Locating a National Collection

Locating a National Collection

This project will help cultural heritage organisations to use location data - such as where objects were made and used or the places they depict and describe - to connect cultural heritage collections and engage audiences. Through scoping, workshops and audience research, the project will establish best practice and provide technical recommendations for a national system that allows collection items from diverse organisations to be discovered through location. The Pelagios Network of researchers, scientists and curators has developed a methodology that uses gazetteer referencing to link research data with considerable success, building a community of partners and stimulating research. This project builds on their methodology, scoping improvements and exploring ways to render content accessible and meaningful to different public audiences. To test and scope this ambition, participating organisations will work on a set of thematic and technological case studies to understand the requirements of stakeholders, institutional, academic and public. The objective is to understand the technical components required, the options available and to make recommendations for potential solutions, all described in the project report. The report will constitute a strategy to inform developments in the next phase of Towards a National Collection and across the cultural heritage sector more broadly. It will encourage cultural heritage organisations to take up a common geospatial approach and provide a roadmap that enables diverse organisations to enrich their metadata and expose this in a consistent and joined-up way, ultimately spear-heading a movement beyond text-based searches in cultural heritage. This project is a Foundation project within the the AHRC funded Towards a National Collection Programme.

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    Item type:Presentation,
    Locating a National Collection
    (2021)
    Rees, Gethin
    ;
    Vitale, Valeria
    Locating a National Collection (LaNC) aims to help cultural heritage organisations to use location data — such as where objects were made and used or the places they depict and describe — to connect collections and engage audiences. Location-based interfaces such as web maps offer opportunities to open up collections to new audiences and uses. This presentation explores how LaNC is using audience research methods including surveys and focus groups to inform geospatial data structures and interface design.
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    Item type:Report,
    Locating a National Collection/Research Bods quantitative findings summary
    (2021-01)
    Strachan, Peter
    The National Trust and The British Library, along with several cultural heritage partners, commissioned an audience research project to inform the development of an online history and heritage platform to provide broader access to the wealth of artefacts and resources from across the entire network of information providers. This slide deck is an output of the first-phase of a two-stage audience research programme aimed at understanding the key needs and drivers of engagement for an online platform to aid history and heritage exploration.
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    Item type:Presentation,
    Locating a national collection through audience research
    (2022)
    Rees, Gethin
    Locating a National Collection (LaNC) aims to help cultural heritage organisations to use location data — such as where objects were made and used or the places they depict and describe — to connect collections and engage audiences. Location-based interfaces such as web maps offer opportunities to open up collections to new audiences and uses. Place metadata can form the basis of engaging stories and tangible links between overlooked groups and local pasts that underscore notions of community empowerment. LaNC seeks to identify how the design of interfaces can be tailored to meet the needs of diverse users thus improving uptake and broadening the appeal of digital cultural heritage. To this end we gathered structured feedback from two groups: cultural heritage professionals and the public. Interviews with cultural heritage professionals helped us to understand motivation and priorities in the sector. Audience research included surveys and focus groups with representative samples of the UK population that offered insights into attitudes and behaviour alongside opportunities to test interface ideas. The research has demonstrated how values, such as local identity, alongside motivations such as curiosity around heritage visits offer hooks into cultural heritage collections. These findings will inform the development of LaNC’s map-based prototype, providing insights into how geospatial data structures and interface design can help institutions leverage serendipitous discovery and curiosity-driven exploration of their collections.
      2  1
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    Item type:Journal article,
    Discovering the local in national cultural heritage collections. How web maps can help the UK public engage with their ‘own places’
    (2022-10-09)
    Rees, Gethin
    ;
    Hunt, Alex
    ;
    Vitale, Valeria
    ;
    Horgan, John
    ;
    Strachan, Peter
    Identity is a critical influence on the public’s engagement with cultural heritage. This article emphasises the role of geographical scale in this relationship examining how the presentation of local heritage can foster meaningful engagement with collections. The geographical information embedded in digital collections – such as where objects were made or the locations they depict and describe – can help varied audiences to discover digital heritage records that are significant to them. Yet the interactive web maps used by cultural heritage organisations have not presented the breadth of collections effectively. Audience research conducted by the Locating a National Collection project offered insights into how the presentation of local heritage using web maps can broaden engagement. A survey explored the values, motivations and identities of the UK public in relation to geography and web technologies. ‘Pretotypes’ or sketches of interfaces prompted focus groups to offer insights into interface design and the suitability of collections. The public were not only interested in heritage connected to the area where they reside but also a range of familiar locations drawn from memory, genealogy and community, termed their ‘own places’. Only particular collections offer geographical information of suitable quality and distribution to support engagement with familiar locations at a local scale. This user-centred approach can help organisations to design web maps that help audiences discover the parts of collections they find meaningful. The article offers the first step in a pathway to achieving social impact such as community building through digital collections.
