The new training play entitled ‘Fighting Your Corner’ is available to download. The play draws on historical collections relating to previous conflicts in Afghanistan that have been digitised as part of the Serving Soldier project. The play is divided into eight scenes which can be viewed individually. An easy to view version will be available on YouTube shortly.
http://podcast.ulcc.ac.uk/accounts/kings/Afghan_performance.xml
Versions of each scene are also available:
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
Launch event and other news
20 November 2009 - A small launch event last night marked the beginning of the next phase in the development of Serving Soldier. Invited guests were shown the new website and enjoyed a preview of the podcast of ‘Fighting Your Corner’, the new training play written and produced by Spectrum Drama. Patricia Methven and Ludmilla Jordanova from the Project Board summarised progress so far.
Other news: Lianne Smith is currently adding metadata to new records - follow her progress in the project’s Twitter page; while stage two of the website development is under way, which will add more functionality and extra records.
Other news: Lianne Smith is currently adding metadata to new records - follow her progress in the project’s Twitter page; while stage two of the website development is under way, which will add more functionality and extra records.
Drama performance brings archives to life
19 November 2009 - The Serving Soldier project and Spectrum Drama recently delivered a thirty minute training drama at the Joint Services Command and Staff College at Shrivenham. The College is one of the main training centres for the British Army and also attracts a large overseas contingent who undergo training in the UK. The play is entitled ‘Fighting Your Corner’ and is based on first hand accounts including diaries, reports and personal testimonies from soldiers who fought in a series of British colonial engagements in the North West Frontier of India a century ago, and which have been digitised as part of the project.
The play is designed to assist the training of officers preparing to serve in Afghanistan or in peacekeeping operations elsewhere by highlighting historical parallels with current troubles. The play is divided into a number of self-contained scenes which can be incorporated into military seminars or classes, though the play is also suitable for more varied audiences including schools and universities, informing debate on such issues as the interaction of military and civilian populations, understanding cultural difference and the dangers of armchair diplomacy.
The performance is the second successful example of collaboration between the Archives and Spectrum: the company last year performed a play ‘Lost in the Field of Blackbirds’ based on archive sources and accounts of the conflicts in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, which was produced as part of the successful Lottery-backed ’Their Past Your Future’ initiative. The play aimed to stimulate debate on themes of reconciliation, trauma and the experience of the refugee in modern Europe and was performed at a number of London venues to audiences of young and old. A podcast and educational pack are available for download: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/archivespec/collections/Digital.aspx
Together, these initiatives aim to bring archives to life and engage new audiences with lively historical topics and issues. They also seek to stimulate fresh use of original archive material and bring together different academic disciplines by exploring innovative learning strategies using new technology.
Fighting Your Corner will be released shortly as a podcast and it is hoped will be incorporated into future military training initiatives at Shrivenham.
The play is designed to assist the training of officers preparing to serve in Afghanistan or in peacekeeping operations elsewhere by highlighting historical parallels with current troubles. The play is divided into a number of self-contained scenes which can be incorporated into military seminars or classes, though the play is also suitable for more varied audiences including schools and universities, informing debate on such issues as the interaction of military and civilian populations, understanding cultural difference and the dangers of armchair diplomacy.
The performance is the second successful example of collaboration between the Archives and Spectrum: the company last year performed a play ‘Lost in the Field of Blackbirds’ based on archive sources and accounts of the conflicts in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, which was produced as part of the successful Lottery-backed ’Their Past Your Future’ initiative. The play aimed to stimulate debate on themes of reconciliation, trauma and the experience of the refugee in modern Europe and was performed at a number of London venues to audiences of young and old. A podcast and educational pack are available for download: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/library/archivespec/collections/Digital.aspx
Together, these initiatives aim to bring archives to life and engage new audiences with lively historical topics and issues. They also seek to stimulate fresh use of original archive material and bring together different academic disciplines by exploring innovative learning strategies using new technology.
Fighting Your Corner will be released shortly as a podcast and it is hoped will be incorporated into future military training initiatives at Shrivenham.
