JISC News Web Feed

Recommendations for systems join-up could make finding research easier

n.yeeles@jisc.ac.uk (nicolayeeles) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:01:37 GMT

A JISC funded study is making recommendations to help people find university research outputs through better integration of library catalogues, research repositories and other university systems.

The JISC-funded ‘Online catalogue and repository interoperability study’ carried out by the Centre for Digital Library Research at the University of Strathclyde suggests that although there is overlap between the types of information resources recorded in library catalogues and repositories, these overlaps are rarely apparent to the information seeker. This is because both types of system need to be searched separately as there is no interlinking.

Barriers between systems arise not only for technical reasons but also because they are often based in different departments of the university.

Practical advice for universities looking to make improvements in this area include:

Improving co-ordination between the departments responsible for institutional information systems to reduce duplication of effort and increase the efficiency of workflows
Making it clear to the information seeker what types of information the library catalogue and the digital repository each cover
Describing the same types of resources consistently in the library catalogue and digital repository
Improving the consistency and quality of subject descriptors, classification and author naming in digital repositories and using the same standards for these as the library catalogue as far as possible

One further solution might be the increasing use of ‘resource discovery platforms’ now available from some library systems suppliers. These are systems which can provide a means of searching across the local library catalogue and digital repository together, although the study considers them a partial solution to such combined searching.

This raises some bigger questions for universities such as: is the research repository now a core information system for my institution? If it is, why would we benefit from integrating it more with other university information systems?

Ben Wynne, Information Environment Programme Manager at JISC, says: “While the study suggests ways that repositories could be better integrated with library catalogues and other university information systems in the future, doing so is not easy. This raises some bigger questions for universities such as: is the research repository now a core information system for my institution? If it is, why would we benefit from integrating it more with other university information systems? JISC’s related study on research repositories and research management systems provides some specific pointers for universities looking to engage with these issues.”

The study included questionnaires aimed at library IT, repository and research managers as well as case studies from two large research intensive universities.

Its findings support those of the recent JISC funded study which explored the links between repositories and research management systems.

This report comes against a wider background in which ways of ‘joining up’ access to academic information resources across library catalogues, digital repositories and publishers’ electronic services is being explored by JISC, SCONUL and others through such initiatives such as the SCONUL shared services feasibility study for library systems

For information about the related JISC study into the links between repositories and research management systems, visit the project website.

Download the report

Podcast & Press Release: Charlie Leadbeater to open JISC online e-Learning conference

h.peebles@jisc.ac.uk (hectorpeebles) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:10:16 GMT

He was ranked one of the top 30 management thinkers in the world by Accenture in 2005 and in 2007 as the outstanding innovation expert in the UK by the Financial Times.

Now Charlie Leadbeater, one of the most influential creative people in the world and adviser to companies, cities and governments, is set to open JISC’s Innovating e-Learning conference, alongside other expert keynote speakers from the world of e-learning: Nigel Paine (former head of training and development at the BBC), Helen Beetham (e-learning advisor to JISC), Rhona Sharpe (consultant at Oxford Brookes University) and Peter Bradwell (researcher at Demos). JISC’s fourth annual online conference on 24-27 November 2009 is focussing this year on the theme of ‘Thriving, not just surviving’ to reflect the challenges facing colleges and universities in the 21st century – particularly important in the current economic climate as institutions are being asked to do more for less. Sarah Knight, e-learning programme manager at JISC, says: “This year’s online conference is promising to be our best yet. We have a superb line-up of internationally recognised speakers in the world of e-learning with engaging content to stimulate some excellent discussion.”

This year the conference showcases a number of new areas for delegates to experience and explore. In the Have-a-go area, delegates will try out innovative new technologies demonstrated by JISC services, and projects, with guided tours around Second Life from JISC’s regional support centre staff.For booking and further information, visit the conference website

The debate feature, entitled ‘Do educational institutions have a future?’, is already stimulating discussion among delegates, many of whom have posted videos and blog entries on the topic, and will be led by experts during the conference.

The online nature of the event means delegates can access the whole conference from the comfort of their own desk, with no special equipment needed beyond a computer and some time, and can revisit sessions as often as they like afterwards, while enjoying ongoing access to the information and resources on offer.

