CDCS Director is Co-Investigator in AHRC ‘Towards A National Collection’ Project
Researchers based at the University of Edinburgh are contributing to a large-scale research project, as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s ‘Towards a National Collection’ programme. Director of CDCS, Professor Melissa Terras, is one of the co-investigators. The project, which also involves co-investigators based at The National Gallery, The National Portrait Gallery and the British Library, seeks to develop a common infrastructure for sharing high quality images from heritage collections and sites.
The project will explore and demonstrate the possibilities of the International Interoperability Framework (IIIF) to support the dissemination of digital and digitised heritage images for research and engagement. IIIF represents a flexible, standard approach to providing reliable access to such images. However, a better understanding of how to combine resources across multiple institutions, and present a National Collection to diverse audiences, is needed. Project aims will be achieved through a series of targeted workshops and surveys, along with the creation of pilot demonstrators.
Towards a National Collection is a five-year research programme which aims to make the UK’s museum, library and heritage collections increasingly discoverable as a unified ‘virtual collection’ for researchers and public audiences. The programme aims to have a transformative impact on digital search and cataloguing tools for collections, related technologies and methodologies, research capability, and public access and engagement with heritage. Programme projects are intended to demonstrate the value of unifying collections across types and geographies, and to create public-facing outputs for large-scale audiences across the UK.