WW1 Poetry Digital Archive: Project Blog

December to March Project Report

2008-03-31T09:34:00.000-07:00

1. Collections
All images have now been received for the major collections and due to an unexpected underspend we are pleased to confirm that we will also be digitising a selection of letters and drafts of In Parenthesis by David Jones. The project is also undergoing discussion with the estates of Edmund Blunden and Ivor Gurney to include a selection from these other two major poets. Negotiations are still underway with the Sassoon Estate.

Agreement has been met with published regarding the inclusion of the full texts of Edward Thomas, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves which will be supplied by ProQuest.

On the 3rd March The Great War Archive (http://www.thegreatwararchive.org) was released. This initiative invites members of the General Public to submit digital versions of any items that they hold relating to the Great War to the archive. To date the website has had over 3000 hits and c.3000 submissions.

2. Cataloging and Metadata
80% of the cataloging for the collections outlined in the original proposal has now been completed. QA at the project level has been undertaken and the steering group will be given the opportunity to further QA from the next steering group meeting. Jenifer Dunn, a graduate student at the English Faculty, Oxford, is currently recataloging the original Owen archive to meet the higher level of detail needed by this implementation.

Additionally graduate student Richard Marshall has been employed to assist in the cataloguing of items submitted to the Great War Archive.

3. Project Management
Apart from the additional staffing mentioned above Rich Doe has been employed as the web developer for the archive. Rich has previously worked on a variety of other technical workpackages for the project and will take the lead in the development of the final delivery system.

In October the team held a meeting to plan the community collection ("The Great War Archive") workflow and marketing strategy. It has been decided to promote the collection primarily via county and public libraries, holding institutions, the media, and a select few other organisations (The Western Front Association, The IWM and the In Flanders Fields Museum, Belgium). A press release has been drawn up and will be available on the website shortly. The community collection will be released on the 3rd March 2008 for an initial period of 3 months.

4. Technical Development
The website and cataloging interface for The Great War Archive were developed, user tested, and launched on schedule on the 3rd March.

Development has begun on the delivery system for the First World War Poetry Digital Archive and c.900 images with completed metadata have now been migrated to the delivery system.The first round of user testing to test the search interface is scheduled for the end of April. The process is still underway for post processing, renaming, and digitally watermarking received images. This has slipped slightly behind schedule due to illness.

5. Events
As part of the Great War Archive initiative, the project has organised a number of "submission days" over the country. The aim of these days is to invite member of the public who perhaps do not have access to the relevant technology to bring in their items for the project team to digitise and catalogue on their behalf. The two run so far have been immensely successful (Oxford and Norwich) with further planned in Hull, Caermarthen, Edinburgh, Powys and London.

Kate has also presented on the project at the 'Electronic Connections' conference in Edinburgh, and at the JISC Services Committee meeting, where the project was chosen as an exemplary project for the JISC Digitisation Programme.

Further interviews have been recorded and made available on the project website (http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/education/podcasts). These include interviews with Gary Sheffield and Richard Holmes and an audio tour of the Imperial War Museum.

October/November Project Report

2007-12-04T05:00:00.000-08:00

1. Collections
The majority of the images have now been received for the major collections with the exception materials held in New York. There has been an unexpected underspend on digitisation and the project is now further investigation other collections to be included within the archive, including Ivor Gurney, David Jones, Siegfried Sassoon and Edmund Blunden. The project has recruited Alun Edwards as a RA for 1/2 a week to assist in the scoping of further collections.

2. Cataloging and Metadata
The project has recruited Alisa Miller as a part-time cataloger on the project to assist in generating metadata for the digital objects. To date nearly 800 objects have been cataloged. Some metadata fields have been adjusted and expanded to address the intricaces of the material we are cataloging.

3. Project Management
The progress report was submitted to JISC and signed off. The report can be found on the project website at:

Apart from the additional staffing mentioned above Rich Doe has been employed as the web developer for the archive. Rich has previously worked on a variety of other technical workpackages for the project and will take the lead in the development of the final delivery system.

In October the team held a meeting to plan the community collection ("The Great War Archive") workflow and marketing strategy. It has been decided to promote the collection primarily via county and public libraries, holding institutions, the media, and a select few other organisations (The Western Front Association, The IWM and the In Flanders Fields Museum, Belgium). A press release has been drawn up and will be available on the website shortly. The community collection will be released on the 3rd March 2008 for an initial period of 3 months.

4. Technical Development
The process is underway for post processing, renaming and digitally watermarking received images.