      2  1
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    Item type:Software,
    Peripleo
    (2022)
    Simon, Rainer
    ;
    Gadd, Stephen
    ;
    Rees, Gethin
    ;
    Isaksen, Leif
    Peripleo is a prototype application for the discovery and spatial visualisation of collection data, originally an initiative of the Pelagios Network and developed early in 2022 as part of the British Library's Locating a National Collection project (LaNC). LaNC was a Foundation project within the AHRC-funded Towards a National Collection Programme. The main development code (https://github.com/britishlibrary/peripleo-lanc) can be found here alongside the template for producing your own version (https://github.com/britishlibrary/peripleo). The development code contains several of the project’s linked datasets structured in a variant of the Linked Places standard.
      4  5
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    Peripleo Linked Pasts tutorial
    (2022)
    Rees, Gethin
    ;
    Simon, Rainer
    ;
    Gadd, Stephen
    This is a tutorial in mapping cultural heritage and humanities data and making these available on the web using Peripleo software. Delivered as part of the Linked Pasts symposium on 23 Nov 2022, this document was provided as a handout. Peripleo is a prototype application for the discovery and spatial visualisation of collection data, originally an initiative of the Pelagios Network and developed early in 2022 as part of the British Library's Locating a National Collection project (LaNC). LaNC was a Foundation project within the AHRC-funded Towards a National Collection Programme. The main development code (https://github.com/britishlibrary/peripleo-lanc) can be found here alongside the template for producing your own version (https://github.com/britishlibrary/peripleo). The development code contains several of the project’s linked datasets structured in a variant of the Linked Places standard.
      4  4
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    Item type:Website,
    Locating a National Collection project website
    (2022)
    Gadd, Stephen
    ;
    Simon, Rainer
    ;
    Rees, Gethin
    ;
    Isaksen, Leif
    Project website for the Locating a National Collection (LaNC) project that houses instances of LaNC’s Peripleo maps interface alongside descriptive text (https://github.com/britishlibrary/locating-a-national-collection). The website was built using Joe Padfield’s simple-site, many thanks to him (https://github.com/jpadfield/simple-site). LaNC was a Foundation project within the AHRC-funded Towards a National Collection Programme.
      2  4
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    Item type:Report,
    Locating a National Collection/Research Bods qualitative findings summary
    (2021-05)
    Horgan, John
    The National Trust and The British Library, along with several cultural heritage partners, commissioned an audience research project to inform the development of an online history and heritage platform to provide broader access to the wealth of artefacts and resources from across the entire network of information providers. This report is the final output from a two-stage audience research programme aimed at understanding the key needs and drivers of engagement for an online platform to aid history and heritage exploration.
      6  3
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    Locolligo British Library tutorial
    (2023)
    Gadd, Stephen
    This explanation of how to transform and wrangle geographical cultural heritage and humanities data using Locolligo software. Delivered as part of the British Library’s internal ‘Hack and Yack’ training programme on 19 Jan 2023, this document was provided as a handout. Locolligo is a single-page, browser-based JavaScript application to facilitate the formatting, linking, and geolocation of datasets, with a particular focus on Cultural Heritage. It can be used on a standalone PC, tablet, or smartphone, without any dependency on a database or other server infrastructure; basic features will even work without an internet connection. More information on the tool and its creation can be found at: https://github.com/docuracy/Locolligo. This software was developed early in 2022 as part of the British Library's Locating a National Collection project (LaNC). LaNC was a Foundation project within the AHRC-funded Towards a National Collection Programme. The main development code can be found here (https://github.com/docuracy/Locolligo) alongside the template for producing your own version (https://github.com/britishlibrary/peripleo).
      2  3
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    Item type:Research report,
    Locating a National Collection (LaNC) Final Report
    (2022)
    Rees, Gethin
    ;
    Gadd, Stephen
    ;
    Horgan, John
    ;
    Hunt, Alex
    ;
    Isaksen, Leif
    Locating a National Collection helps cultural heritage organisations to use geographical information — such as where objects were made and used or the locations they depict and describe — to connect collections and engage the public. Through workshops, audience research and software development the project has developed a set of recommendations for using location to enhance the discovery of digital records across diverse collections. A set of thematic and technological case studies have connected site records from historic environment organisations with objects from galleries, libraries, archives and museums virtually. The Pelagios Network of researchers, scientists and curators has developed a methodology that uses geographical information to connect research data with considerable success. LaNC built on their methodology by exploring methods of accessible and meaningful presentation to the public in collaboration with the National Trust and Historic Royal Palaces. The engagement work package encompassed survey and focus groups to understand the attitudes, behaviour and motivations of audiences such as community groups, heritage visitors and schools towards cultural heritage and location-based technologies. Our infrastructure work package created two web apps: a curation tool, Locolligo, and a web-map interface that can be embedded in organisational websites, Peripleo. LaNC encourages cultural heritage organisations to take up a common approach to creating and presenting geographical information with the ultimate aim of spear-heading a movement beyond text-based searches in cultural heritage.
      4  10