Sarah suggests: “My top tip for making the most of the conference is for delegates to use the reading week to browse the sessions and identify the ones they particularly have an interest in and want to follow closely during the conference. We look forward to welcoming everyone online when we open the conference for the reading week on the 17th November.”

For more details on how to get the most from the online conference, and how it works, listen to the full podcast interview with blogger James Clay of Gloucestershire College.

Podcast: Getting to grips with the Innovating e-Learning online conference
(Duration 5:58)
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT

Visitors to the conference will find resources under two themes to help them navigate the wealth of information and interactions at their disposal: ‘finding the way’ and ‘meeting the challenge’. ‘Finding the way’ focuses on exploring guiding principles for technology-enhanced learning and teaching. ‘Meeting the challenge’ looks at the integration of technology-mediated practice under specific agendas such as meeting the needs of employers, developing sustainable and external-facing strategies for curriculum development and engaging stakeholders in the design of learning spaces.

Last year’s delegate list topped 400 and included representatives from 14 countries, making this a particularly ‘green’ way to hold an event.

For booking and further information, visit the conference website.

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Siegfried Sassoon collection launches online

n.yeeles@jisc.ac.uk (nicolayeeles) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:43:45 GMT

JISC and Oxford University are marking this year’s Armistice by launching the first ever online collection of the manuscripts of Siegfried Sassoon, focusing on his war poetry.

This is the first time these have gone online and they present a comprehensive collection of his war poetry, reassembled from collections across the world.

The work, which will be freely accessible online, will be part of Oxford University’s First World War poetry digital archive, which is funded by JISC. This enables online users to view over 12,000 previously unseen materials such as poetry manuscripts, letters, and original diary entries from some of the conflict’s most important poets including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and Vera Brittain.

The latest extension to the archive will add to the Edmund Blunden collection, which was launched to great acclaim a few months ago.

The launch will also mark the first anniversary of the Archive, which began on Armistice Day last year in conjunction with the Great War archive and has been a phenomenal success.

Ben Showers, JISC digitisation programme officer, says: "Building upon last year's success, JISC's funding has enabled the creation of an invaluable resource for teachers, students, researchers and the general public. As one of the most complete and important online collections of World War One poetry, the Sassoon manuscripts help further highlight the significance of this collection to audiences around the world."

Highlights of the new Sassoon collection include manuscript variants of his key war poetry anthologies The Old Huntsman (1917), Counter-Attack (1918), and Picture Show (1919). Highlights of the new Sassoon collection include manuscript variants of his key war poetry anthologies The Old Huntsman (1917), Counter-Attack (1918), and Picture Show (1919).

Director of the archive, Dr Stuart Lee said: “Siegfried Sassoon ranked alongside Wilfred Owen as the most widely read of all of the poets of the First World War. He is an important addition to the archive. Technology has enabled us to virtually reassemble Sassoon's manuscripts, which for years have been dispersed across the UK and USA, so they are now freely available for any one to read.

“It is fascinating being able to see the corrections and crossings-out he made to the manuscripts, invaluable to researchers studying the literature of the War, and provides a rich resource to enhance both teaching and learning of the period."

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886-1967) served, for the most part, on the Western Front in the Royal Welch Fusiliers (the same regiment as Robert Graves). In reaction to what he witnessed there - especially at the Somme - he produced some of the most damning and critical poetry of the war, culminating in his 'declaration' which saw him narrowly avoiding a court-martial and instead being sent to Craiglockhart hospital with 'neurasthenia' (shell shock). It was here that he met fellow patient and poet Wilfred Owen, forming one of the most important literary relationships of the twentieth-century.

Lord Max Egremont, Sassoon's biographer, said: “As Siegfried Sassoon’s biographer, I greatly welcome The First War Poetry Digital Archive. It is a very important contribution to scholarship and to the dissemination of what we know about some of the major war poets.

“To see such impressive images of these original manuscripts of poems and letters is both moving and salutary – a reminder of the poets’ ordeal and the power of their writing. It seems to me to be a remarkable achievement to have assembled all this material – and then to have selected what is shown so judiciously. I am certain that this digital archive will add greatly to the knowledge and appreciation of the poets’ work.”

The University also launched the groundbreaking Great War Archive digitisation project which encouraged members of the public to digitally capture, submit, catalogue and assign usage rights to material they owned originating from the First World War, in addition to the Poetry collection.