Website launched
19 November 2009 - The new Serving Soldier website is available to view at: www.kcl.ac.uk/iss/archives/servingsoldier. The website showcases a selection of images and text including Field Marshal Alanbrooke’s Raj scrapbooks, photographs from the German Eastern Front in World War One, recruitmant posters from the Home Front, 1914-1918 and the early history of the motor car. Earthquake relief operations in Pakistan and journeys of discovery and cultural exploration also feature on the website.
The selection highlights the diversity and eclecticism of the military collections held in the Liddell Hart Centre which reflect the broad talents and accomplishments of servicemen and their families a century ago - not least as writers, artists, photographers and explorers. More images will be added shortly including stereoscopic photographs of the Western Front, tales of exploration from the Great Sand Sea, early aerial archaeology and Lawrence of Arabia’s private photograph albums. New functionality will allow users to zoom into documents and download copies for educational or personal use. Themed essays will help the visitor to learn more about this rich and varied collection.
The selection highlights the diversity and eclecticism of the military collections held in the Liddell Hart Centre which reflect the broad talents and accomplishments of servicemen and their families a century ago - not least as writers, artists, photographers and explorers. More images will be added shortly including stereoscopic photographs of the Western Front, tales of exploration from the Great Sand Sea, early aerial archaeology and Lawrence of Arabia’s private photograph albums. New functionality will allow users to zoom into documents and download copies for educational or personal use. Themed essays will help the visitor to learn more about this rich and varied collection.
Farming out metadata creation
12 August 2009 - Some consideration should be given to remote metadata creation if the available DAM system allows this. The workflow of this process requires careful thought - who is doing what and when; are guidance notes up to date; is contextual information available -for example the full names of people featured in images or approximate dates? How is the output checked and corrected?
A two stage process is recommended. Stage one is undertaken in-house with original material at hand. This involves the capture of unique annotations, accessioning information and staff knowledge acquired from creators or their families. Stage two focuses on providing keywords, adding controlled vocabulary terms and providing a basic description of the images concerned. Particular guidance is given on how detailed text/printed document pages are described to avoid over-description of narrative a user will be able to read for themselves or even freetext search if OCR has been applied successfully. Staff with a good general or historical knowledge are preferred to identify and recognise the significance of certain events, places or people. A good quality online catalogue is also an advantage in providing a shortcut to describe images adequately.
A two stage process is recommended. Stage one is undertaken in-house with original material at hand. This involves the capture of unique annotations, accessioning information and staff knowledge acquired from creators or their families. Stage two focuses on providing keywords, adding controlled vocabulary terms and providing a basic description of the images concerned. Particular guidance is given on how detailed text/printed document pages are described to avoid over-description of narrative a user will be able to read for themselves or even freetext search if OCR has been applied successfully. Staff with a good general or historical knowledge are preferred to identify and recognise the significance of certain events, places or people. A good quality online catalogue is also an advantage in providing a shortcut to describe images adequately.
Publishers
7 July 2009 - We’ve started looking for publishers of history materials who might want to use our digital archive as a resource. It has the potential to appeal to many subjects and areas of interest so we’re very keen to see how this project develops. With several reputable publishing companies following us on Twitter we can already see the potential.
Our database now holds over 11,000 images, the majority of which have their own metadata (the ones which do not are being completed at present). These span around 30 collections by seperate authors. Hopefully we will be getting some feedback from publishers who will point us towards the next stage of the project.
Our database now holds over 11,000 images, the majority of which have their own metadata (the ones which do not are being completed at present). These span around 30 collections by seperate authors. Hopefully we will be getting some feedback from publishers who will point us towards the next stage of the project.
Latest Flickr images
29 June 2009 - A new set of images has been added to our Flickr account. These are photographs from an album dating back to China in 1900 owned by LHD Campbell. The album features images of soldiers of different ranks from countries around the world - Italy, Russia, Japan, the United States and many more. All are shown in their respective uniforms and military attire.
