day – so please return to open the online door on our daily musings and see mysteries unfold.

Image credits:

• Christmas carols. From: Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper, deres Tungemaal… By: Johan Ernst and Leem Gunnerus and Knud. Published: 1767. Tab. XCV. Copyrighted work available from Wellcome-images under Creative Commons.
• Carol Singing: photograph by Wolfiewolf (Flickr) available on a Creative Commons Licence.

In the Intute arts and humanities events calendar you may have seen the conference Building a Virtual Humanities Collaboratory - at CRASSH, Cambridge University (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) - in January 2009.

There I’ll be speaking on behalf of The Great War Archive (a project which was highly commended at the Times Higher Educational Awards 2008 for ‘Outstanding ICT Initiative’), about the issues of mass digitisation and visualising digital archives for students and teachers to use. As mentioned previously on this blog the Great War Archive complements the First World War Poetry Digital Archive. This website is making extensive use of MyIntute to provide an extensive set of links to appropriate websites including teaching resources for the study of the literature of that conflict.

I expect to be able to muscle in MyIntute into the talk - it is an incredibly powerful tool for anyone creating lists of links or a gateway to online resources - whether catalogued by Intute or not - in a small way you can see short lists in recent Advent Calendar blog posts in Intute such as Happy Birthday Woody! and St. Paul’s Cathedral.

We still need your help to ensure that the events calendar includes all significant conferences and events, so if you are involved in organising an event, or even if you are simply planning on attending an event that we’re not yet aware of, please let us know so that we can help publicise it. Details should be emailed to artsandhumanities@intute.ac.uk.

Throughout Advent (until the 24th December) Intute brings you an eclectic mix of the Internet, with reflections drawn from the position of our academic expertise and our cultural background. Links in these articles will lead you to online academic resources reviewed by Intute, or directly to relevant sources on the Internet. A new post every day – so please return to open the online door on our daily musings and see mysteries unfold.

Today’s post highlights The Panizzi Lectures (26th November, and 2nd and 10th December 2008) which aim to promote and further the study of bibliography under the aegis of the British Library.

Antonio Panizzi (1797-1879) painted by Ape, 1874 (image from Wikimedia Commons)

The Lectures - inaugurated in 1985 - are named after Antonio Genesio Maria Panizzi, to a British audience Sir Anthony Panizzi, Principal Librarian at the British Museum in the years 1865 to 1867. Antonio Panizzi, however, prior to his arrival in England, was a lawyer from Brescello, a small village in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. It is, perhaps, less well-known that his political activities and connections with one of the many secret societies widespread throughout the Italian Peninsula at the time, had brought him to the attention of the authorities in the Duchy of Modena. His strong patriotic sentiments and love for the native land would not abandon him for the remainder of his life, this despite a profound gratitude toward the country which had adopted him. In England, Panizzi would obtain professional recognition and great achievements, including the idea for the construction of the British Museum Reading Room, clearly inspired by the Pantheon in Rome.

British Museum Reading Room

The “Italian Question”, the destiny of the Italian Nation, however remained entrenched in the heart of the Italian exile. In 1820 a revolution broke out in the Kingdom of Naples, inspiring the poet Gabriel Rossetti to write: “In the balmy garden of Italy, bondage is no more“. The fear of political upheaval prompted a harsh response throughout Italy and in the Duchy of Modena. In the midst of tyrannical persecutions enforced by the suspicious, almost obsessed, Hapsburg Duke Francis IV, Panizzi, in 1822, facing imminent arrest, managed to flee, certainly with the aid of fellow Carbonari, carrying with him compromising documents. He settled temporarily in Lugano, in nearby Switzerland, where he published a short work entitled: Dei processi e delle Sentenze contra gli imputati di Lesa-Maestà di aderenza alle Sette proscritte negli Stati di Modena, with the fictitious imprint: Madrid, Per Roberto Torres 1823. “Both the place of publication and the name of the publisher were concealed in order to distract the attention of the police“. Only two copies of this political libel - in which Panizzi vehemently condemned the tyrannical regime of Francis IV - are reputed to be extant. One is preserved at the British Library and contains Panizzi’s personal annotations. According to a letter written by his loyal friend and biographer, Louis Fagan, and published in The Times on 19th April 1879, Panizzi, in later life, rejected his youthful work and was personally responsible for the destruction of several copies. (This is available as a digital reproduction if you have a subscription allowing access to The Times Digital Archive). When questioned on the matter, Panizzi would drily reply: “better say nothing about it“.

In London, where he had settled and where he associated himself with other Italian political exiles, amongst whom were Foscolo, Mazzini, Santorre di Santa Rosa, the contumacious Panizzi, having been condemned in absentia, was duly dispatched with a list of expenses sustained by the Duchy of Modena for his execution in effigy - which included a gratuity for the executioner. The failure of the 1848 revolutionary movements which had ignited almost the entire Italian Peninsula was followed by severe reaction. Retribution for those involved was particularly callous in the Kingdom of Naples. In 1851 Gladstone, a personal friend of Panizzi, published the famous “A letter to the Earl of Aberdeen on the State Prosecutions of the Neapolitan Government” which was followed by two additional pamphlets, provoking great outrage amongst the British public opinion. The letter vividly described the inhumane conditions patriots were imprisoned in - especially in the infamous prison of the Vicaria - often without a fair trial. Gladstone, in referring to the rule of Ferdinand II, King of the Two Sicilies, claimed that this was “the negation of God erected to a system of government“.

