Worth a look at the new CyMAL magazine: http://wales.gov.uk/docs/drah/publications/110905cymalmag11en.pdf
Major articles from Peter Keelan and Janet Peters on Cardiff Rare Books and Alan Vaughan Hughes on Welsh Newspapers and Journals Online … plus a profile of Lorna Hughes.
Historic news once sung on street corners is now being captured online in a virtual resource. 4,000 ballads from 18th and 19th century Wales are launching on a website run by Cardiff University and the National Library of Wales.
The songs document the important issues of their day, such as workers’ rights and crime, as well as local festivals and village gossip.
Funded through a £66,000 grant from JISC, the project has completed a network of digital resources giving access to these precious documents. Academic editor of the Welsh Ballads project, Dr Wyn James of Cardiff University’s school of Welsh, commented: “Ballads were the ‘daily newspapers’ for the poor throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries, and were sold cheaply and widely at markets, fairs, and villages; they communicated news on local matters and overseas events of the day. “We have selected around 15,000 pages of rare Welsh and English language ballads and have now made them available for audiences around the world to study and enjoy.”
Ben Showers, programme manager at JISC, said: “The Welsh Ballads project puts in place the final piece of a national jigsaw of digitised ballads. Adding to the ballad collections of England and Scotland this new archive will help make this a unique and indispensable resource for researchers, students and interested members of the public. “This project is part of JISC’s continued work to enhance collections of significance, and ensure that resources are not left in isolation, but brought together for the benefit of research, teaching and learning for everyone.” Digitisation of the ballads collections was carried out in Cardiff University’s information services directorate and the National Library of Wales.
“With the funding from JISC we are able to put ballads studies in Wales on the world map, comparable with the best of other ballads projects in Britain and America,” said Janet Peters, director of university libraries at Cardiff. “Two rare ballads collections are now available from one website at Cardiff, jointly linked with a full catalogue and scanned pages at the National Library.”
Cardiff University also intends to make a small selection of sung audio recordings of some rare Welsh ballads available later in the year.
Listen to a pilot recording at: http://www.cf.ac.uk/insrv/libraries/scolar/digital/welshballads/wg3526030.html
Access the collection at: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/libraries/scolar/digital/welshballads.html
Find out about how JISC is developing online content for teaching, learning and research at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitisation.aspx
The National Library of Wales is currently seeking to fill a new Chair in Digital Collections, funded by the University of Wales.
“An opportunity for an outstanding individual from any relevant academic background, with a passion for the digital.
You will be expected to undertake and lead research based on the latest developments in your chosen field of expertise, while applying your findings to the large digital collections housed at the National Library of Wales. You will have a world-class research profile in any aspect of digital curation: the creation, provision, investigation, interpretation and conservation of digital collections – encompassing legal issues, the management of data, innovative research methods, and technological developments in access, search and exploitation.”
http://www.llgc.org.uk/fileadmin/documents/adDisSwyddSaesPrifysgol.pdf
Closing date for receipt of applications: 9 August 2010.
What’s the point of a library or a librarian in the digital era? Who needs a physical space for books and archives, and librarians to police their use, when all that material will soon be available to anyone with a decent internet connection at the click of a mouse?
On a visit to the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth last week, the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones got a few answers to those questions. Read more on his blog
NLW has recently published on its website a paper entitled ’2020: a long view of the National Library of Wales’.
http://www.llgc.org.uk/fileadmin/documents/pdf/Vision.pdf
The paper tries to identify the most significant factors – economic, political, social and technological – that are likely to affect the Library over the next ten years. It goes on to suggest how the Library itself will develop over the same period. There will be major changes in collecting, many propelled by digital developments, and in the way users and collections interact. A much more prominent role is proposed for the Library as an educational institution, and its relationship with local institutions in Wales may well change in radical ways.
This is not a consultation paper, but comments on it are very welcome. It will be the subject of a talk and discussion at the Welsh Libraries Conference in Llandrindod Wells on 14 May.
Paper delivered at the Digital Resources for the Humanities and Arts conference in Belfast on 8 September 2009 by Andrew Green, National Library of Wales.
Andrew’s theme is ” what I have termed ‘big digitisation’: the attempt to translate large quantities of analogue knowledge into digital form. I shall concentrate on knowledge originally in print form and I want to consider three questions: why this mass approach has emerged, what it has achieved and might achieve, and how different models for big digitisation compare.” He includes an assessment of Google Books and its impact on libraries worldwide.
http://www.llgc.org.uk/fileadmin/documents/pdf/darlith_big_digitisation_where_next.pdf
The National Library of Wales has made a short film clip about the new North Reading Room:
http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=4037
Don’t forget that their online services and databases are available to HE staff and students anywhere in Wales, and you can register for those services without having to visit Aberystwyth – see the web page at:
http://www.llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=179
Thursday, 26 November 2009 in the Drwm, National Library of Wales
10.00 Arrival, and tea/coffee
10.30 Welcome and introduction by Andrew Green, Librarian
10.45 The National Library of Wales Education Service (Owen Llewelyn, Senior Education Officer)
11.15 Enquiries at the National Library of Wales (Anwen Pierce, Head of Enquiries)
11.45 Electronic resources at the National Library of Wales (Manon Foster Evans, Head of Reader Services)
12.15 Putting Welsh Journals online : the challenges (Martin Locock, SCIF Project Co-ordinator)
12.45 – 1.30 Lunch at Pendinas
1.30 Digitisation of Newspapers and Journals (Alan Vaughan Hughes, Digitisation Project Manager)
2.00 North Reading Room; presentation and tour of the new reading room (Iwan ap Dafydd, North Reading Room Manager)
2.30 Depart
[Members of the University, College and Research Libraries Wales Section Committee will hold a meeting at 2.30]
If you are interested in attending this event, which is free of charge, could you please contact Carol Edwards at the National Library of Wales, on 01970 632923 or cce@llgc.org.uk
The National Librarian (and Chair of WHELF), Andrew Green, was among those honoured by the Gorsedd of Bards at the National Eisteddfod. He was honoured with the white bardic robes, the highest honour bestowed, for his contribution to the nation, its language and culture.
According to Andrew Green, ‘This is a great honour, and so unexpected – one of the biggest honours for anyone living in Wales. But this is mainly an acknowledgement for The National Library of Wales, how the institution has grown in the last few years, as an important resource for Wales and the world, as innovators in our field of work and as a national institution that Wales can be proud of.’
The Welsh Assembly Government announced yesterday its SCIF grant of £2m to the National Library for a project entitled ‘Welsh Newspapers and Magazines Online’.
This is a three-year project to digitise a high proportion of all out-of-copyright Welsh newspapers and publish the resulting text online for all to search, browse and reuse for free. WHELF and Welsh HEIs in general supported the bid to SCIF (the Strategic Capital Investment Fund).
For more details, see the press release:
Wales’ past to go on-line
http://wales.gov.uk/news/latest/090415online/?lang=en
BBC Cymru/Wales:
Historic newspapers to go online
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/mid/8000088.stm
Posted in digitisation
Tagged digitisation, journals, National Library of Wales, newspapers