As usual, the uploaded images are low res JPEGs created from the original TIF files. Feel free to look and tell us what you think.
www.flickr.com/photos/servingsoldier
As usual, the uploaded images are low res JPEGs created from the original TIF files. Feel free to look and tell us what you think.
www.flickr.com/photos/servingsoldier
Photo tagging and Flickr sets
12 June 2009 - Later today we should have our first photo sets live on Flickr. They have been watermarked, converted to low resolution JPEGs and are ready for upload. 75 tags are allowed for each image and we intend to make the best of these. Browsing the Top 100 Tags list on Flickr has given us some ideas.
One collection is of great historical and archaeological interest whereas the other is more light-hearted. The first is a set of photographs of the old crusader castles with notes on their history, taken by Lawrence of Arabia early in his career as an archaeologist. The second is a group of pictures of Charles Foulkes’ pet cats found in his albums. The ‘Foulkes’ Cats’ collection will be uploaded first and compiled as a set, then everything we learn about the system can be used to create the ‘Crusader Castles’ gallery. Fortunately, metadata for each image already exists on Brandworkz so this can be copied over to Flickr.
This is still at an experimental stage so we are all keen to see what kind of response we will get.
One collection is of great historical and archaeological interest whereas the other is more light-hearted. The first is a set of photographs of the old crusader castles with notes on their history, taken by Lawrence of Arabia early in his career as an archaeologist. The second is a group of pictures of Charles Foulkes’ pet cats found in his albums. The ‘Foulkes’ Cats’ collection will be uploaded first and compiled as a set, then everything we learn about the system can be used to create the ‘Crusader Castles’ gallery. Fortunately, metadata for each image already exists on Brandworkz so this can be copied over to Flickr.
This is still at an experimental stage so we are all keen to see what kind of response we will get.
Social Networking Sites and Digitisation Projects
10 June 2009 - As mentioned in our last posts The Serving Soldier is embracing web technology by creating accounts with Twitter and Flickr. The full potential of using these social networking sites has yet to be seen but already the response has been more than encouraging. Now we have a quick and easy way to stay in touch with the other projects set up by our funding body, as well as reaching archivists and historians throughout the world. It doesn’t stop there - we already have a number of publishing companies following us on Twitter and there are several interest groups on Flickr who will no doubt be keen to see our archived photographs. The fields provided for information and tagging will also grant us some searchable metadata on one of the largest social networking sites on the net.
Things certainly are busy for us at the moment!
Things certainly are busy for us at the moment!
Flickr
9 June 2009 -
Our Flickr account is now up and running. We have a few low resolution images available to view on our page and hope to have more uploaded in the near future.
http://www.flickr.com/people/servingsoldier/
http://www.flickr.com/people/servingsoldier/
2 June 2009 -
The Serving Soldier project now has its own page on Twitter.
Follow us at http://twitter.com/ServingSoldier
The Serving Soldier project now has its own page on Twitter.
Follow us at http://twitter.com/ServingSoldier
Creating Digital Photo Albums
6 April 2009 - One of our first challenges was deciding how to arrange the scans of Charles Foulkes’ photograph albums on Brandworkz. As every picture tells a story, each of these albums depicts an adventure to another world – from the villages of Nigeria to Paris
The albums are named by location and time period, with some covering up to four or five years of Foulkes’ life. On each page, the images form an eye-catching display and it is clear that a great deal of time and effort has gone into the arrangement. The author has written in his own captions to give the viewer some of the story behind the pictures. They are often arranged in a particular order to depict an individual journey or as part of a collection to create a portrait of life in a particular village. Some images are even placed together to form panoramic views – a groundbreaking technique that helped develop procedures for military photographic reconnaissance.It quickly becomes clear that this is a medium where the context of an image is as significant as the individual photograph.
With this in mind, we made the decision to retain high-resolution scans of the whole pages. We also agreed to scan these in colour despite the extra time this would take to process. These were saved to the shared drive without any alterations. We then used cropping tools to extract the photographs and used image and filter tools on Photoshop to restore these images as best as possible. Each photograph was then numbered (subdivided by author’s name, section, sub-section/album, page, number) and uploaded to Brandworkz.
