JISC White Paper for WW1 Commemoration planning meeting: 27th March
In every village, town and city of this and other nations we see (or perhaps fail to see) memorials that
are reminders of the enormous sacrifices made by a generation not so long passed during the First
World War.
As we approach our second meeting to assist in planning the centenary of the First World War we see
tremendous opportunities to make visible aspects of the conflict either not previously explored, engage
the academy and citizens more effectively and use our respective networks in a ‘smart’ way to enable
this and future generations new insights into the momentous events of 1914-18. In addition, the
national focus on the War as we move towards August 2014, and subsequently through to 2018 as the
centenary of the major battles and events occur, offers us an opportunity to address some recurring
contemporary issues – such as national identity, citizenship, digital literacy, to name but a few.
What do we hope to achieve through the development of rich new digital content? Well, some of the
experiences of the First World War and its effects on the peoples of these islands and elsewhere are
readily available via existing digital offerings, but many are not, and are being lost on a daily basis.
Digital technologies are being matched by new and innovative approaches in the development of digital
content and data. It is the intention of this second meeting to ‘map’ our respective plans and seek
agreement about how we might jointly develop something never before undertaken due to ‘political’
considerations, i.e. an open and collaborative environment not purely driven by ‘marketing’ or ‘selfinterest’ .
We would like you to consider possibilities previously considered impossible or just ‘too difficult’ for
whatever reason. Imagine if funders, collections, communities, the arts and creative industries sign up to
a ‘declaration of intent’ underpinned by ‘best in class’ or perhaps more realistically ‘just good enough’
standards to make whatever is made discoverable and usable on the web for future generations. To
some extent these principles are not new, as they underpin aggregations like Europeana, the JISC
‘Discovery’ principles etc. We want to encourage medium to long term interest in the activity to ensure
a ‘long tail’ of education and research benefits.
Imagine also community groups being encouraged to capture and record their locality’s experiences of
the First World War using a ‘Guide to Good Practice’ produced in plain English that is easy to adopt and
using ‘open data’ principles to permit new types of innovation. Imagine this is supported by an online
support package and regional training initiative delivered through the ‘Race for 2012’ (and other digital
skills programmes) to assist digital literacy development. Imagine the possibilities of this new activity
being funded through commercial sponsorship and public investment from existing and/or new
programmes.
Imagine a series of educational outreach initiatives that bring together the old, the young, the digitally
literate and non-literate. These will be centred in schools, public libraries, care homes, colleges,
community centres, and so on. The power of the events surrounding 1914-198 offer us an opportunity
to bring these together, and in so doing to share memories, best practice, and skills. In addition, this was
a war of Empire involving all of the countries of the current commonwealth – from which many people
trace their own roots in multi-cultural Britain. This was their war as much as anyone’s yet their
experiences and contributions are often overlooked. Imagine again, then, the possibilities offered in
terms of bridging the cultural divides we still see in the UK by bringing attention to a period where all of
the world suffered together.
Imagine the awareness raising fostered by BBC local radio, television and online ‘advocating’ of
community based activities and ‘good practice’ links. Imagine the BBC establishing a schools partnership
programme, similar to one being run in conjunction with the British Council for this year’s Olympic
Games.
Imagine Universities being encouraged to engage with their local communities linked with specific
subject based programmes. A retelling of the effects of the conflicts will be captured using local arts
based organisations and/or broadcasters, creating a new coherent collection of open learning objects.
Academic and other experts will co-author new insights into the social web, e.g. Blogs, Wikipedia
entries, etc. They help to add context and depth to existing local, regional and nation collections.
Imagine being able to develop a degree of harmonisation in order to ‘measure engagement online’ and
demonstrate ‘impact’. This might:
 explore how to build engagement metrics and better understand what this really means for
cultural venues
 consider any changes in audience behaviour from the use of mobile devices (and other
emerging technologies) and associated metrics
 consider the relationship between the online activity and its ability (or not) to act as a call to
action for audiences
 look at demographic profiling of online audiences based on the MOSAIC profiles that link to
postcode data that is available in the Hitwise service http://www.hitwise.com/uk.
