{"id":2413,"date":"2022-01-30T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2022-01-30T17:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=2413"},"modified":"2025-09-12T11:23:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T15:23:51","slug":"access-books-and-digital-collections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2022\/01\/30\/access-books-and-digital-collections\/","title":{"rendered":"Access, Books, and Digital Collections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the things I\u2019ve learnt from a few years teaching students how to \u2018read\u2019 a digital instantiation of a book is that without some knowledge of the wider context of that digitization \u2013 the platform, database, collection, or archive \u2013 it can be difficult to understand why the way digitized books look the way they do. This worksheet enables students to begin to learn what\u2019s involved in the digitization of books. In particular, it aims to help students explore the various legal, technological, and economic factors involved in the creation of large-scale digital collections; and also the cultural contexts of representation and access against the hype of universal knowledge. The in-class task, a paper prototype of a digital archive, works particularly well to bring home the difficult choices between sometimes contradictory factors involved in real-life digitizations.  The session is part of a second-year undergraduate module entitled \u2018Literature and Digital Culture\u2019, following on from discussions in previous weeks about the digital medium, the digital divide and information privilege, and the representation of gender, race, sexuality, and intersectionality in Wikipedia articles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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PART ONE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Please read (see reading list below)<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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  1. On the \u2018universal library\u2019: EITHER Paul Hammond, chapter three; OR Marilyn Deegan & Kathryn Sutherland, chapter five. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Intersectionality and access: ONE of these: Amy Earhart \/ Jacqueline Wernimont & Julie Flanders \/ Adeline Koh.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
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    How to read a digitisation<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    The questions below will help your digital literacy and will enable you to assess the differences between digital collections of books. This involves a bit of detective work, since some collections don\u2019t give full information about themselves, or make it difficult to find: just try to find out as much as you can. Some of this information you might be able find by browsing the archive website (for example, look for pages labelled \u2018About\u2019, \u2018History\u2019, \u2018FAQs\u2019). Don\u2019t worry if you are not be able to answer all these questions in relation to your chosen archive: this itself might be significant in relation to the question of access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    1. Is it a standalone collection or a collection that is accessed via a platform? (e.g. Jisc Historical Texts or Gale Primary Sources are platforms that give access to multiple individual collections or archives).<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    2. Try reading and\/or downloading material to get a feel for each site. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
    3. Is it paywalled (e.g. via our library), or free to access? Is it commercial or scholarly? What kind of organisation is it? How is it funded or supported?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    4. How is it digitised? Is it images or text, or both? Are the images colour or b&w? If it has text, how was the text created? Was it transcribed (copied by hand), or created by automated software (OCR)? Was it edited?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    5. Does it tell you about the original source of the material (the library or archive in which the physical copy is held)? Does it give you any other details about the individual books or materials?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    6. Is there any information about the copyright status of the book images or text? <\/li>\n\n\n\n
    7. Is it delimited (e.g. by genre, period, geography, nationality, etc)? Does it tell you how the material was selected?<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    8. What terms, language, or imagery does the collection use to describe its ethos or aims?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
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      Choose one collection from these:<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n