Board of longitude

Creating Digital Collections: Collection and Curation

Background

The blog post discusses and analyzes the peculiarities of digital collections and curation, drawing on the case study on the Board of Longitude and its digitalization. 

Link to the Collection : https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-RGO-00014-00008/23

Navigators, just as researchers and scientists in the connected fields of science, had been dealing with the basic issue of not knowing and not having the option to discover a ship’s longitude. The foundation of the Board of Longitude was pushed forward by this issue and by a few genuine mishaps before the formation of the Board. For example, Vice-Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell had grounded four boats of the regal armada off the Isles of Scilly, which incited passings of numerous sailors. It was unacceptable, and the government decided to handle the problem accordingly.

The papers of the Board of Longitude, otherwise called the Commissioners of the Longitude Discovery, structure the cunning assortment of an imaginative and inventive logical association shaped in 1714.This British government body was formed to administer schemes of prizes meant for encouraging talented innovators and scientists who were in a project of identifying the ships’ longitude in the seas. The board committee consisted of 24 key figures from the fields of mathematics, navy, politics, and astronomy. The pages are evidence of the Board of Longitude minutes from their meetings that they would conduct regularly to track their progress about creative and inventive projects. The formation of the Board was motivated by not possessing enough knowledge concerning the longitude of the ships. Although the Board of Longitude had been formed years before, they could not meet until 1737 when an interest was focused on the marine timekeeper, John Harrison. The committee defined itself as a standing body. Digital collection helps to understand the history and stories behind every written page, extract, painting, or video. It serves as the source of valuable information that could have been otherwise lost or forgotten.  

Larcum Kendall’s first marine timekeeper (K1), 1769 (National Maritime Museum/MOD Art Collection, ZAA0038)

Problem

One of the main issues presented by the pages is the handwriting. It is mostly not legible due to the calligraphy used. There are many fragments where figures, numbers, or words do not make sense on their own. It becomes difficult for a reader to understand the meaning of presented information or data unless the original writer explains it. The work lacks organization; it discourages readers when the information presented has no proper and consistent flow. Thus, the main issue concerned the inability of the readers to obtain any useful information from the preserved writings.

 Minutes of the first formal meeting of the Commissioners of Longitude, 30 June 1737

Solution

Being a curator or a collector requires considering other people who might come across the writing or pieces of work previously done. In this case, Thomas Young, who had been the Board’s secretary, did not mind his work’s legibility when, in reality, word spacing should have been increased and a more calligraphic font or handwriting used. Digital collection should be modest. Aesthetic is essential in terms of color, font size, font type, and layout. The organization is one of the notable aspects of digital collection and curation of materials. Digitization of the material has rendered it visible and readable. The background is transparent, and the font has been saved from fading. 

William Wales records the observations made at Drake’s Island near Plymouth in 1772 from which the testing of Kendall’s watch (k1) and Arnold’s three timekeepers began on Cook’s second voyage

Evaluation

The initial launching of the digitized collection took place in 2014, where papers of Board of Longitude, as well as drawings and paintings of the Greenwich Observatory, have been added. The minutes from the Board of Longitude meetings from 1823 to 1829 address the prizes, loans of instruments, and support to the project. The Board rewarded individuals who showed an effort to demonstrate their creative work and inventions of devices that could be implemented to resolve the longitude problem. The participants would be rewarded as per distance and time determined by the method or device. This includes £10,000 within 60 nautical miles, £15,000 within 40 nautical miles, and £20,000 for 30 nautical miles. Those that offered support financially or other efforts to the success of the project were also awarded. 

In the volume RGO 14/8, it is evident that the Board of Longitude was established as a government office that dealt with various activities concerning the committee’s interests. Based on the digitized material, the meetings took place four times a year that is every first week of February, April, June, and November. The Board would plan and organize such projects as optical glass improvement in 1824, which was proposed and accepted. In cases where proposals were unsuccessful, the secretary, Thomas Young, would be required to turn them down politely and thank the correspondent. Some schemes would be rejected before the meeting but still were recorded in the minutes to acknowledge the correspondent by the Board. The Board of Longitude considered transparency, as it was in the constant limelight during its powerful reign; therefore, cases of corruption and nepotism could be noticed to justify their actions and operations to the Admiralty Board. Collection of information started way back put in writing. Transparency was crucial and motivated the Board to keep records concerning their dealings, opinions, schemes, and proposals; they ranged from brief information to in-depth descriptions of terms of money loans by the Board of Longitude to individuals. Key events were also described, such as the contribution of the Board to the development of the British Empire, the construction of the Cape of Good Hope Observatory where the Board loaned instruments to Fearon Fallows, and chronometer trials at Greenwich. 