The response was huge with 6,500 items submitted and almost 2,000 feeds to an additional Flickr site set up due to the great demand once the date for submissions had passed. Most of these items were previously unseen, other than by their owners and as the First World War moves further away, were at risk of being lost forever. This is the first time crowd-sourcing has been used to create a digital archive in this area and has become a model for other projects - with the Oxford team receiving requests for advice on setting up similar initiatives from around the world.

The collections have proved useful to academics, teachers and students, as well as interested members of the public. They are surrounded by online teaching resources for Key stages and Further and Higher Education. But they have also become another tool in family and local history and genealogy. Since its launch the Oxford team has united distant family members who have searched the archive for information on their ancestors.

Visit the Sassoon collection

JISC receives award for federated access management work

n.yeeles@jisc.ac.uk (nicolayeeles) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:35:32 GMT

JISC received an international award today for its work in federated access management in the UK at the Educause conference in Denver.

The catalyst award is intended to recognize technology innovation and initiatives that provide groundbreaking solutions to major challenges in higher education, or change prevailing conditions in remarkable ways so as to allow new solutions to be arranged.

Federation Services Manager at JISC, Nicole Harris, who accepted the award on JISC’s behalf, said: “The award really shows how far access management has come, with parts of the UK experience considered so embedded that they have become informative history.”

Educause is a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.

Julie Little, Educause senior director of teaching, learning and professional development, said: “This year the catalyst award recognizes a complex, far-reaching web of initiatives that has had broad impact on higher education and its partners in less than a decade.

The ultimate goal of federated identity systems is to allow users of one domain to securely access data or systems of another domain seamlessly, without the need for them to change their password or do other administrative work.“Although many federal identity management organizations exist, we wish to identify several with this award to represent the field as a whole and acknowledge their work as representative of the many organizations that manage federated identity systems worldwide.”

However, there is also a need to protect the user’s privacy, so this has spurred the development of open-source software and work on standards. As a result, a federated approach was adopted by many countries as a basis for advancing their infrastructure to support 21st-century research, education and collaboration.

Earlier this year, JISC launched new infrastructure to lead the colleges and universities towards more effective access management. To use the new system, institutions and service providers need to join the UK Access Management Federation for Education and Research, which is run by JANET(UK) on behalf of JISC and Becta.

Read about JISC's work in this area

Read the Access Management team's blog

Animation of the Federated Access Management

Mapping the needs of a generation

n.yeeles@jisc.ac.uk (nicolayeeles) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:49:34 GMT

Interim findings of major study of doctoral researchers indicate urgent need for libraries and universities to develop their understanding of ‘Generation Y’.

Emerging findings from a major three-year research study into the information-seeking behaviour of doctoral students have highlighted the need for far greater understanding of the generation born between 1982 and 1994 – commonly dubbed Generation Y. Researchers of Tomorrow was commissioned by the British Library and JISC to establish a benchmark for research behaviour, against which future generations can be measured

Researchers of Tomorrow was commissioned by the British Library and JISC to establish a benchmark for research behaviour, against which future generations can be measured – and also to provide guidance for librarians and information specialists on how best to meet the research needs of Generation Y scholars.

Earlier this year 70 full-time doctoral students at UK colleges and universities were recruited for a longitudinal study of their research habits during the course of the next three years. The study will investigate their research habits in digital and physical environments, as well as their use of resources both off- and online.

The longitudinal study will be supported by a number of surveys to establish the wider context of the doctoral research landscape. The first of these surveys has just been completed; it surveyed a representative sample of all doctoral students in the UK and yielded a number of significant interim findings.

Information format Three quarters of Generation Y students – more than those in any other age group – found the information they sought in an e-journal article
Emergent technology Only a small proportion of respondents (10-30%) in any age group say they use ‘emergent technology’ – such as wikis, virtual research environments, social networking and other Web 2.0 applications – in their research, Of those that do use them, more generally find them useful in their research than not
Help and advice Fewer Generation Y students than other age groups say they regularly use library staff support to find research resources (11% of Generation Y compared to an average of 17% for other age groups), or take advice from subject specialist librarians (4% compared to 9% average). More Generation Y respondents (46%) than any other age group turn to their fellow students and/or supervisors for support in using emergent technologies
Location of work Compared to other age groups, more Generation Y researchers work from a dedicated or shared office space (or laboratory or studio) (40%), than work from their own home (39%).