As a British subject Panizzi was able to visit Naples, where he was granted an audience with the King. His plea in support of the political prisoners was, however, cut short by Ferdinand II, who impatiently interrupted him with the words: “Addio terribile Panizzi!” (Farewell, incorrigible Panizzi !) and abruptly ended the proceedings. In Vienna, Panizzi met the Duke Francis IV of Modena, who expressed appreciation for the fame the former Modenese had acquired. The Duke remained indignant however at the veiled implication that Panizzi deserved to now be pardoned. In 1856 Panizzi himself was involved in the organisation of a daring plan aimed at rescuing some of the leading figures of the 1848 Neapolitan revolution who were then languishing in the island prison on Santo Stefano, a few miles off the Southern coast of Italy. Panizzi succeeded in enlisting the charismatic Giuseppe Garibaldi, and in collecting funding from personal friends and even a sum put at his disposal by the British secret service. The plan failed, but the prisoners involved - amongst whom were Luigi Settembrini and Carlo Poerio - were later released on condition of their accepting exile to Argentina. The American ship on which they were transported, the David Stewart, was audaciously forced by the crew to detour to Cork where a jubilant crowd welcomed the convicts to safety. Panizzi’s actions and conspiratorial activities had finally paid off. In 1868 Panizzi - who continued to reside in Bloomsbury Square, London, to his last days - was made a Senator of (the newly-unified) Italy. Reporting on his death in 1879 The Times commented: “To the full extent of this well-spent life has England profited by the political calamities of Italy. From her who hath not even what she had was taken, and it was added to the wealth of her to whom so much had already been given“.

This year Lectures were given by Professor Nicholas Pickwood surveying the function and value of books and bookbinding. They are expected to be published in the Panizzi Lectures series of the British Library. Intute provides access to a wealthy array of resources related to the topics covered by the Lectures, past and present. A helpful selection features on the Intute: Limelight section under the heading History of the book prepared by Dr. Michael Fraser on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of World Book Day.

Image credits:

• Antonio Panizzi (1797-1879) Auteur : Ape Date : 1874 on Wikimedia Commons “in the public domain”
• British Museum Reading room originally from a photo on Flickr by bru76, licensed under Creative Commons, this image from Wikimedia Commons

The Intute: Arts and Humanities online Advent Calendar continues with a celebration of a great anniversary.

The first service in the new St. Paul’s Cathedral building was held in the quire on 2nd December 1697 - although the entire building was not completed for another 13 years. After the old building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666, Christopher Wren was commissioned two years later to produce the plans for the new building. His first design, known as the First Model, was rejected for being too modest, and his second plan, the Great Model, was accepted by the King, but criticised by the Chapter and Clergy. Wren’s third design, known as the Warrant Design, was given Royal Approval in the spring of 1675 and the first building contracts were confirmed in July of the same year. However, as you can see from the two images below, the cathedral that Wren ended up building bore little resemblance to Wren’s Warrant Design plans…

Wren's Warrant Design for St. Paul's Cathedral

Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral as built

According to the Cathedral’s website, one onlooker at the service commented:

I went to Paules to see the Choire now finished… The pulling out of the Formes [benches], like drawers from under the stalles, is very ingenious.

The official website contains a wealth of information about the current life of the Cathedral - from its services to the texts of the sermons preached on Sundays, from its music lists to online prayers - as well as providing a comprehensive history of the building and cathedral life in years gone by, including details about the bells, the library, the choir and the Cathedral school. You can view a virtual tour (requiring Flash software) of the magnificent dome, find out how many cathedral buildings have been built on the site since 604 (three, four or five, anyone?) and read what the Cathedral is doing to lower its own carbon emissions. As a bell ringer I was particularly impressed by the fact that St. Paul’s houses the Great Paul, the largest bell in the British Isles. At sixteen and a half tons, she (are bells, like cars, traditionally female?) is larger than Big Ben. Click here to view a picture of the former Dean, Dr John Moses, standing next to Great Paul.

Related Intute records with information about Sir Christopher Wren and some of his buildings include:

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And related Intute records about the Great Fire and other seventeenth-century events include:

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Throughout Advent (until the 24th December) Intute will bring you an eclectic mix of the Internet, with reflections drawn from the position of our academic expertise and our cultural background. Links in these articles will lead you to online academic resources reviewed by Intute, or directly to relevant sources on the Internet. A new post every day – so please return to open the online door on our daily musings and see mysteries unfold.

Eagle-eyed visitors to the Intute: Arts and Humanities web pages may have noticed a recent addition to the ‘Features’ menu on the left-hand side of the screen – ‘Critical Thinking‘. We are creating a series of exercises that hone students’ analytical abilities when using the Web as a source of knowledge. With the Internet now ubiquitous as a tool for research, and a first point of reference for a majority of students, it is more important than ever that people understand how best to use the information they can obtain online.

Intended primarily for classroom use, the two units launched so far deal with obtaining high-quality factual information, and using the Web to gauge and understand popular opinion on issues of controversy. Whilst the exercises are likely to be particularly relevant to students in disciplines such as philosophy, religion, or history, many aspects of coverage are applicable across humanities subjects. There are teacher packs with lesson plans, student worksheets, and presentation slides to download – everything you should need to rapidly get a class involved and thinking about how they can use what they find on the Web.