Draft Statement of Intent – Strategic Vision
UK students, teachers, researchers and citizens will have access to a wealth of unique and authoritative
digital materials which are comprehensive, open and sustainable. These resources will provide
an opportunity to interact with and create new and innovative forms of education and research around
the First World War in order to build upon our nation’s body of knowledge of this period.
The commemoration of WW1 offers providers of publically-funded content a vital opportunity within
the digital domain to provide a digital user experience that is personal, rich and vivid. This user
experience should offer the user the ability to contextualise their own understanding and customise
resources in line with their own teaching, learning and research priorities.
Communities, educators and learners would find inspiration and stimulation from an innovative, high
quality curated collection online. While it is now possible to find online data about moving images, still
photographs, poetry manuscripts, sculpture and art no one has yet taken the next step of bringing these
assets together in a single digital space. The WW1 anniversary offers the opportunity for key
institutions to work together and to raise the game for a sustainable open educational resource online.
Selected high quality objects, images, print and manuscripts could be brought together to provide a
powerful, mediated online experience which would engage users by offering journeys through layers of
cultural and political information, as well as selected material for re-use and re-contextualisation. For
the first time we would be able to simultaneously demonstrate the 1914-18 period as one of cultural as
well as political and military upheaval – a time which gave birth to the modernist impulse that still
influences the way we see the world today.
The WW1 commemoration also offers providers of digitally-funded content a framework ‘theme’, by
which to explore and challenge some of the barriers that have previously impeded access to digital
resources, be they legal, economic or technical, so that content remains accessible, relevant and
malleable to user needs.
In achieving this ambition, public bodies working on behalf of education, cultural heritage and publicservice broadcasting as well as funders need to work together to unlock the potential of the rich
collections and in doing so, provide co-ordination so that expertise can be shared and maximum impact
can leveraged from the ‘public purse’.
To this end, we are committed to:
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Setting in place the building blocks to understand how academic audiences can play a formative
role in an academic appraisal and reappraisal of themes, events and perceptions of WW1 and
how this can be effectively represented through technological means to support innovative
teaching, learning and research.
Understanding, gathering and evaluating evidence on the legal, economic and technical barriers
in providing access and re-use opportunities and recommend methods of mitigation or
circumvention.
Providing co-ordination, and where appropriate, sharing expertise so that maximum impact can
be leveraged the most from the public purse and duplication of effort is avoided.
To support the above we have a joint Technical Vision:
UK students, teachers and researchers will have easy, flexible and ongoing access to WW1 content and
service through a collaborative, aggregated and integrated resource discovery and delivery framework
which is comprehensive, open and sustainable.
We are committed to enabling the Vision of the ‘Discovery’ programme and aims to apply its principles
and methodology in the delivery of the JISC WW1 programmes so that WW1 digital content resources
are more discoverable both by people and machines. In doing so, we can make our data work harder,
integrating and combining it in new ways that can add value for researchers, teachers, and managers of
information assets within libraries, archives and museums.
Working to enable this Vision, JISC and its partners can go about building critical mass of discoverable
content through opening up data, providing examples and communicating outcomes through the
context of WW1. It is envisaged that this will offer the opportunity to test, monitor and evaluate the
methodology and Vision against a ‘real world’ theme.
To this end, we are committed to:
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Engaging key stakeholders across libraries, archives and museums – from directors to
developers, those who have the power, the ideas and the will to make things happen;
Building a critical mass of freely available quality data that will inspire others to participate in
opening up their own data and developing purposeful aggregations and compelling applications;
Exemplifying what can be done across domains if we work together to free data and explore
how to make that data work harder
Communicating the direction and means of distribution through well-targeted events,
exemplars, publications and forums.