See Researchers of Tomorrow

68 colleges and universities around the UK collaborated with the distribution of the wider ‘context-setting’ survey, and a total of 6562 questionnaires were returned. This excellent response rate provides a detailed and nation-wide snapshot of doctoral research across all types of education providers.

Joanna Newman, the British Library’s Head of Higher Education, said, “The interim findings of the Researchers of Tomorrow study provide a fascinating snapshot of current research behaviour of doctoral students. It’s perhaps surprising that so few researchers in the 21-27 range really use the wide range of Web 2.0 applications for research or collaborative working. And when it comes to emergent technology, they’re more likely to seek the advice of their peers or supervisors than librarians or information specialists – a finding that could suggest a need for professionals to rethink how best to deliver advice and support in this area.”

Charles Hutchings, JISC’s market research manager, said, “Of those students who have used advanced technologies in their research 27 per cent have received no advice or guidance at all or they self-help for instance using online guides and manuals. This could be because these technologies are being underused and undervalued, due to a lack of understanding of the benefit they can deliver during the research process. As the study continues it will be interesting to see if this is true.”

The study is being conducted by Education for Change, in association with The Research Partnership, and builds on the study by CIBER of the Google Generation, which was published by the British Library and JISC in January 2008.

Joanna Newman concluded: “Although it’s still early days with this project, we’re already uncovering some fascinating detail about how doctoral research behaviours are evolving – some of which throw into question some of the key assumptions often made about Generation Y in particular. The three-year longitudinal study that began this September will add much concrete detail to our understanding of researchers’ changing needs and, once complete, will help inform and guide research support over the coming decade.”

Have your say about the JISC website: survey launched

k.down@jisc.ac.uk (kerrydown) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:14:33 GMT

We need help from the JISC user community to be able to make our website better. This year we’ve made some changes to the JISC website. You can now customise your JISC homepage, search for publications in a new way, navigate via topics, see the ‘most read’ content, and search for information across all of our JISC Services sites using the JISC search box.

We’d like to get your feedback on these changes through a survey and user testing so that we can improve the website even further.

Survey

Give us your views by completing our short survey. You also have the option to enter our prize draw to win a £30 Amazon voucher. The survey (8 questions) should only take about 10-15 minutes.

User testing

Enter our prize draw to win a £30 Amazon voucher

We're looking for volunteers to take part in usability testing of the JISC website, particularly if you're based in London, Oxford, Birmingham or Manchester. If you're chosen to take part in the testing, you'll earn £40 for your help. Sign up at the end of the survey and remember to fill in your contact details too.

Closing date Friday 4 December 2009

Complete the survey

Virtual trenches immerse students in First World War poetry

n.yeeles@jisc.ac.uk (nicolayeeles) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:41:47 GMT

With Armistice Day fast approaching a JISC project team has taken an unusual approach to ensuring that people continue to learn about the First World War.

The First World War Poetry Digital Archive and the Learning Technologies Group at Oxford University have collaborated on an exciting new project in the 3D virtual world Second Life to simulate areas of the Western Front 1914-18. The team believes this is the first time anything of its type has been done on Second Life.

This project, which is funded by JISC, has arranged a range of digitised archival materials like poetry manuscripts, letters and diaries from the major poets of the First World War including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg and Vera Brittain, along with contextual primary source materials. These materials have been supplemented with new interpretative content and a spectrum of interactive tools and tutorials, streaming video and audio effects.

Watch the video to explore the virtual trenches and find out more

JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT

The artefacts have been drawn from the highly successful First World War Poetry Digital Archive, launched in 2009 to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of the war. By placing them in an online virtual model the project aims to make the collection more useful and engaging to a range of different user groups across UK education sectors, research communities and the heritage industry.

Ben Showers, digitisation programme officer at JISC, said: “The First World War Digital Poetry Archive is constantly pushing the boundaries of what it means to be an academic archive, and now users are able to interact with the collections and materials. JISC funding for this additional virtual environment means students, researchers and everyone interested in this material can collaborate and become immersed in the world of the Western Front to experience the immediate context of these manuscripts and poems like never before.”

