Digital Preservation Coalition

RLUK

Excerpt from DPC Annual Report 2008-2009

The 19th Century Pamphlets Online project was sponsored by Research Libraries UK (RLUK), funded by JISC and led by the University of Southampton. Other partners included JSTOR, Mimas, and the Universities of Bristol, Durham, Liverpool, LSE, Manchester, Newcastle and UCL.

The overall aim of the project was to provide researchers, teachers and learners with online access to significant collections of 19th century pamphlets held within UK research libraries. In order to achieve this aim, the project drew on the pamphlet holdings of seven research libraries (Bristol, Durham, Liverpool, LSE, Manchester, Newcastle and UCL), choosing collections that focused on the political, social and economic issues of the day. The project scanned these collections within the University of Southampton Library’s specialist BOPCRIS Digitisation Centre and then sent the datasets to JSTOR for archiving and delivery via their online publishing platform. Mimas enabled links to the digitised pamphlets to be added to the national Copac catalogue and to local library catalogues. A supporting website was developed to hold information about the collections and educational resources to support researchers, teachers and students.

The 19th Century Pamphlets Online project sought to build on previous work and expertise. It followed on from a large retrospective cataloguing project, which included many of the same partners and was also sponsored by RLUK. Metadata created within this previous project was extended and linked to the digitised pages and text. The project drew on the considerable digitisation experience of BOPCRIS, the delivery platform of JSTOR, and existing resource discovery channels available via JSTOR and Mimas (such as Google Scholar and Copac).

In addition to building on the past, the project was concerned to leave a good legacy for the future.

A problem facing large consortia digitisation projects is how to preserve and sustain the resources they create. Which of the many partners will take on this responsibility? How will it be paid for? To address this problem, the UK partners chose to enter into a long (25 year) agreement with JSTOR over the care and delivery of the collection. JSTOR would preserve the data and make it available free of charge to UK users, and it would pay for this by making the content available on commercial terms to others.

Over the course of two years the project succeeded in scanning 26,041 unique pamphlets (1,000,732 pages) and ensuring their effective online delivery and discovery. Despite undertaking much research and planning prior to its commencement, the project inevitably faced challenges and changes. It was able to respond to these in a flexible and adaptive way, drawing on the strengths within the consortium and the trust that had been established between partners.

Although the main aim of the project was the production of content, it also had research and development components, and there was much learned and created through the project, which will benefit partners and the wider community of resource providers and users.