UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Beatrice Webb, co-founder of both the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Fabian movement, left a fascinating 70-year account of social upheaval and history in the diaries which have now been made freely available online to launch LSE’s digital library. UCLDH collaborated with this project since its early stages: Julianne Nyhan served on the project’s Advisory board and students on the DH MA/MSc programme carried out user testing of the site before it went live.

Two versions of the diaries went live last week: the actual manuscript as well as 8,000 pages of a transcribed version that is cross-referenced with the date fields indexed from
the manuscript version. Both versions can now be viewed side-by- side for comparison. The project, “Webbs on the Web”, was made possible with funding from the Webb Memorial Trust.
Sue Donnelly, head of archives at LSE, said:

Her diaries are remarkably rich. The style is very personal and often introspective but
she can be analytical and gossipy as well at times.

The diaries were chosen as the launch collection for the new LSE Digital Library. LSE is one of the first academic libraries to provide a
digital library, a service which is becoming more and more necessary due to the requirement to collect, preserve and provide access to digital material.
This is compounded by the popularity of social media today and its importance as a historical record, particularly to an institution like LSE.
Ed Fay, manager of the digital library, said:

It is a way of storing potentially anything in digital format. It allows us to archive books, photographs and maps but also blogs, podcasts, social media and
other forms of communication which are increasingly important in academic life. We don’t know exactly what the future will bring but we
needed to build our capacity to respond.

For more details on the digital library contact Ed Fay e.fay@lse.ac.uk
For more information on the content of the Webb diaries or other LSE archive collections contact Sue Donnelly s.donnelly@lse.ac.uk
To view the Webb diaries, visit LSE Digital Library at http://digital.library.lse.ac.uk

Claire Ross has won the student category of the Provost’s Awards for Public Engagement.

There is a guest blog post by Hilary Jackson (UCL Public Engagement Unit) on the student blog.

On 5 December I gave a presentation at the National Committee for Information Resources on Asia conference at the British Library.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) set up a Fast Track for ccTLDs (country code Top Level Domains) in November 2009.

These include IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names), Internet addresses in non-Latin scripts, e.g. http://실례.테스트.

The ICANN board voted for IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names) in June 2011. There will be a big bang of gTLDs (generic Top Level Domains) in late 2012 or early 2013. Applications for this first round need to be made officially by April 12 2012 (but more safely by March 29).

Why is UCL interested?

• Put UCL and SOAS together and you have the world’s leading centre of linguistic expertise.
• The New gTLD Programme will be a catalyst for the development of the Internet.
• There are legal implications e.g. trademarks.
• There are opportunities for new businesses both legal and otherwise!
  • New gTLD program on: www.icann.org
  • The Applicant Guidebook: newgtlds.icann.org

Further information

Dr Caroline Bressey (Human Geography and Equiano Centre) and I have received Pioneer Award funding to investigate the Black and Asian presence at UCL in its early years.

As well as conducting research, we will stage an exhibition and hold some writing and art workshops during Black History Month 2012.

More details on the UCL DIS staff blog.

Image: UCL Library Services Special Collections. Used with permission.

We are delighted to announce that over the summer months several students will be completing voluntary internships at UCLDH.

As well as assisting us in three of our projects, the internship programme gives us the opportunity to provide inhouse training on TEI. Julianne Nyhan, Teaching Fellow in Digital Humanities and member of the TEI Council, has developed the programme of activities, and the first sessions, in which interns have been encoding data for the Day of Digital Humanities have already taken place.

Our summer interns are Inga Jones, Eunhae Jung, May Warren and Francine Wood, who are all students on the  MA LIS programme.