A presentation about the JISC Mass Digitization project "Rhyfel Byd 1914-1918 a’r profiad Cymreig / Welsh experience of World War One 1914-1918". Talk at the Strategic Content Alliance World War One roundtable meeting, 27th March 2012.

1. RhyfelByda’rprofiadCymreig
Welsh experience of World War One
Lorna Hughes
University of Wales Chair in Digital Collections
National Library of Wales
Strategic Content Alliance WW1 Roundtable meeting
March 27th 2012

2. RhyfelByda’rprofiadCymreig /Welsh experience of World War One
• New mass digitization project: JISC e-Content programme 2011-13
• Project duration: Feb 2012 – July 2013
• £500,000 funding from JISC (FEC £987,916)
• Supported by partner institutional contributions, especially NLW
• Welsh Higher Education Libraries Forum (WHELF) partnership
• Partners: National Library of Wales (lead); Aberystwyth University;
Bangor University; Trinity St David’s; Swansea University; Cardiff
University; Archives of BBC Cymru Wales; archives and local records
offices in ARCW (Archives and Records Council, Wales); The People’s
Collection, Wales.
• Will produce unified, cohesive digital archive of text, image, audio
and film
• Developed in consultation with many stakeholders: will have major
impact on research, teaching and commemoration time for
centenary education and commemoration
• Contribute national picture impact of WW1 on Wales
• #CymruWW1

3. Project overview and scope
• Content to be digitized from NLW and partner collections
• 190,000 pages of printed text, archival pages, manuscript pages and
photographs; 50 hours of audio; and 20 hours of audio visual material
• Content approximately 70% English and 30% Welsh
• Content presently fragile, difficult to access; dispersed around institutions
in Wales.
• Digitization to take place at NLW (except Cardiff content)
• Digital content stored in Institutional Repositories at NLW, and partner HEIs
• Consolidated and unified access via common user interface
• People’s Collection Wales will undertake 3 targeted community digitization
workshops; and assist with developing ARCW content
• Will hold a series of of community and scholarly workshops dedicated to
developing content and approaches to embedding the resource in teaching
and research, building a network of researchers to encourage use of resource
• Canolfan Bedwyr (Bangor) will implement language technology tools, and
methods for enriching digitized content for multilingual access to bilingual
content.

4. Embedding impact in planning: scoping content
• Content scoped in collaboration with
partners, academics, authors, educators, media, exhibitions
staff….
• Needs of users core to digital scholarship, and should inform
selection and resource discovery
• Careful selection of content will increase value, use and
impact of digital resources, tools and methods
• Understanding the narrative of archival selection will be key
to understanding digital resource
– Project developed in consultation with academics to ensure impact on
research, teaching and commemoration
– Content selection collaborative and iterative process between special
collections, libraries, archives; and academics
– Enabling not ‘digital history’, but ‘good history’
– Workshop at NLW April 19th to complete selection process

5. Key content for digitization
• The records of the Welsh Army Corps.
– Recruitment of volunteers; mobilisation of public attitudes in support of the war
– Construction and mobilisation of national identities for the war effort in official materials
• Welsh newspapers 1913-1919.
– Reports illustrating world events, as well as the impact on citizens not part of the
fighting.
– Letters from soldiers, poetry columns, and other literary content.
– Llaisllafur / Labour voice, Merthyr pioneer, Y dinesyddCymreig; local,national Welsh
– Expanding Welsh Newspapers Online Project
• Welsh periodicals and other printed publications.
– Include first hand evidence of the impact of the War.
– Y Gymraes; student newspapers; and Y Deyrnas (journal of conscientious objectors)
• Personal archives: diaries, journals and letters
– correspondence, contemporary writings
– oral histories: National Screen&Sound Archive of Wales; South Wales Miners Library; BBC
Cymru
• Literary Archives
– “Welsh War Poets”: Edward Thomas, David Jones and HeddWyn (Ellis Humphrey Evans)
– To compliment existing projects, e.g., Oxford First World War Poetry Archive
• Official documents
– Church&chapel records, reports; official records, e.g., trades union&shipping records

6. Incorporating dissemination and engagement
• Consolidated and aggregated access to locally hosted data from
partner HEI repositories and People’s Collection, Wales
• Exposing content for widest harvesting and discovery via OAI
Protocol for metadata harvesting
• Use of community standards for data development, encoding and
controlled vocabularies
• Use of NLW’sflickr Commons for sharing selected visual resources
• Project budget includes usability testing workshops and stakeholder
engagement with: researchers across the arts and humanities,
librarians, archivists, cultural heritage staff, funders, technical
experts, data scientists…
• Interface will use TIDSR (Toolkit for the Impact of Digital Scholarly
Resources http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/) toolkit for analytics
and statistical gathering tools to understand use, and increase
impact and uptake
• Fully bilingual and accessible user interface will embed multilingual
cross-searching services
• Engagement with other WW1 digital projects and resources
….Encouraging use and embedding of resource will support
long term sustainability!