The modules have been created by Dr Meriel Patrick, who has several years experience of teaching philosophy and religion at the University of Oxford.

Those looking for learning modules relating to find and assessing websites for particular subjects should take a look at Intute’s Virtual Training Suites.

Image copyright Library of Congress (LOC_.cai96000522/PP), distributed for non-commercial purposes only by ARTstor (http://library.artstor.org/).

Call for papers and posters from Oxford University’s annual educational technology conference Shock of the Old 8, which is on the 2nd April 2009. This year’s conference theme is “Digital literacy: the place of new media in higher education“. (Deadline for submission is Friday 9th January 2009 with notification to authors on 19th January 2009. Full details on submission are available via the website).

Whilst web-based tools are rapidly becoming standard in education and in the workplace and technologically-mediated communication is the norm, fluency in information, visual, and technological literacy is not formally taught to most students, according to the Educause 2008 Horizon report. We therefore need new definitions of academic digital literacy.

Presentations and Posters should address either:

• Research reports and case studies of teaching using student- or teacher-created audio, video, images, simulations, hypertext or virtual worlds in academic subjects which:
  • explore the challenges that the use of these new technologies brings to received wisdom in the planning, design, assessment and evaluation of teaching and learning activities.
  • explore the impact that the use of these new technologies has on motivation, participation and differentiation.
  • reflect on the skills and knowledge (competencies) required by students and staff in this context.
  • identify new approaches to relevant skills training.
• Or Theoretical or position papers on new academic literacy in areas such as modelling, collaborative working, computer gaming, mash-ups, co-creation and open content.

As a slight departure from previous years the conference will be followed the next day not by the Beyond Debate, but this year we will be hosting a conference “Beyond Walls“, concerning production, processing and distribution of digital media such as video, audio and podcasts. Details of this are still being finalised.

Feeling Christmassy yet? No, nor me…

Last leaf, last raindrop, last holiday of the year

Well, let Intute: Arts and Humanities lead you through the preparations for the holiday with our second online Advent Calendar! Please read on (below), or follow this link to this year’s Advent Calendar www.intute.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/…2008-advent-calendar/

2007’s Advent Calendar was such a success, it generated more visits to the blog than we’d received before and it involved so many of our staff and cataloguers – many contributing to the blog for the first time! Some of my favourite posts from last year’s Advent Calendar include: the blockbuster-exhibitions for winter 2007; art in space; a second life for education; Advent in the Netherlands, Sweden, Quebec and Japan; as well as visiting churches in the British Isles and in virtual worlds like Second Life.

With the perfume adverts dominating our TV viewing, and whilst we wait for “the sofa adverts” to begin - an oblique reference to Michael McIntyre’s live comedy show on YouTube! (includes strong language) - why not return each day to open the next door in the Intute: Arts and Humanities online Advent Calendar!

Daily we will highlight academic resources on the Internet on a variety of themes – artists’ lives, anniversaries, soldiers’ experiences during the First World War, international awards, film, dance, English literature and languages and literatures from around the world, as well as a few subjects which imply that “it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…”

First lighting of the giant Christmas tree at a park in São Paulo

Image credits:

• The last one, from a photo on Flickr by maistora, licensed under Creative Commons
• Xmas Tree, from a photo on Flickr by R. Motti, licensed under Creative Commons

Intute: Arts and Humanities online Advent Calendar begins with an overview of Internet resources relating to Woody Allen.

Born on December the first 1936 in Brooklyn, New York, Allen Stewart Konigsberg became better known to the world as Woody Allen, multi Oscar and BAFTA winning film director, playwright, scriptwriter, actor, author, musician and now Opera director. He adopted the name of his favourite jazz clarinettist, Woody Herman in his late teens.

Woody Allen

Perhaps surprisingly for such a prolific, popular, critically acclaimed and widely studied artist, there are few if any officially sanctioned online sources of information about Woody Allen. He has no official biographical website, although there are a number of unofficial ‘fan’ sites, perhaps the best being: www.woodyallen.com. This contains comprehensive biographical information, a ‘filmography’, and details of his books, plays, and stand up comedy, assorted videos, articles and more.

Woody Allen is as often quoted and referenced by philosophers and psychoanalysts as by film critics and researchers, thanks to the recurring character of the neurotic schlemiel, often played by Allen himself in many of his films. Any online search for “Woody Allen” in academic writings reflects this. His Jewish background and examination of the Jewish New Yorker identity also leads to him being referred to on academic websites dealing with Jewish studies, and religion in the arts, such as the Journal of Religion and Film. There are a few online catalogues detailing collections of items useful to Woody Allen Researchers, such as: The Woody Allen Papers at the Harry Ransom Centre of the University of Texas at Austin, and The Marion Meade Woody Allen Research Files. His other identity as a respected jazz clarinettist led to a film documentary “Wild Man Blues” directed by Barbara Kopple in 1998, which followed a European tour of his band. Information on Woody Allen’s numerous awards and nominations is available on websites such as the Golden Globe and the Oscars.

Related Intute records with content on Woody Allen include:

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Image credit: photograph by C Swan (Flickr) available on a Creative Commons Licence.

Throughout Advent (between today and the 24th December) Intute will bring you an eclectic mix of the Internet, with reflections drawn from the position of our academic expertise and our cultural background. Links in these articles will lead you to online academic resources reviewed by Intute, or directly to relevant sources on the Internet. A new post every day – so please return to open the online door on our daily musings and see mysteries unfold.