Visitors to the virtual trenches are given a unique immersive experience where they can explore a training camp, dressing station, a trench network and No Man’s Land. The terrain is waterlogged and difficult to navigate, rife with rats and littered with poppies. Moving nearer to the front line the clamour of shell blasts and artillery fire becomes louder and louder.

Dr Stuart Lee, lecturer in English at Oxford University, said: “Attempting to form the context of a particular piece of literature is a key critical approach in the discipline, which normally involves studying secondary material, or in rare case, site visits. By piloting the use of Second Life, the First World War Poetry Archive is approaching this in an innovative way. More importantly it is showing how new technologies (virtual worlds) can be utilised to provide more interesting access to key research and teaching resources.”

As guests explore the simulation, they can listen to the voices of veterans recounting their experiences of the war, watch original film footage from the time, and learn about life on the Western Front. Within this context they can encounter some of the most powerful poetry in English literature by handling the original manuscripts, turning the pages of the poet’s war diaries and letters, and listening to readings.

At the end the visitor is teleported out of the trenches to a teaching area. Here they are asked to consider the memory of the war, and to confront their own prejudices and stereotypes - was the war really all about trenches, mud, and rats, or are their other aspects to it that we now need to consider? Should it only be remembered as mass slaughter, a gross act of futility, or more a collective act of unparalleled heroism that ended ultimately in a victory for Britain and its allies?

Kate Lindsay, project manager, said: “Virtual worlds create opportunities to do things that are impossible in real museums. By simulating parts of the Western Front, we can embed an entire exhibition's worth of content within in the space. This can be further enhanced by placing digital versions of real archival materials and narratives along the paths that visitors take. The result is an immersive and personal experience. It's not 'real' but it does offer possibilities for understanding a part of history that is now beyond human memory."

Explore the virtual Western Front in Second Life

Find out more about the project

See JISC's Getting started in second life guide

Podcast: Minister David Lammy speaks to JISC about the new HE Framework - Higher Ambitions

h.peebles@jisc.ac.uk (hectorpeebles) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:25:35 GMT

In 2008 John Denham, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills launched a consultation called the HE Debate, to seek expert thinking, fresh ideas and comments on the future of higher education for the next ten to fifteen years.

Today, the new HE Framework - Higher Ambitions was launched by David Lammy (Minister of State for Higher Education) and in this podcast interview with JISC’s Rebecca O’Brien, he explains the Government’s vision of the future for UK higher education and shares his thoughts on the future of learning, teaching and research.

Listen to the podcast (Duration 9:13)
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT

Find out more about JISC’s work in online learning

Find out more about JISC’s open education resources programme

Read the Government’s announcement on the HE Framework - Higher Ambitions

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Commercial radio archive online for the first time

n.yeeles@jisc.ac.uk (nicolayeeles) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:12:50 GMT

The UK’s first online commercial radio sound archive has been launched with JISC funding, preserving over 5,000 searchable recordings including the first hour of UK commercial radio in 1973, coverage of five UK general elections and the end of apartheid.

The collection is available online for researchers, lecturers and students at the LBC / Independent Radio News (IRN) radio news audio archive which gives access to the catalogue and audio of reports filed by some of the UK’s leading journalists including Jon Snow, the late Carol Barnes and Dickie Arbiter.

Thanks to funding from JISC of just over £760,000, the Centre for Broadcasting History based at Bournemouth University has spent the last three years digitising the noteworthy radio dating from 1973 up to the mid-1990's.

Paola Marchionni, JISC digitisation programme manager said: “I'm particularly proud of what this project has achieved and the many challenges it has overcome in curating and making accessible this material. Audio recordings are still relatively little used in research, teaching and learning. The JISC funding for this archive contributes to broadening the pool of resources available to researchers and students not only in media disciplines but also relevant to the study of society, history, politics and popular culture.” The Centre for Broadcasting History based at Bournemouth University has digitised noteworthy radio dating from 1973 up to the mid-1990's

Making the 7,000 reels of tape available online has been the role of the British Universities Film and Video Council (BUFVC) which has extensive experience in the online delivery of moving image and sound.

Professor Sean Street, project director and director of BU’s Centre for Broadcasting History said: “This is the most important commercial radio archive in the UK and provides a unique audio history of the period. We are extremely grateful to JISC without whom none of this would have been possible.