We also needed to upload the pages in full – if possible, giving the viewer the experience of browsing the complete album. The problem was that the file sizes of the original high resolution scans were too large to upload. In the end, we created sub-folders for cropped versions of the original scans and converted these folders to PDF files. However, some of the larger albums will most likely have to be divided in two to accommodate the file size limits.
The albums are named by location and time period, with some covering up to four or five years of Foulkes’ life. On each page, the images form an eye-catching display and it is clear that a great deal of time and effort has gone into the arrangement. The author has written in his own captions to give the viewer some of the story behind the pictures. They are often arranged in a particular order to depict an individual journey or as part of a collection to create a portrait of life in a particular village. Some images are even placed together to form panoramic views – a groundbreaking technique that helped develop procedures for military photographic reconnaissance.It quickly becomes clear that this is a medium where the context of an image is as significant as the individual photograph.
With this in mind, we made the decision to retain high-resolution scans of the whole pages. We also agreed to scan these in colour despite the extra time this would take to process. These were saved to the shared drive without any alterations. We then used cropping tools to extract the photographs and used image and filter tools on Photoshop to restore these images as best as possible. Each photograph was then numbered (subdivided by author’s name, section, sub-section/album, page, number) and uploaded to Brandworkz.
We also needed to upload the pages in full – if possible, giving the viewer the experience of browsing the complete album. The problem was that the file sizes of the original high resolution scans were too large to upload. In the end, we created sub-folders for cropped versions of the original scans and converted these folders to PDF files. However, some of the larger albums will most likely have to be divided in two to accommodate the file size limits.
Colour vs Greyscale
17 March 2009 - A decision had to be made early on in The Serving Soldier on whether to scan photographic images in colour. The images in question were those of Major General Charles Howard Foulkes. Foulkes’ photograph albums span almost a lifetime in and out of military service and contain images gathered from around the globe, appealing to a broad range of academic interests. His subject matter varies greatly – from landscapes to human figures to the aftermath of war – demonstrating keen attention to detail and composition in each photograph. These date from the late nineteenth century to the post-war period of the twentieth century and provide fascinating insights into life and events around the world during this period of history.
Colour photography was, at the time, still relatively in its infancy. Each of Foulkes’ images was developed from glass plate negatives (many of which have survived and are held in archive) in black and white. As our equipment and software can produce high quality scans in greyscale this was considered as an option, particularly since this takes considerably less time than scanning in colour and we were aware of time limitations. On producing a number of ‘test scans’ at a resolution of 800dpi, the quality did prove to be acceptable. However, when the same images were scanned in colour at 800dpi the results were profoundly different. Rich sepia tones greatly enhanced the quality and aesthetical values of the photographs. There was also far more scope for fine-tuning and alterations using Photoshop software later on. Some of the prints were badly worn or damaged (presumably during development or by over-exposure to light). By spending time adjusting the saturation, contrast and brightness levels, these could be restored to their former glory. Such results were unachievable with the greyscale tests, which had a ‘washed out’ look by comparison. The decision was made to scan all photographs in colour from there on.
Our exhibition (currently on display in the Strand campus) demonstrates perfectly the benefits of colour scans. When viewing the display as a whole, a spectrum of subtle shades and hues is presented, providing a rich depth on a level we did not anticipate. This would most certainly have been lost had we settled on greyscale scans. We were also pleased to include several images that we had restored through Photoshop and would otherwise have been unable to put on display.
Charles Foulkes exhibition
20 February 2009 - The first part of Serving Soldier digitisation - the papers of Major General Charles Foulkes - is nearing completion. To mark the occasion, King’s College have created a small display of among his finest photography during a long career as a soldier and surveyor.
Foulkes (1875-1969), established the first Army photographic section during the Boer War, the precursor of the Army Film and Photographic Unit. Foulkes captured images of war and its aftermath, Empire and Commonwealth and local cultures and ethnography. Perhaps his most challenging photography involved surveillance and intelligence-gathering missions among the Boers. His collection includes detailed notes describing his subjects and working life.
The exhibition is available for view in the lobby outside the Great Hall of the College’s Strand Campus until the end of May. Online highlights will appear shortly.