When I saw Yorkshire Day highlighted in Tim Machin’s posting on this blog in July, as someone born and brought up in Furness - the bit of Lancashire that became part of the new county of Cumbria in the 1974 local government reorganisation - I had to investigate whether there was a Lancashire Day to celebrate the red rose county. And indeed there is: 27 November, the day in 1295 when the first elected representatives from Lancashire were called to Westminster by King Edward I to attend what later became known as the Model Parliament. The Real Lancashire Society’s website pointedly declares: ‘Our county is called Lancashire, not Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Merseyside or part of Cheshire’.

A cobblestone mosaic of a red Lancashire Rose in Williamson Park, Lancaster. Image by Lupin, published on Wikimedia Commons under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license.

Intute has catalogued some excellent online resources about Lancashire. Some aspects of the county’s history are dealt with on these websites: Spinning the Web, the story of the Lancashire cotton industry; Lancashire Pioneers, which highlights the contributions of various individuals to many different fields, such as architecture, photography, textiles and transport; and the Pendle Witches, which tells the story of England’s most famous witches, hanged in 1612.

Lancashire has also produced some important figures in the arts. To pick just a few, the county’s industrial landscape is perhaps best known from the paintings of L. S. Lowry; Kathleen Ferrier, described as ‘the greatest lyric contralto England ever produced’, was a Lancashire lass; and the skinny one of Laurel and Hardy was born in Ulverston (in Furness), where there’s a museum dedicated to the pair.

Furness, the name of this part of old Lancashire, doubtless brings to mind the shipbuilding that has dominated the town of Barrow-in-Furness. The website of the Dock Museum in the town charts the social and industrial history of the area, and this enthusiast’s site provides an Index of Furness and Duddon sailing ships. However, this southern part of Furness also has strong religious connections, with the ruins of the Cistercian monastery of Furness Abbey; here are some good pictures. And despite the image of Lancashire as an industrial county, the old county had its share of a National Park: the northern part of Furness falls within the Lake District. I’ll highlight just one place here and it’s for the simple reason that I saw it across the lake every day from the house I grew up in: it’s Brantwood, the home of the 19th century writer, art critic and social commentator John Ruskin; see this Intute saved search for more on Ruskin.

Yesterday (20 November) was World Philosophy Day, an annual celebration of philosophy initiated by UNESCO in 2005. The aim of the event is to make philosophy accessible to all, and to this end, debates, colloquia, and other activities were organised in over 80 countries around the world.

The Intute: Arts and Humanities Philosophy section lists hundreds of resources relating to this fascinating discipline. Newcomers to the subject may be interested in The Philosophers’ Magazine Online, which offers articles, a blog, and interactive philosophical activities, and Philosophy Now, the online edition of the magazine of the same name.

A huge number of works of classic philosophy are now available online. Readings in Modern Philosophy on the University of Idaho’s website offers a wide selection, or for those in a hurry, Glyn Hughes’ Squashed Philosophers provides useful condensed editions of key texts.

For further suggestions, see Intute’s Philosophy booklet and the VTS tutorial Internet Philosopher.

The BBC News website’s Magazine section also celebrated by offering its readers a selection of knotty philosophy problems.

Intute: Arts and Humanities is recruiting casual staff to review and catalogue academic websites. The work is flexible and may be undertaken from anywhere with reliable access to the Internet. Payment rates are yet to be confirmed, but are likely to be in the region of £11 to £12 per hour.

Suitable candidates will have, or be working towards, a doctoral degree in one of the arts or humanities disciplines listed below; or alternatively have experience as a subject librarian in one of these disciplines. Experience of using Internet resources for research or teaching is essential, as is an understanding of the academic requirements of students, teachers, and researchers in the UK Higher Education sector. Successful candidates will be required to demonstrate an excellent command of written English and a keen eye for detail.

We are currently recruiting cataloguers from the following disciplines to work up to 50 hours per month from January 2009 to June 2009:

• Architecture
• French
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Celtic Studies
• Islamic Studies

We will also consider applicants from the following disciplines to work up to 20 hours per month from January 2009 to June 2009:

• Middle Eastern Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Chinese
• Russian
• History and Philosophy of Science
• American Studies

Training will be provided for the successful candidates - face-to-face like the session in London, above - or remotely by email.

To apply, please email intute-support@oucs.ox.ac.uk by Friday 28th November, 2008, including the following:

1. A copy of your CV.
2. A summary of your experience and use of online academic resources.
3. Confirmation that you are eligible to work in the UK, and that you have access to a broadband Internet connection in a location where you will be able to undertake this work. You will also require a UK bank account in order to receive payment, and you will need to provide us with your passport, birth certificate, or student visa to satisfy new immigration procedures.
4. A brief review (fewer than 200 words) of a website not currently in our catalogue which would be useful to an academic audience in your discipline. The website must comply with our Collection Development Policy. You should include the title and URL of the website, and follow our cataloguing guidelines when writing the review. Please take a look at this downloadable Word document for a succinct version of the Collection Development Policy, and a brief guide to writing Intute reviews.

If we would like you to carry out this work for us, we will contact you by telephone between the 1st and 12th of December, 2008, to assess your suitability.

Intute: Arts and Humanities is based within Oxford University Computing Services and Manchester Metropolitan University.

