July Project Report

1. Collections
This month saw a significant acquisition for the First World War Poetry Archive when the grandson of Edward Thomas brought Thomas' war diary to Oxford to be digitised at the Bodleian Library. The quality of the scans are of a very high quality, making it possible to read the diary much more easily than the physical object. Also digitised were a selection of previously unseen letters held by the family from Thomas to his son Merfyn.

Orders have been placed at the National Library of Wales Thomas Archive and also to the Imperial War Museum (Rosenberg). Additional items have been sourced from Buffalo (Graves), The British Library (Rosenberg) and McMaster Univeristy (Brittain). Service records have been obtained from the Public Records office for Graves and Thomas and later this month a visit will be paid to the Berg Collection in New York Public Library to identify relevant items to expand the Graves and Rosenberg collections.

We are now starting to identify and order contextual materials for the archive from the Imperial War Museum and discussions are also being held with the Welcome Trust Archive to include a selection of their medical images from WW1.

We are very pleased to announce that the Ivor Gurney and the David Jones estates have agreed to be included in the archive and a selection of documents is currently being made.

Usage contracts have now be drawn up and are being sent to the relevant institutions.


2. Metadata and cataloguing
QA has taken place of the cataloguing for all images received thus far and metadata has started to be added to the Thomas war diary and letters. It is expected that the vast majority of images will be received in August and September.

3. Project management
Work on the project website continues and contacts are being made for school liaison and the community collection. Facebook groups and google groups have also been set up to support the project (see web site).

4. Technical Development
An evaluation of the content system ContentDM has been made and the system has been selected for use within the project, a more detailed evaluation is currently being undertaken to determine how the other aspects of the final archive (e.g. the seminars, rather creation scheme) etc. will feed into it.

The metadata from the Wilfred Owen Archive has been converted to TEI P5 for archiving and work is underway to feed it into the new archive.

A technical specification has been drawn up for the community collection and build will start in September.

5. Events
A paper for the project has been accepted at this years Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts Conference in September which Kate and Michael will be attending.

Everett will be attending the David Jones Conference at the National Library of Wales at the end of the month.