Foulkes (1875-1969), established the first Army photographic section during the Boer War, the precursor of the Army Film and Photographic Unit. Foulkes captured images of war and its aftermath, Empire and Commonwealth and local cultures and ethnography. Perhaps his most challenging photography involved surveillance and intelligence-gathering missions among the Boers. His collection includes detailed notes describing his subjects and working life.
The exhibition is available for view in the lobby outside the Great Hall of the College’s Strand Campus until the end of May. Online highlights will appear shortly.
Welcome to new staff
28 January 2009 - Two new members of staff, Mary Canham and Lindsay Robertson, have joined the Serving Soldier team and will be reporting on progress in the coming months. They are have experience of digitisation, metadata and publishing.
ULCC testing
9 Jan 2009 - Pilot documents were submitted to the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC), a scanning unit based near Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. ULCC tested a variety of materials from the Foulkes collection such as fold-outs, inserts added at the page proof stage of pre-publication of books, and mixed media with typescript, manuscript and photographic material on the same page, all at different resolutions. The results of the pilot were positive, in particular the use of back lighting to reveal hidden text behind inserts.
The Serving Soldier
5 November 2008:
This summer, King’s College London’s Archives and Corporate Services successfully applied for funds from JISC to participate in the latest round of their Digitisation Programme. The programme aims to create and publish digital content that can be used by students and academics in the UK and internationally.
Archives’ project - The Serving Soldier - seeks to digitise around 22,000 items from the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, which has custody of more than 800 collections of material created by senior defence personnel throughout the twentieth century. Original material includes diaries, correspondence, photographs, maps and unpublished reports and memoranda covering the theme of war and peace, international relations and decolonialisation, among other themes.
The Serving Soldier will focus on the role of the soldier in a variety of contexts - as peacekeeper, negotiator, scientist, technical innovator and advocate of the rights of veterans. The project, which will be completed in September 2009, will publish content online to be used in graduate teaching programmes in the College’s Departments of War Studies, History and Defence Studies. The project will also explore the value of selective dramatisation of content as an aid to teaching.
Areas of enquiry to be explored by archivists and their academic colleagues include:
This summer, King’s College London’s Archives and Corporate Services successfully applied for funds from JISC to participate in the latest round of their Digitisation Programme. The programme aims to create and publish digital content that can be used by students and academics in the UK and internationally.
Archives’ project - The Serving Soldier - seeks to digitise around 22,000 items from the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, which has custody of more than 800 collections of material created by senior defence personnel throughout the twentieth century. Original material includes diaries, correspondence, photographs, maps and unpublished reports and memoranda covering the theme of war and peace, international relations and decolonialisation, among other themes.
The Serving Soldier will focus on the role of the soldier in a variety of contexts - as peacekeeper, negotiator, scientist, technical innovator and advocate of the rights of veterans. The project, which will be completed in September 2009, will publish content online to be used in graduate teaching programmes in the College’s Departments of War Studies, History and Defence Studies. The project will also explore the value of selective dramatisation of content as an aid to teaching.
Areas of enquiry to be explored by archivists and their academic colleagues include:
- How the lessons of the campaigns in the North West Frontier prior to Indian Independence can be made available to today’s serving soldier in Afghanistan.
- The changing role of the peacekeeper.
- The evolution of modern surveillance photography.
Pilot digitisation - HEDS
25 November 2008: I delivered two test albums to the Higher Education Digitisation Service at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, last week. The visit gave me the opportunity to inspect their facilities, including security arrangements, in order that a suitable service level agreement be drawn up between King’s College and HEDS. The visit highlighted two possible approaches to scanning of multi-asset albums - in this case a photograph album, each page of which contains between 4-8 images. The first entailed scanning the whole page at 300 dpi, before high resolution scanning by HEDS of those component images already selected by Archives staff as being of potential interest to academics. The second approach involves the high resolution scan of a whole page. Subsequent selection and publication of component images would take place in the Archives when necessary, on demand. Each approach has potential advantages and drawbacks which the test will highlight.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)