This is a short note to remind everybody that Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse, the most famous mouse in the world, turned 80 today (his first short, Steambot Willie, was released to cinemas on 18 November 1928). Several media have prepared  special pages for the event, and I recommend the BBC and TIME ones. And we would like to suggest two additional resources from our own catalogue: The encyclopedia of Disney animated shorts and the Big cartoon database.

Mickey and Walt; the "Partners" statue at Disneyworld, USA. Picture by auntie rain published in Flickr under a Creative Commons licence.

Mickey Mouse has made us laugh and dream for 80 years now, and he has become a true icon of our contemporary world as well as a subject of pop art. Walt Disney himself used to say, Never forget that it all started with a mouse. And we say: Happy Birthday Mickey from everybody here at Intute!

The British National Videogame Archive has recently launched its website and an associated online call for materials. The NVA is a joint project between the National Media Museum at Bradford, and Nottingham Trent University…

“the Archive is working to preserve, analyse and display the products of the global videogame industry by placing games in their historical, social, political and cultural contexts. This means treating videogames as more than inert, digital code: at the heart of the National Videogames Archive is the determination to document the full life of games, from protoypes and early sketches, through box-art, advertising and media coverage, to mods, fanart and community activities.”

‘Loading’ screen from Fallout 3 (Bethesda, 2008).

It’s early days, and there’s not a great deal on the main website yet. But it seems the perfect time to launch — the industry’s revenues are overtaking music and video combined; a slew of superb games are being released; there’s increasing activity in Game Studies; and there’s an increasing risk of archival material being lost in the dustbin of history. It’s also a rare example of our government giving any taxpayer money whatsoever to the videogames industry, since some of the seed funding apparently comes from the DCMS.

Gamasutra has an interview with James Newman of the Archive…

“”This is not a brick-and-mortar building — not yet, anyway,” Newman points out. Right now, the group is focusing on research and collection of games and gaming hardware, across several decades and myriad platforms. “The partnership between these two organizations already at the forefront of their areas means that we have an enormous head start with our research, facilities and expertise,” he adds.”

A concern of all universities and colleges over the past decade has been harnessing digital content and electronic services and realising the benefits they can bring. To date the focus has been on access and service development, at the expense of long-term access and preservation. However, future benefits may be heavily dependent on digital preservation strategies being in place now. To this end JISC has published a study of Digital Preservation Policies.

Although focussed on the UK Higher and Further Education sectors, the study draws widely on policy and implementations from other sectors and countries and will be of interest to those wishing to develop policy and justify investment in digital preservation within a wide range of institutions.

Two tools have been created in this study:

1. A model/framework for digital preservation policy and implementation clauses based on examination of existing digital preservation policies.
2. A series of mappings of digital preservation to other key institutional strategies in UK universities and colleges including Research, Teaching and Learning, Information, Libraries, and Records Management.

The study looks set to be an important tool for staff and institutions developing digital preservation policies in the context of broader institutional strategies.

The 90th anniversary of the Armistice sees the launch of the final element of a remarkable online archive that provides open access to an unrivalled database of primary source material as part of the JISC Digitisation Programme. The University of Oxford’s First World War Poetry Digital Archive now comprises over 7,000 digital images relating to the poets of the Great War. The collection brings together highly valued material currently dispersed across the UK and the USA.

Building on the success of the University’s existing Wilfred Owen archive (referenced by teachers and researchers worldwide), this multimedia collection contains images, text, audio and video relating to other major British ‘front line’ poets.

Highlights include manuscript material from:

• Wilfred Owen: all of his poems; military records; selections of letters, including his last letter home – from ‘The Smokey Cellar’; his personal edition of the ‘The Hydra’, the journal from the Craiglockart military hospital;
• Edward Thomas: drafts of all his war poems and war diary, and a selection of letters and prose articles;
• Robert Graves: drafts of his poems from ‘Over the Brazier’ and ‘Fairies and Fusiliers’; an extract from his wartime memoir, ‘Goodbye to All That’; and letters (one of which was written after he was listed killed in action – “I hope you haven’t been taking the casualty lists seriously again!”);
• Isaac Rosenberg: drafts of his poems (including ‘Daughters of War’ written in pencil on torn and muddied Salvation Army paper) and letters written during active service;
• Vera Brittain: drafts of her poems written as a nurse including ‘Perhaps’ (written after learning of the death of her fiancé, Roland Leighton’, her war diary, and letters to her fiancé, Roland Leighton
• Roland Leighton: poems and letters.

The archive also features:

• Contextual material – photographs, audio and film material from the Imperial War Museum including trench newspapers containing soldier poetry.
• Teaching resources – online tutorials, resources packs, links to appropriate websites presented using MyIntute, podcasts with famous commentators (including Ian Hislop)

And, throughout 2009, the archive will be augmented by collections covering the work of Edmund Blunden, David Jones, Ivor Gurney and Siegfried Sassoon.

“Aside from being widely dispersed, many of the manuscripts of the war poets are in a very fragile condition. Consequently direct access to this material will always be restricted. The First World War remains one of the keystones of modern history teaching at all levels and the war poets are, in many ways, the most vibrant and controversial ‘chroniclers’ of the conflict. Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon have always shined brightly but they are just two stars in a constellation of great poets; writers whose powerful work deserves to be much better known. The expanded First World War Poetry Archive – facilitated via the JISC Digitisation Programme – will play an important part in making this happen.” Dr Stuart Lee, manager of Oxford University’s Computing Services and a member of its English Faculty

Fun in the trenches, by Percy Matthews (contributed to The Great War Archive by Elizabeth Masterman)

The Archive also provides access to a wealth of World War I memorabilia enabling family items to be made public for the first time for use by educators and scholars. The ‘Great War Archive‘ website brings together 6,500 digital images of items submitted to Oxford University by members of the public. The majority of these images are of treasured family heirlooms which have never been on ‘public display’.