“As well as turning previously inaccessible material into a web-based archive for all, this project places key material within a teaching and research environment where it can be exploited for future knowledge,” he continued.

Among the 4,000 hours of radio are a number of historic events covered by LBC/IRN including:

The first hour of UK commercial radio including the first commercial radio news bulletin
Broadcasts of the Falklands War, the miners’ strike and Northern Ireland
The live reporting of UK election results from five general elections, giving a unique sense of the political shaping of the country
News related to the whole of the Thatcher government
The whole of the 'Decision Makers' series 1974-86: weekly 30-minute programmes of political and current affairs analysis which provide a unique insight into politics and its reportage within the UK at the time
State President PW Botha’s speech at the opening of the South African parliament in which he announced that the era of apartheid was over, with political and journalistic analysis of this event

Commercial radio in Britain was launched in October 1973 when IRN and its sister organisation the LBC were granted their licences. A joint LBC / IRN archive of programmes and news items was established and this, together with its catalogue, constitutes the contents of the archive.

Jonathan Richards Programme Director of LBC 97.3 added, “It is only right that the UK’s first commercial radio station has its proud history preserved in this fashion for future generations to learn from. The current staff of broadcasters and producers know they are building on the excellence of the past, and remain proud of the LBC’s rich heritage. I wish to pay tribute to Professor Sean Street and his team at Bournemouth University for this invaluable resource.”

The archive was unveiled by internationally-acclaimed broadcaster, radio historian and academic, Professor Seàn Street, at the Radio Centre in London.

He said: “This was at a time before the Broadcasting Act of 1990 which brought significant change to the structure of British broadcasting. The change in commercial radio since this period is extraordinary. It is impossible for the young student of radio, born since this time, to imagine that such independently funded radio could have existed. As a result, it is vitally important that these programmes be preserved, as part of the evolving history of post-war British broadcasting.

“This archive forms an important part of the history of radio broadcasting since it provides an alternative source of radio journalism and news and current affairs broadcasts to the BBC’s own collection,” he concluded.

Find out more about the project

Visit the archive

Culture change in Asia tracked through new online archive

n.yeeles@jisc.ac.uk (nicolayeeles) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:53:31 GMT

Rare images showing rituals, festivals and everyday life for isolated tribes in the Himalayas are to be preserved online by JISC and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) for the benefit of researchers, teachers and students.

Highlights among the 10,000 images include rich textiles and jewellery of the Nagas and the shaman-led rituals and acrobatics of the Apatani tribe.

These extraordinary moments were photographed by a professor of anthropology at SOAS, Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf (1909-1995), who studied tribal cultures in South Asia and the Himalayas from the 1930’s to the 1980’s.

His photographic collection consists of more than 20,000 images of which approximately half, from India and Nepal, are now online for people to browse, download and use non-commercially free of charge.

Digitisation programme officer at JISC, Ben Showers, says: “Life has now changed forever for the tribes that Fürer-Haimendorf photographed, but JISC is safeguarding these collective memories held in the images of the rituals, events and cultural interactions. This open archive will allow researchers and students working far into the future to have online access to some of these hugely significant moments.”

Visitors to the archive will find a host of resources to guide them through the collection, including biographies, maps, background on the different tribes, and an interview with the photographer, as well as a comprehensive search facility.

The online archive is the first digitisation project of SOAS's new Centre for Digital Africa, Asia and the Middle East, created in part to make the invaluable archives of the school more widely available. Digitisation is essential for the preservation of fragile material and to give researchers online access to rare or difficult-to-access books, manuscripts, photographs, sound and film recordings.

Stuart Blackburn, the SOAS Centre’s academic coordinator, says: “At a time when tribal cultures are undergoing rapid change, including religious conversion and language loss, these photographs of Fürer-Haimendorf are a valuable resource for the study of change and continuity. From my experience in the area, I know that the tribal peoples themselves, many of whom have computers, will find these images endlessly fascinating.”

After 12 months of archiving, an open day celebrating the launch will take place at SOAS on Friday 30 October.

Launch event

The launch event for the online archive will include lectures, discussions and an evening reception at which the online collection will be officially opened.

It will be held from 10 am to 6.30 pm on 30 October at SOAS's Brunei Gallery Thornhaugh St., London WC1H 0XG.

Visit the archive