A virtual development server has been purchased for the development period of the project from Oxford University's Network Solutions Systems. After the period of funding ends the project will be transfered onto shared webspace.

The old tutorials that were in the Virtual Seminars website have been converted to compliant XHTML by Rich Doe and redesigned to fit with the look and feel of the new archive. These will be made available on the project website before Christmas.

Images with completed metadata have now started to be uploaded to CONTENTdm for final delivery and work will start on the design of the archive and the static web pages that surround it in January 2008.

5. Events
In November the project ran a workshop entitled 'Teaching WW1 Literature'. The event was attended by 25 teachers and lecturers of First World War literature with speakers including Jon Stallworthy, Vivien Noaks and Guy Cuthbertson. Topics covered included methods of teaching the literature of the First World War, broadening the canon of First World War literature and the place of First World War literature within the wider context of War literature. The project team used the event as a requirements gathering exercise for the development of accompanying educational resources for the archive and presented the project to the group. All talks were recorded and will be made available as podcasts on the website in December.

Also during November Stuart and Kate attended the 'Dead Reckoning Passchendaele 1917 Conference' in Leper, Belgium. Contacts were made with variety of sources including the In Flanders Fields Museum who the project will work with promote the Great War Archive and the First World War Poetry Digital Archive.

Kate also attended the 'Books on the Battlefield' conference at the university of York and recorded a selection of talks for podcast delivery. Both Everett and Kate gave talks at conferences to promote the project, and further interviews with experts on the Great War have been sourced to include on the webpage, including military historian Gary Sheffield and Richard Holmes.

September Project Report

2007-10-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

1. Collections
A variety of images focusing on women in the war, the homefront, and diversity of the troops have been ordered from the Imperial War Museum as part of the contextual content of the archive.

Following Kate's visit to New York in August orders have been placed at the Berg Collection, New York Public Library.

Contact has been made with the Gloucestershire County Archives re. the manuscripts of Ivor Gurney and a visit will be made next month to scope items for possible inclusion in the archive. Additionally an item list fom David Jones has been received from the national Library of Wales, and have images of Edward Thomas Poetry Manuscripts. The images relating to the Rosenberg collection at the Imperial War Museum have also been received

2. Cataloging and Metadata
Cataloguing has started on the new batch of Edward Thomas images.

3. Project Management
Kate is currently writing the project progress report for JISC.

A meeting was held with Dunstan Ward, president of the Robert Graves Society and council member of the War Poets Association, to identify further Graves materials for inclusion in the archive and also for future collaboration. The project has been invited to be represented at a number of RGS and WPA events.

4. Technical development
CONTENTdm has been purchased and installed on the project server and web space purchased for the next 10 years.

Development is underway for the community collection and the update of tutorials in the Wilfred Owen Archive. The image processing workflow is also underway.

5. Events
Earlier this month Stuart and Kate interviewed Ian Hislop about his views on the First World War and War Poetry. The interview is available as a podcast on the project website at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit.

Michael and Kate attended the Digital Resources in the Arts and Humanities Conference in Devon, where Kate presented a paper on the project.

Stuart and Kate also took a trip to see "Forgotten Voices", a play adapted from Max Arthur's best selling book, at the Oxford Playhouse. Max Arthur has kindly agreed to

August Project Report

2007-10-09T10:29:00.001-07:00

1. Collections
This month Kate visited the Berg Collection at New York Public library to make a selection of manuscripts by Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg and Edward Thomas. Items selected include letters from Graves to Siegfried Sassoon, a typescript of Graves' unpublished collection of poems "The Patchwork Flag", letters from Rosenberg to Harold Monro, and Thomas' prose work "This England".

Work is in progress for selecting audio and film materials from the IWM for inclusion in the archive

2. Metadata and cataloguing
No images were received this month.

3. Project management
A workflow has been set up for the editing of image files (cropping, enhancement, conversion etc.). Contractors were sourced for the technical development of the community collection interface and conversion of existing tutorials in the Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive.

4. Technical Development
CONTENTdm has been purchased for the delivery of the archive. Michael has been on holiday this month so not much else to report!

5. Events
Everett attended the David Jones Conference at the National Library of Wales at the end of the month and has made contact with the David Jones estate re the possible digitisation of "In Parenthesis" for the archive.

July Project Report

2007-08-06T02:11:00.000-07:00

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.