Author and academic Vivien Noakes: “Each of the items submitted to The Great War Archive tells a personal and, often very poignant, story. The archive provides a myriad of windows into the period – the Great War in microcosm. Access to this material can only enhance our understanding of what it was like actually to live through these momentous times.”

Items include:

• A bullet-dented tea can which saved the life of an engineer who repaired a bombing post whilst under heavy fire in Bullecort in November 1917.
• A souvenir matchbox made by a German POW for a British Lance Corporal after they had fought a raging fire together, saving many lives.
• Remarkable sketches of scenes and characters from military and civilian life by Private Percy Matthews, until now, an unknown artist, see image above.

The Great War Archive complements the First World War Poetry Digital Archive.

“The Great War is arguably the most resonant period in modern British history. The memorabilia and poetry archives will provide easy access to an unrivalled collection of material which will be of use to anyone interested in getting closer to this world-changing conflict.” Oxford University’s Project Leader, Kate Lindsay

A recent well-attended Institute of Ideas event in London asked “Researching the arts - why bother?”. A free online video of the debate is promised soon on Fora.tv, but this week’s Times Higher Educational Supplement has a short report from the event. Elsewhere, Torsten Reimer wonders what the results would be if all academic search resources in the arts and humanities went on strike for a week.

Intercultural Contacts in the Ancient Mediterranean is the title of a conference held in Cairo, Egypt, at the end of October 2008. During four days several speakers (I was one of them) have read papers relevant to specialists and the broader archaeological community. Of great importance was the location which allowed a greater participation from scholars based in the southern and eastern Mediterranean. I try to summarise here a few points discussed during the conference, mainly those of interest to a broader archaeological audience.

Prof. Manfred Bietak brought up one of the key issues in the study of the ancient (pre-Classical) Mediterranean: chronology. Bietak is running a long-term project on this issue, SCIEM, and has collected much of the available information. Results from the project are being published, but it was useful on this occasion to see them discussed. In short, Bietak has still many problems in synchronising the many relative chronologies of the eastern Mediterranean, and the joint chronology that is slowly taking shape at least using part of the available contexts disagrees with C14 results. The difference is consistent; C14 dates are invariably about a century older than those calculated using ceramic styles, lists of kings and pharaohs and other traditional methods of chronological dating. Plotting them on a chart shows that the traditional chronological methods have progressed a lot and indeed the case rests on finding the reason that offset the C14 dates (in Bietak’s view) or the period in which a century has been left out from the count (in the radiocarbon scientists’ view). Bietak also confirmed that to arrive to the chronology he is revealing it was necessary to modify the length of reign of several pharaohs. In many cases, determining how long a pharaoh reigned has been result of guesswork and mathematical calculations, so I understood. This is a key point well worth emphasising: the traditional Mediterranean chronology has been historically rooted on the length of the reigns of the pharaohs as reported by Egyptian sources, and now the precision of that chronology is rejected by archaeologists accepting radiocarbon dates and traditional archaeologists. So, next time you will see precise dates associated with a particular pharaoh, do not be so sure about them. Another point related to the discussion on chronology is the dependency of many scientific studies on one single date, the eruption of Thera (dated to ca. 1600 BC with C14 and 1500 BC using traditional methods). Sturt Manning has been the principal investigator in that research, and he does not seem to have convinced everyone, actually that research probably split in two camps the archaeological community. It might not be productive at this point to side with either camp: given that both radiocarbon methods and Bietak’s synchronisation project are still progressing noticeably it is too soon. With the historical chronology abandoned, both camps are probably prepared to adjust their chronologies, and the real question for both is now why there is a consistent 100-year gap between them.

And since we are talking about the difficulties in integrating scientific archaeology into mainstream archaeology, I bring to your attention Dr. P. Perkins’ remarks on DNA studies. He presented a paper reviewing the substance behind the claims that the Etruscans have an eastern origin as suggested by Herodotus. The mass media put some enthusiasm on the news, and Dr. Perkins reviewed what was the origin of that claim and what is its validity for archaeologists about one year later. The origin were two papers based on genetic (i.e. DNA) studies on modern populations. One study focused on the human population at Murlo, and a second one focused instead on bovine DNA. They prove that people and animals from the Near East eventually ended up in Italy at some point in time. Exactly when the geneticists cannot say, explained Perkins, and considering that people and animals moved around the Mediterranean well before the Etruscans (a direct connection between Near East and Italy can be made as early as the Late Bronze Age) and many times after them, the research appears pointless from an archaeological point of view. The Etruscans remain a native Italic population that had contacts with the Aegean and the Near East. Perkins correctly pointed out that whilst there is nothing wrong with the science behind it, random measurements will tell us nothing: archaeologists, as the scientists specialising in the past, need to come with the questions that might be then answered by any valid methodological approaches (listen to Keri Brown’s interview for some comments on how archaeologists and geneticists can collaborate; I am very convinced about the need for archaeologists to embrace the new scientific methods and these initial setbacks due to lack of communication between the parts are not a reason to question the validity of the actual scientific methods). And archaeologists accept today that the Etruscans, as perhaps all original cultures, did not originate from the migration of one people. Perkins also recommended that in the future geneticists and archaeologists work together to answer real questions. He barely ended his talk when news spread that geneticists had found Phoenician genes in Italian and Iberian people. This research team seems smarter in their presentation as they clearly tried to pinpoint a specific movement of people, but the substance is exactly the same: they reason on a geographic base, and identified genes originating from populations residing in the Levantine coast, as if these never moved before or after the Phoenicians. Obviously they know nothing about the already mentioned Late Bronze Age exchange network, just to cite one example.