New Media Collections

Digital collections refer to the various forms of information represented digitally through images, blogs, eBooks, music, or videos, which manifests a plethora of value and purposes. Digital collection is the process of acquiring digital materials that have distinct characteristics. According to Watkins et al. (2015), digital content that makes up digital collection exists externally in other forms for it to be acquired. It can exist naturally or be produced by an individual or an organization. Digital collection includes the content that serves as a means for another collection (for instance, Pinterest). Digital collection can be classified into pursued, evolving, and emerging collections. Pursued collections refer to the contents that do not have existing literature. The collector of these materials takes joy in pursuing the hunt, as every successfully obtained collection unit grants the collector the emotions of an achievement.  

On the other hand, evolving collection proponents do not take pride in the hunt; instead, they discover something new. The surprise agent is involved in this kind of collection because the collector can hardly predict what the next collection might be or where to get it. It is highly dependent on the person’s interest and tastes rather than skills; thus, autobiographical value is not attached to them. For instance, a DJ who has a list of music or a collection of MP3s continually evolves his or her content gradually by discovering new tunes or beats to add to the music collection. Finally, digital collection can also be emerging, which means that the content can be other materials’ by-product. For example, upon purchasing an application, the vendor offers eBooks, which become part of the client’s digital collection. Although the user did not intend to purchase the eBooks, they are at their disposal. Digital collection is facing challenges as technology changes are constantly occurring. For instance, the materials linked to computer applications can only be accessed well in tandem with mathematical apps.

Some digital collections have no boundaries. A person can copy, edit, and paste someone else’s work for it to appear original. It lacks a sense of ownership; although individuals are supposed to acquire intellectual property’s rights and copyrights, such rights are violated with the increasing hacking and piracy. The web is the powerful portal where digital collection and curation are taking place. The web platforms allow dissemination of various kinds of information across the globe, including free distribution of licensed and commercial products. One of the  most widespread features is web publishing, which has become part of the contemporary lifestyle. The web archiving program managed by the Swedish Royal Library takes care of collecting and preserving digital documents. More national libraries are following the trend of collecting and preserving national content through the web. 

Curation is the aspect of managing materials collected, whether physically or digitally. Curation consists of organizing, uniting, exhibiting, and self-reflecting; it determines how people see, transform, and maintain the meaning of the stored possessions (Dekker & Tedone, 2019). Online curation has been carried out in many instances where artists organize their online exhibition spaces to explore web possibilities. 

Online curation entails dealing with networked processes that involve presentations and the creation of several invisible and interrelated differentiated systems. The museums, which use online curation by connecting their server rather than connecting to the artists’ server, suffer from failure. This is because for one to address the web specifics; there should be circulation or hyperlinking. Based on the computational aspects, socio-technical relations, features of applications, interfaces, and the systems involved in the production of content, a curator’s role is reframed. It is more than networked curation instead of the alliance between machines, users, objects, and curators. Digital curation helps to maintain, add value, and establish repositories of digital assets, such as data, for current and future use. Besides, it involves web and gallery exhibitions that participate in the creation of knowledge and interpretation of information.

According to Dekker and Tedone (2019), curation has been widely adopted in social media to compile web links, movie files, and digital images. As a curator, I understand that stipulated principles ought to be adhered to; they include ensuring a complete life cycle of the digital asset, conducting asset evaluations, strengthening reusability and integrity of the assets by applying appropriate preservation methods for future users, and monitoring the accessibility of the digital assets by the users.

