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Projects
Project work is a very important element of the Library's remit, with the focus on collection care and enhancing access, and research and development. In the case of materials from UCL Special Collections, this includes preservation of important documents and preparing collections for digitisation. In the case of digital resources, this again includes both the provision of content and the further development of methodologies aimed at ensuring preservation and long-term access.
Contents
- UCL Special Collections
- UCL Wickford Store
- E-resources - specialist subject coverage
- E-resources - support for teaching & learning
- Repositories / digital preservation
UCL Special Collections
Art for medicine's sake, the project for the restoration of the pathological anatomy drawings and watercolours of Sir Robert Carswell (1793-1857), was completed in December 2006, thanks to a grant from the Wellcome Foundation. A link to the full listing of all the 1031 items in the collection can be found on the website.
Bentham papers
A further phase of the ongoing project for the deacidification and encapsulation of the papers of Jeremy Bentham, covering over 1,500 documents on the Constitutional Code and the Jury System, was completed thanks to a grant from the National Manuscripts Conservation fund.
Gaster Papers
A grant from MLA-London has enabled us to re-house and re-box part of the correspondence of Sir Moses Gaster (1856-1939). The Gaster papers comprise an extensive collection of over 170,000 items include letters from many important contemporaries as well as a wide range of other items collected by Gaster.
Judaica
A grant from UCL Futures has enabled conservation treatment to be carried out on a number of Anglo-Jewish pamphlets in preparation for digitisation work. The ultimate aim is to produce a digital version of what is a virtually complete published record of the history of Anglo-Jewry in the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth centuries.
Hume Tracts
The Hume Tracts, a collection of pamphlets assembled by the nineteenth-century radical politician Joseph Hume (1777-1855) and covering themes ranging from parliamentary reform, through the abolition of slavery in British colonies to the problem of obtaining corpses for dissection in anatomy classes, are included in a project to digitise 19th century pamphlets. The project is led by CURL, the Consortium of Research Libraries in the British Isles, and work to prepare the collection for digitisation has been completed.
UCL Wickford Store
UCL is currently engaged in a pilot project with Cambridge University Library with the aim of formally sharing responsibility for long-term storage of print materials in targeted collections. The methodology developed and tested in respect of two collections will be more widely applicable and will enable UCL to participate in similar initiatives both regionally and nationally.
E-resources - specialist subject coverage
NLH - Neurological Conditions Specialist Library
Building on its success with the Gastroenterology & Liver Diseases
Specialist Library last year, the specialist libraries team at the Royal
Free Medical Library, UCL Library Services was awarded the contract in
late 2006 to develop the Neurological Conditions Specialist Library.
This is part of the National Library for Health and provides information
targeted at NHS healthcare professionals.
E-resources - support for teaching & learning
SuperBook Project
The Library was a partner in the SuperBook Project, led by the UCL School of Library, Archive and Information Studies, with the aim of surveying users' attitudes to and use of electronic books. One outcome is that UCL staff and students now have continuing access to four collections (of over 1,200 titles) that were heavily used during the project. In the longer term, the findings of the associated surveys will inform further development of the Library's e-resources strategy.
Repositories / digital preservation
LASSO
The LASSO (LEAP Aggregated Search Service On-line) project is the third phase of SHERPA-LEAP, the London Eprints Access Project, and began in March 2007. One of the main aims of the project is to design and implement a single interface to allow cross-searching of the content of all the eprint repositories involved in SHERPA-LEAP.
EMBRACE
The aim of the EMBRACE project, which began in May 2007, is to enhance the repositories involved in SHERPA-LEAP. This will include the development of a tool to embed citations and other information into the text of eprints. The project will also investigate issues around the advocacy of repositories of digital assets.
RIOJA
RIOJA (Repository Interface for Overlaid Journal Archives) is funded by the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), as part of its Repositories and Preservation Programme. RIOJA is a partnership, led by UCL and involving four other universities in the UK and the USA. The main aim of the project, which began in March 2007, is to investigate issues around quality assurance in papers deposited in eprints repositories, focusing on astrophysics and cosmology.
Identity Project
UCL is a partner in the Identity Project, which began in November 2006 with the aim of investigating issues around authenticating access to networked resources. It is funded by the JISC as part of its e-Infrastructure Programme, and complements work being carried out in-house in collaboration with UCL Information Systems on Shibboleth, the system of user authentication that UCL will shortly be introducing.
LIFE 2
LIFE Phase 2 is a European collaboration between the LIBER Access and Preservation Divisions. Its aim is to identify economic models for the curation of digital assets and their long-term digital preservation. Phase 2 of the project, which began on 1 March 2007, will firm up the models developed in Phase 1, test the models on a further range of assets - including the Open Access repositories in their UCL-led SHERPA-LEAP partnership, and compare the costs of digital versus analogue preservation.