And I say something about the Late Bronze Age exchange network, very much at the centre of the conference. Diamantis Panagiotopoulos and Gert Jan van Wijngaarden in separate presentations have emphasised how dynamic the network was and how it adapted on a region by region case. Panagiotopoulos looked at the reasons for the network to exist as it did: a lower dependency on governing elites (weak ties of an open network in his language) boosted its dynamism. Van Wijngaarden instead focused on Egypt, and showed how thing changed in that area throughout the Late Bronze Age. He interpreted the Aegean-type pottery from Egypt as exotica (it is not the only region of the Mediterranean where this is the case), and could interpret the efforts to procure this pottery as strategies to acquire exotica. Marie-Henriette Gates and Andrea Vianello (also in separate papers) considered the unifying reason that prompted and fuelled the Bronze Age network. Gates emphasised the economic reasons while Vianello, agreeing with Gates on the fundamental importance of the economic motivations for the exchanges, looked also at the social implications that the network had. The network is a very complex phenomenon indeed and it might be conceptualised as an experimental lab that gave to birth to what will become known as Mare Nostrum.

I conclude mentioning the introduction to the conference by Kim Duistermaat: she stressed the need for archaeology to be relevant to the modern world and how this conference was an example of this. Intercultural contacts are a hot issue of our world, and both the Arab and “Western” cultures historically originated on its shores and have co-existed for millennia. Looking to a common past is therefore a good way to start a dialogue and see how different cultures can coexist. The EU supported this view sponsoring the conference. A few presenters (starting with Susan Sherratt) recalled the recent idea proposed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy of a Mediterranean Union suggesting that it happened several times in the past, and, at least culturally, the dialogue between different cultures in the Mediterranean never stopped. Maintaining the distances with the current political projects, it seems however that archaeology can make the difference in prompting dialogue and be part of the intercultural contacts that were mentioned so much during the conference.

Britain’s National Media Museum has started a Flickr stream, onto which the NMM is starting to place sets of old public-domain photographs.  There are currently four sets, all in the public-domain, and with pictures shown at a decent size (between 1000px and 1500px on the longest side) and without watermarks.

One of the set titled ‘The spirit photographs of William Hope’ by William Hope (1863-1933).

The NMM’s initiative is part of Flickr’s The Commons, a portal that serves as a means of keeping track of all the public domain images currently being placed onto Flickr by the world’s museums, archives and galleries:

“The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are to firstly show you hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer.”

Those interested in a detailed account of one institution’s experience with Flickr should look at Seb Chan’s long report on the first three months of experience at the Powerhouse Museum, after placing the Tyrrell Photographic Collection online. Also of interest may be the ‘Museum 3.0′ group weblog.

Last week I was invited to take part in a small group discussion about the arts in Liverpool to be recorded for Portable Radio. The project, run by Russell Martin and Sarah Thelwall (supported by Workplace Gallery, SCAN and Arts Council England) is visiting ten different UK locations between May 2008 and May 2009 across the UK interviewing a cross section of people about their local art scene in order to use podcasts to create an online audio map of the UK.

Image copyright Sarah Thelwall 2008.

The Liverpool strand took place at A Foundation and unsurprisingly, centred around the Liverpool Biennial, the Independents Biennial and their effects on the city. One things that was really clarified for me during the discussion was the two-tier system that exists in Liverpool. I was there to represent Wolstenholme Projects, a collective I am part of and also one of the smaller, independent galleries that exists alongside others such as Red Wire, The Royal Standard, The Bridewell and Arena Studios. The top tier was comprised of those galleries and spaces affiliated with other bodies or those that received funding: A Foundation; Tate Liverpool; The Bluecoat; FACT and National Museums Liverpool to name a few. This situation was represented in a group drawing of a tower block (Insular Towers) with the top tier only accessible by a heli-pad. We all wondered how artists bridge that gap between the two levels, particularly in Liverpool.

Another question posed via the drawing representing the arts in Liverpool was in the form of a ‘car park of critical discourse’, empty of cars. It was felt by all present that Liverpool is lacking criticality, probably because the art world here is too small, and also because there it has no real outlet. The ubiquitous artinliverpool.com is an incredibly comprehensive guide to what’s on in the city, but I have never seen a negative review posted there. John Byrne from Liverpool School of Art and Design at John Moore’s University (LJMU) was optimistic that an increase in postgraduate students at LJMU and a new Art School base would help to implement change and would also bring a real research culture into the city.

One thing of which I am certain is that this Biennial has been the biggest and most circus-like yet and a period of reflection and concentration is much needed, not only to learn from the experience, but also to make sure artists and organisations in Liverpool create a sustainable community and continue to represent themselves well in the future.

In this shorter version of a post on the Intute blog I try to draw out how the Intute: Arts and Humanities maintains its relevance to our audience.