Digital curation practices are based on two methodologies: sequential actions and occasional actions. Sequential life cycle procedures state that the curator conceptualizes content, taking into account the digital output that is to be created, stored, and exhibited. Apart from producing the digital content, metadata should be attached to it. Besides, preservation actions ought to include frequently checking accessibility, usability, transformability, and reusability of the material to avoid inconveniences (Forlini & Hinrichs, 2017). Concerning the occasional actions, the curator ought to dispose of unnecessary digital material, reevaluate the material to ensure its relevance and ingenuity, and migrate data from one form to another to protect it for future use. 

Digital Materiality

The tangibility of an object is what many term the materiality. The artifacts play a substantial role in organizational processes that people claim cannot be pointed at due to a lack of materiality (Migliore, 2015). Digitization has affected every sector in the lives of people. Libraries and organizations have found an easy way of managing their materials and information through digitization. As much as human interaction with organizational dynamics is taken seriously, the artifacts surrounding the interaction should be considered in terms of arrangement, infrastructures, bodies, and material artifacts. 

Materiality can be defined based on the significance, practical application, and matter. Since digital materiality is an organizational process, it has practical application and significance; although it lacks matter, it has materiality. According to Drucker (2013), Kirschenbaum’s definition of materiality highlights that digital formats are material, persistent, and fundamental. Digital technology has changed the materiality that the world has known for many centuries. It has been replaced with rarefaction rather than dematerialization, increasing interaction more than virtualization. With the introduction of digital tools, concepts of predictability, durability, reliability, and certainty have been addressed effectively. Besides, new anticipations and potentials, such as versatility, conciseness, intelligence, interactivity, and independence, have enhanced projects’ materiality. 

Apart from that, digital aspects of computing play a role in offering design process, which informs users of material characteristics and behaviors while deriving response from the surroundings. Leonardi (2017) argues that it has become possible to use digital tools to explore the nature and apply those mechanisms, designs, and methodologies to tangible projects by imitating the digital operation process, thus achieving tangible results by materializing nature and biological models. Concerning cultural practices and values, their materiality has been dissolved through digital transformation, enhancing accessibility and widespread knowledge of different cultures worldwide, which can be materialized where and when required. Digital materiality has achieved sustainability socially, economically, and environmentally. 

Nevertheless, Drucker (2013) classifies materiality into performative and literal materiality. The performative aspect assumes that digital content has materiality, which can be defended through forensics and legal matters. Forensic materiality is based on traditions of analytics, as well as chemical, physical, and descriptive investigations. Its value relies on the chain of historically based values and cultural associations. On the other hand, distributed materiality explains that digital artifacts depend on interdependencies between host environment, servers, networks, and their relations. This explains search engine results of digital materials, which are usually well structured and supported by dynamic APIs; yet, the files are stored locally and protected by a firewall. 

Conclusion

Digitization of the written documents is an important procedure that requires a thorough understanding of the purpose of it. There are various reasons for digitization and curation of materials, and the most notable of them is the need to preserve information and data for future generations, which proves to be difficult with tangible records (e.g., music sheets or writings). Digital collections can encompass different distinct materials and files, ranging from several books to an entire musical database. It helps the humankind to store, preserve, and display important and valuable materials for the private and public usage to educate and entertain themselves, as well as support the progress in acquiring, expanding, and applying relevant knowledge. Thus, it is apparent that digitalization and formation of digital collections is an issue of interest to the humans, as it is currently the most advanced way to gather the entire world’s knowledge in an organized and efficient manner.

References

Dekker, A., & Tedone, G. (2019). Networked co-curation: An exploration of the socio-technical specificities of online curation Arts,8(3), 86.

Drucker, J. (2013). Performative materiality and theoretical approaches to interface. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 7(1). 

Forlini, S., & Hinrichs, U. (2017). Synesthetic visualization: Balancing sensate experience and sense making in digitized print collections. Digital Preservation for Social Sciences and Humanities. 

Leonardi, M. P. (2017). Digital materiality? How artifacts without matter, matter. First Monday, 15(6).

Migliore, E. (2015). Digital materials. A new “biologically digital” materiality. Digicult. https://digicult.it/news/digital-materials-a-new-biologically-digital-materiality/

Watkins, R. D., Sellen, A., & Lindley, S. E. (2015). Digital collections and digital collecting practices. In B. Begole, & J. Kim, Proceedings of the 33rd annual ACM conference on human factors in computing systems (pp.3423-3432). Association for Computing Machinery.