Enhancing the archaeological record

With the large scale digitisation projects that are taking place, a vast amount of historic newsprint has become available online in the past decade, both from the UK and abroad.

These newpapers, dating back as far as 1720, are proving to have great potential as a source of archaeological and architectural information. Indepedent researcher Dr Stephen Briggs will be at Digital Past 2013 discussing the projects he has been carrying out in data-mining these newly accessiable sources, including the transcription of over 450 Bronze Age burial in Scotland, the publication of c.1400 'new' medieval and later coin hoards and the reassessment of the number of human bodies found in Irish peat bogs.

Click to read the full abstract

Agenda

Our agenda for the two days of Digital Past 2013 is now available. See agenda.

To register go to the Royal Commision on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales webpage.

Creating a new sense of place

Dissemination of, and public engagement with, the outcomes of historical research can benefit from tourism management and the intervention of cultural institutions in utilising new digital technologies that promote engaging ways of enhancing the visitor experience. These resources may be online or on site, but equally provide a new critical currency in the global digital economy. 



Professor Ray Howells of the South Wales Centre for Historical and Interdisciplinary Research and Matt Chilcott, development director for digital tourism, interpretation and inclusion at CMC2 Community Interest Group and PhD scholar at the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling will be discussing their experiences of work carried out by SWICHR in the creation of immersive digital environments and other projects.

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Raglan Sense of Roots

Dr Cheryl Morgan of Raglan Local Archives will be at Digital Past 2013 talking about the latest digital projects that have been taking place within the Raglan and District Local History Group. These projects include:

•A Digital Story Telling Project - a digital archive of local records and digital media at http://www.raglan-history.org.uk/ working with youth groups to digitise and catalogue over 800 historical photographs, maps, wills and other documents, and the creation of digital stories

•The Raglan Local Ways Project - linking Raglan Primary School Children with long time residents. A CD was published including old photo's and video records of elderly residents reflecting on the changes in Raglan Village in the last century.  In the past two years, the Raglan History Detectives after school club has focused on learning history through studying and conserving the graves in St Cadoc's Churchyard.

•Raglan Village Domesday Wiki site as a repository for local historical records and memories.  Since its establishment the wiki has had over 30,000 hits from around the world.

•The current QR based project for Heritage Landmarks

For further details read the full abstract.

The work of the Archive and Records Council Wales

Gary Tuson of the Gwent Archives will be explaining the work of the Archive and Records Council Wales at this years Digital Past conference.

Since 2010 ARCW has been working on selecting tools and developing skills for digital preservation. Central to the work is the Open Archive Information System (OAIS) model. Often difficult to understand by those with non-specialist knowledge, the work of the ARCW Digital Preservation Trust has been to simplify this knowledge, work which has led to the creation of a consortium in Wales aiming to share knowledge and experience.

ARCW has also been looking at the tools required to carry out Digital Preservation and providing the practical training and support in their use.

For further details of the presentation go to the full abstract

Through the Eye of the Robot

 

Marek Ososinski, a KESS student at the Computer Science Department, Aberystwyth University will be presenting on his current research into automation in laser scanning. He will discuss the visual technology that can aid surveyors by allowing them to observe crude 3D representations of the environment and enable them to maximise their positioning of data capture instruments such as laser scanners. Issues of data representation and management will be discussed alongside the requirements for real-time reasonaing and visualisation for providing instant feedback.

The digiDo Project

Dr Ted Jones of the National Library of Wales will be presenting on the digiDo Project at Digital Past 2013. The Theatre of Memory programme has aimed to digitise as much printed material published in Wales as possible and make it freely available and accessible via the internet, giving Wales and the Welsh an enhanced online identity on a worldwide stage.

Key initiatives to date include:

 

WelshBiography Online that holds approximately 5,000 biographies of eminent Welshmen/ women who died before 1 January 1971.

 

Welsh Journals Online which offers access to a selection of 50 modern periodicals and 300 historical titles in both Welsh and English.

 

WelshBallads Online that comprises of approximately 4,000 digitised ballads, mainly dating from the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

 

Welsh Newspapers Online which is the National Library of Wales’ entire holdings of pre-1910 Welsh newspapers: a magnificent resource of everyday knowledge estimated to contain over 1 million pages and 200 newspaper titles covering every corner of Wales.

 

Additionally, the Library’s collections of manuscripts, wills, archives, maps, paintings, photographs and drawings have also been digitised.

Dr Jones will be speaking about the process of scanning, ocr'ing, metadata, data management and data dissemination. For the full abstract go to our speakers page.