I’ve always thought that one of the contributing factors to Intute’s relevance to Higher Education (in particular) is the many and diverse activities undertaken by our staff.

One of my colleagues, Tim Machin, at work in his other day-job

For example, during my service at the University of Oxford (nearly ten years) I have split my time between Intute-related work and a series of nationally funded research projects. These have included the usability of digital certificates, e-science and Shibboleth. Most recently I have been involved in researching the manuscripts of some of the poets of the First World War for a project which launches on November 11th (the 90th anniversary of the Armistice). The Great War Archive - part of this project’s work - aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of mass digitisation techniques in this age of the Internet. It has gained the University of Oxford a place on the shortlist for a Times Higher Education Award.

The project team“travel hopefully” to London today (23rd October) for a swanky black-tie bash in a Park Lane hotel. The competition for the Outstanding ICT Initiative of the Year - for the uninitiated, ICT stands for Information and Communications Technology - is strong, and I quote from the sponsor’s press release (the JISC):

…the shortlisted entries for this year’s JISC/Times Higher Outstanding ICT Initiative of the Year Award… cover a Second Life project, digitisation, assessment, location independent working, language teaching and the use of video. But which forward-thinking initiative will take home the prestigious award? This year’s competition attracted a record number of entries from some 140 institutions, surpassing all expectations according to THE editor Anne Mroz. The ‘Oscars’ of the sector are “a great way of recognising the commitment and success of the talented individuals working in UK higher education” according to a representative from Universities UK (THE 13.03.2008), this year’s diverse entrants are more impressive than ever.

The JISC-sponsored award is designed to showcase the most innovative and potentially far-reaching ICT initiatives across the UK.

Anyway this train of thought prompted me to ask colleagues in Intute based in universities throughout the UK… What else do you do when you’re not helping academia find information on the Internet? From this question I am able to highlight some of the other work Intute staff are also involved in:

Such as:

• ARLIS UK and Ireland (the Art Libraries Society) Cataloguing and Classification Committee

E.g.

• the First World War (see my references above)
• visual art (see Tim’s response below)
• the British National Corpus (BNC)
• use of language by teenagers in Europe

E.g.

• religion and philosphy at the University of Oxford and in summer schools for visiting undergraduates

By for example:

• cataloguing online teaching resources for JORUM
• managing projects for their University’s computing or library service such as at Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and Oxford, as well as teaching departments like the schools of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Manchester, and working as subject librarians in their area of expertise
• collaborating on the JISC CREW project (Collaborative Research Events on the Web)
• sourcing, evaluating and indexing online teaching and learning resources for the Higher Education Academy subject centres such as Economics Network and ESCalate
• working on a large-scale pan-European collaborative effort to create, coordinate and make language resources and technology available (CLARIN)
• writing guides and tutorials for Informs and the Virtual Training Suite , and also for particular subjects within their institution’s VLE - like BlackBoard
• working on the EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service to offer access to Doctoral theses from UK universities
• working on the the support aspect of the European DRIVER project in addition to the Intute Repository Search (IRS) that allows users to cross-search UK repositories

Such as:

• ProQuest (indexer)
• Skills for Security (on the board for their policing, crime and terrorism research centre)

Such as:

• Why Study Economics? for the Royal Economic Society
• World War One literature or military ancestor/family history research available on YouTube, and iTunes

Such as:

• The Library and Information Professional’s Internet Companion: A Practical Resource for Library and Information Professionals

The most unusual answer was from Tim Machin (pictured above) (based at Manchester Metropolitan University) who writes:

…when not at Intute I am a practising artist, my own website is www.tmachin.co.uk and I’m represented by Bureau. This isn’t just about sitting in the studio all day (I wish it were, although it’s very cold at this time of year) but is increasingly related to specific projects and commissions. Recently these have included swap/vaihto, an artist exchange with a group of artists from Finland, a research trip to LA, which should result in a collaborative art work and a contribution to a publication, a commissioned text on artist/filmmaker James Brown for Site Gallery’s Platform project, Wrongteous - a new piece of fiction, commissioned for a book launched at the Liverpool Biennial, and a contribution to 100 Years, 100 Artists, 100 Works of Art a project devised by Art on the Underground, transport for London’s agency commissioning new works of art. This all helps inform my work at Intute, (I’ve become a bit of Hitchcock bore recently thanks to the James Brown work, and know quite a lot of esoteric stuff about early twentieth century graphic design thanks to the Tube stuff) not just keeping up to date critically with what is going on in contemporary art and culture and creative subjects (which I catalogue) - but engaging with it. I also do a spot of freelance cataloguing for JORUM, which keeps my metadata skills shiny.

All this helps Intute staff to gain a greater appreciation of how online resources are actually being used by academics, enabling them to tap into networks of subject specialists, and to see how subjects are evolving (even ensuring our subject/technical knowledge is up-to-date) and so can adjust their Intute work to meet these needs. Intute has become firmly embedded in the information services of the Universities we work for which helps us keep in touch with strategic priorities for Higher Education in eLearning, eResearch and IT.

This activity within subject communities and via professional organisations makes more people aware of Intute and often shows that we are using emerging technologies to good effect and in some cases that we are looking to disseminate our messages to the next cohort of students before they even get to university.

Of course, this does not take account of the many contributors who assist Intute, but are not actually core staff. One of the main reasons for employing them to look after our subjects is their experience and current positions in research, teaching, or support such as libraries and archives.