Patricia Methven, Director of Archives & Information
Management; Geoff Browell, Senior Archives Services
Manager, King’s College London
Purpose of project
 To survey the availability of hard copy and digital
resources relating to the First World War in UK
repositories
 To survey HE and FE teaching of the First World War
and identify trends
 To provide expert academic guidance across a range of
First World War subject areas
 To provide a priority list of available digital resources
for a new JISC aggregation website meeting criteria of
academic relevance & technical accessibility
Methodology
 Led by King’s College London Archives and Department of War Studies
 Academic Steering Committee: William Philpott, Professor of the
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History of Warfare (Chair); Simon Wessely, Director, King's Centre for
Military Health Research Institute of Psychiatry; Max Saunders,
Professor of English; Edgar Jones, Professor of the History of Medicine
and Psychiatry; Andrew Lambert, Laughton Professor of Naval History;
Ian Beckett, Visiting Professor of Military History, University of Kent;
Dr Pierre Purseigle, Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of
Birmingham; Dr Hope Wolf, Teaching Fellow in Life Writing
Project team: Lynelle Howson and Daniel Whittingham
Focus groups of archivists, librarians and academics across a range of
subject disciplines (x4)
Desk research & telephone interviews
Online surveys of teaching and of available hard copy and digital
resources (Total returns: 230)
Contracted deliverables
 Report summarising the findings of the research, with
appendices
 Spreadsheet listing institutions holding World War
One-related material & summarising holdings;
summaries of top websites with content and expert
and amateur opinion about the War; available online
digital content (built on original IWM/Wellcome
supported survey)
 Priority list of digital resources for aggregation
 Database (additional) – to collect data on digital and
hard copy resources on an ongoing basis
Findings: academic (teaching and
research) 1
 Top three themes taught are war experience (e.g accounts of battle), memory (e.g war
memorials) and social and cultural experience of war (e.g recruitment, the Home Front)
 Clear correlation between existing teaching and available digital resources at both HE
and school level - but regarded as limiting teaching and research rather than an
indicator of adequacy
 Concern about over emphasis to date on trench experience and the Western Front
 Few examples of active engagement with digital material in teaching – images are mainly
used for decoration in PowerPoint rather than in a more sophisticated way. Lack of time
is cited as a significant reason
 Unmet digital resource needs in relation to the global experience of war (comparative
studies between participant countries), multi-theatre operations (in particular nonWestern Front), naval history, literature and colonial experience and impact (for example
the lives and experiences of Indian or Caribbean servicemen)
Findings: academic (teaching and
research) 2
 Nursing and medicine are key themes but nursing in particular needs to be
pieced together from disparate sources as central records have been destroyed.
There is a need to bring these sources together on public health, STDs, health
leaflets and grey literature generally to reassemble this information
 Themes still ripe for very considerable further research and teaching include
class, gender, employment, trade and industry, food supply, temperance,
regions of the UK, religion and faith
 Obvious gaps in print digitisation include official histories , maps and
statistics. Print should be prioritised over more visual material. Runs of printed
material are preferred over cherry-picking
 Challenge to capture sources for current scholarship on memorialisation and
representation. What is what we are doing today saying about us? Why has the
school curriculum significantly distilled to trenches and war poetry?
Findings: resources
 Significance of brand recognition: IWM versus JISC JORUM
 Impact of disappointed searches/retrieval expectations: use as
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dressing rather than substance
Website sustainability/persistence: ‘This is something else you
can look at but be wary’
Usability: TNA business model for materials heavily used by
family historians militates against socio-demographic and
epidemiological research
Quantities of information digitised but sitting on CDs, drives etc
and not advertised or accessible only by physical visitors
(technical-IPR issues typically cited)
Paucity of digitised print material over visual including official
histories, maps and statistics
Findings: resources statistics
 47.8% of respondents to the resources survey have digital
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material cleared for not-for-profit/educational use
67.2% do not require an institutional subscription to access
digitised data
Only 15% of first World War digitised content is aggregated
with content from other resources
39.6% of digital content is only, or only partially, available
for view in an institution, for example via a server or a CD
65.4% of digitised content created by the institution is
freely available (this is not an indication of available extent)
31% of repositories are planning WW1-related activities or
programmes for 2014
Findings: technical
 Few institutions have APIs
 Need for documentation from JISC to explain to
institutions what an API is, how it can be made,
sustained and used
 IPR checking required for many collections to go
digital
 Lack of institutional support for advanced classroom
technology – need for lightweight digital delivery
Recommendations/requirements
for aggregation layer
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Frame searching from the home page by large disciplinary topics but underpinning searching needs
to be completely porous
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Significance of context: include catalogue provenance, detail of % of collection digitised and selection
criteria, catalogue description/metadata, display host repository contact details and location
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Include /point to rights cleared collection(s) of images cleared for immediate use
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Availability or pointers to podcasts by experts
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Ensure strong branding. Make explicit JISC/partner roles to avoid researchers contacting the wrong
source institutions
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Ensure clarity about target audience and purpose
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Links to internationally significant resources e.g. Australian War Memorial, French digitised film,
Berlin sound archives
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Provision of/links to tools that support the manipulation of material and/or exemplar case studies in
bringing different types of material together e.g. a day in a battle; one soldier’s individual timeline
Aggregation layer: initial selection
 British Library (India Office/Empire-global theme)
 British Postal Museum (war
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memorials/memorialisation)
Cartoon Archive, University of Kent (society and
culture)
LSE Digital Library (Trade unions and politics)
National Maritime Museum (naval history)
Serving Soldier (printed/private papers)
Welsh Voices of the Great War (society and culture)
Other recommendations
 JISC Collections to be asked to review scope for academic
licensing of commercial products produced by TNA and others
 JISC to consult with commercial contractors with a view to
ensuring that future digitisation project data is structured in
ways that support research, not only access for family history
 JISC/others to invest in bringing already digitised content online
e.g. TNA MI5 papers and RAMC Journal
 JISC to guide and model creation and maintenance of
institutional APIs to deliver content and/or highlight best
existing practice from other sectors
Patricia.methven@kcl.ac.uk
Geoffrey.browell@kcl.ac.uk