June Project Report

2007-07-09T02:15:00.000-07:00

1. Collections
A visit to the British Library unearthed a few additional Rosenberg and Graves items to be digitized and included in the archive. Additionally, with the help of Dunstan Ward, WW1 Poets Association and key academic on the poet Robert Graves, a number of manuscripts are being identified to supplement the Archive's Graves collection.

A significant find has been another manuscript version of Wilfred Owen's poem "Strange Meeting", held in a private collection by the Day-Lewis family. We thoughroughly enjoyed our visit to photograph the manuscript last week and look forward to seeing it in the archive.

Work is underway this month to build up the collection from Women Poets.

3. Metadata and Cataloging
Cataloging continues for the images received and our cataloguer Everett Sharp has been visiting the Public Records Office to select pages from Graves and Thomas' service records to include in the collection.

4. Project Management
Work on the project website continues and contacts are being made for school liaison.

5. Technical Development
Michael has started work on building the technical architecture and design specs are being put together for the community collection.

5. Copyright and Permissions
Copyright letters are being finalised and will be sent to the literary estates and libraries this month.

6. Events
Stuart and Kate will be attending the JISC Digitisation Programme Conference in Cardiff on the 19th and 20th July.

The programme is being put together for the "Teaching WW1 Literature" event on the 12th November at the Computing Services, Oxford. Booking for the workshop is available on The English Subject Centre Website.

May Project Report

2007-06-04T04:05:00.000-07:00

1. Collections
Earlier this month items were selected from the Rosenberg Collection at the Imperial War Museum for inclusion in the project. Included are all of Rosenberg's "War" poems and poetry drafts, drafts of the play "The Unicorn", a selection of letters and other miscellaneous items (photographs and sketches). Many thanks to Vivien Noaks for giving her time and advice in making the selection.

Recently we visited the Edward Thomas Collection at Cardiff University Library and selected a number of poetry manuscripts, letters, and photographs, for the archive. The majority of items have now been selected for Thomas, with the exception of the National Library of Wales which we will visit shortly. Images of the Thomas Manuscript ADD 44990 were received from the British Library and are in the process of being catalogued.

We have been offered a rich selection of items by the Vera Brittain Estate for inclusion in the archive. Many thanks to Mark Bostridge for his support, and also to Andrea Peterson for her input and advice tracking down other women poets to include in the project.

The curators of a number of collections (Thomas, Graves, Blunden) held by various Oxford University libraries have been contacted and we will be visiting these collections to identify any other appropriate items.

3. Metadata and Cataloging
Cataloging continues for the images received.

4. Project Management
The Project Plan was submitted to the JISC, along with a detailed budget and break down of work tasks. The project plan in available from the website.

Kate and Stuart will be attending the JISC Digitisation Programme Meeting on 13th and 14th June in Colchester.

5. Technical Development
System architecture has been spec-ed and is currently under peer review by inhouse system developers.

5. Copyright and Permissions
Copyright letters are being finalised.

6. Events
Preliminary work has gone into the workshop being jointly run with the English Subject Centre in November and potential speakers contacted. Thank you to Guy Cuthbertson and Andrea Peterson for agreeing to participate at the event.

April Project Report

2007-04-26T04:12:00.000-07:00

The project formally began on April 1st. The first few days were spent establishing the project office at the Faculty of English's building.

1. Recruitment
Interviews and selection tool place for the post of technical specialist on the project. Michael Louzoi will be joining the team on May 1st and will be responsible for the system design and technical architecture. Everett Sharp joined the project team on April 12th as the cataloger, working 1.5 days per week.

2. The Collections
Orders have been processed for the Robert Graves material at the University of Buffalo, and the Edward Thomas material in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Digital scans have been received and archived. Some experimentation was carried out on post-processing of derivatives.

A full list of the collections is now being finalised and will be completed at the first Steering Group meeting on the 27th April.

3. Metadata and Cataloging
Metadata fields were finalised and a review of cataloging software took place. Portfolio 8 was selected as the project's cataloging tool. Cataloguing and QA has begun on the images received so far, and tests have been carried out on metedata conversion to TEI P5.

4. Project Management
A wiki has been set up for the project team to record thoughts, meeting minutes, and other information to be shared. A blog has been set up to issue monthly progress reports. The team is currently reviewing project management software. The first project plan is due to be submitted to the JISC on 11th May.

5. Copyright and Permissions
Copyright letters are being finalised.

6. Events
Preliminary work has gone into the workshop being jointly run with the English Subject Centre in November. Project staff have attended JISC workshops digitization, copyright, and a National Archives workshop on teaching history.