Project Initiation Document (PO003)

Abstract

CHARTER is a small-scale digitisation pilot which will deliver an open-access repository populated with a critical mass of 4000 digital images drawn from the unique and rare resources in the Special Collections of the University of Exeter. CHARTER will select, digitise and deposit 2000 new images and will transfer another 2000 existing images (held in the online EVE database facility of the University’s museum, the Bill Douglas Centre) into the repository.

The project will also create 2000 new metadata records and the creation of a tool for transferring 2000 metadata records from EVE into the repository. The selection theme of the 2000 new images will be popular culture in the long-nineteenth-century, 1800-1914, drawn from across Special Collections (Bill Douglas Centre, plus Archives & Rare Books). The selected items have no Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) or copyright issues and have interdisciplinary subject appeal through a wide academic base in the arts and humanities. Academics will participate throughout the project in the process of selection for digitisation and through the creation and testing of an e-learning module

The 2000 existing images already held on EVE all relate to popular culture but a proportion have dates post-1914. All will be transferred to the new repository to aid their long-term preservation. CHARTER will deliver the next phase of Exeter’s strategy to capture and preserve digital artefacts and make them freely available for research and teaching (in a key move from a legacy database (EVE) to a sustainable open access model). The new repository will become the centralised location for storage and access to all digital images drawn from the Special Collections and Bill Douglas centre. The EVE facility will continue in existence for the time being (as its functionality is much broader than digital image management). EVE will be fully decommissioned in a future project, probably through a managed migration to the established collection management system, DS CALM. This project will run from October 2008 through to the end of September 2009.