Protest and campaigning in the archive
IOE students protest, c1970s
A new exhibition can be found in the IOE foyer covering the subject of protest and campaigning in the archive.
Collections held at the IOE archive include various examples of individuals and groups who have lead campaigns related to education. These include;
Brian Simon (campaign for equal secondary opportunities for all through comprehensive schooling, anti-Fascist campaigns)
National Union of Women Teachers (their own campaign for equal pay, along with numerous campaigns they supported such as removal of the marriage bar for women teachers, campaigns for world peace, campaigns for sex education in schools)
London Parents Ballot (campaign for a ballot regarding the transfer of responsibility for education services from the ILEA to local authorities)
Amelia Fysh (the Campaign for Drawing drew on the work of Fysh in encouraging teachers to collect examples of children’s work in reference to their development)
Rose Kosky (campaign to prevent funding cuts which would reduce the number of teaching staff employed by Barking and Dagenham Schools’ Psychologist Service)
Marina Foster (campaign against racism in children’s books, Campaign Against Racism in Education [CARE])
National Commission on Education (Campaign for State Education, Campaign for Equal Access to Primary Education for All, Campaign for the Advancement of State Education, Further Education Campaign Group)
Pre-school Learning Alliance (including Pre-scool Playgroup Association, sustained campaign for pre-school provision and education)
Bernarr Rainbow (Campaign for the Defence of the Traditional Cathedral Choir)
The IOE’s own archive collection also includes material related to campaigns fought by staff and students.
If you are interested in using campaign related material, whether for teaching or research, email us at arch.enquiries@ioe.ac.uk, or pop into the archive office (just round the corner from the photocopiers in the library)
Tags: archive, campaign, collections, IOE archives, protest
Moving Image Gateway – a source of inspiration?
The Moving Image Gateway, hosted by the British Universities Film & Video Council, links to over 1,300 websites relating to video, multimedia and sound materials. Check out the latest additions, browse using the subject links (including Education) or try the search function.
Also included are a useful selection of links to material on popular MOOC sites.
Tags: audiovisual resources, BUFVC, discovery, MOOCs, moving image, podcasts, sound, video
Safer Internet Day 2013
Originally created by the European Commission in 1999, Tuesday 5th February will see the tenth anniversary of this event. Hosted by European Schoolnet, the theme this year is ‘Online rights and responsibilities’, and aims to encourage users to ‘Connect with respect’. With the day now taken up on six continents, the site also provides a chance to view material from individual countries across the world.
Watch the promotional videos, and have a look at the school resources available for down load on the main and UK sites.
The CBBC website also provides a useful collection of online resources for children, including a Newsround special ‘Caught in the web’ which can be watched online.
Talking of European Schoolnet, their main site is also well worth a visit, particularly the Learning Resource Exchange for schools. Currently this is our featured resource on the ‘Sharing Resources’ tab in the Audiovisual Resources Online LibGuide.
Tags: BBC, internet, school resources
Your views on the British Library’s Social Science Strategy
The British Library is seeking information about your experiences and your views on the Social Sciences collections at British Library. In particular, they would like to find out about your level of engagement and satisfaction with the services provided, and the areas you think should be developed and improved. As such, they have commissioned Education for Change Ltd to evaluate the BL’s Social Science Strategy.
Since education is multidisciplinary and sits within the social sciences, and because we make use of the various Social Science collections at the British Library, this is an opportunityfor all staff and students to provide feedback. An overview of the resources in this collection was given in an earlier post, The OTHER great library at our doorstep: Social Science Collections at the British Library – if you need to be reminded of this treasure!
A short survey which should take you about 5 minutes to complete is available at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BLSSS so do take the time to complete the survey as it will benefit us all in the long-term.
Tags: British Library, feedback, social sciences, survey
Assessing personal digital archive collections – an update.
A few months back I wrote a post about my experience of going to one of the SPRUCE Mash-Up events. Since then I’ve been doing a bit more work looking at the digital collection I took with me and I thought it was about time I wrote an update on what I’ve been doing.
Firstly, I’ve found that the outcomes of the Mash-Up event were simply too complex to follow up with limited technological knowledge or assistance. Instead I’ve been using a more ’archivist-friendly’ piece of software called Karen’s Printer Directory to generate descriptive metadata which can then be imported into Excel enabling quicker assessment and appraisal of the collection. This software has already been recommended by a number of project teams working in the area of digital preservation including the UK-USA collaborative AIMS project and the JISC-funded Paradigm project. The great benefit is that it’s extremely simple to use. Once downloaded an easy-to-use dialogue box enables you to choose whether to print or save the metadata once it has been exported; export metadata about files / folders or both; and select the location of the folders and files you want metadata to be generated for. Further options are also available. My handy hints would be:
- On the ‘Sort files by’ option remember to select ‘don’t sort’ from the drop-down box
- Under the ‘Print Option’ Select ‘File info only’. You can extract metadata from both files and folders at the same time but, once imported into Excel, I found the latter option makes it more difficult to manipulate the metadata as there is duplication of columns in the spreadsheet. In addition, information about the file metadata is more useful for finding exact duplicates and versions of the same record.
- On the right-hand side box you can select the metadata you want to extract. I found the following metadata (in this order) to be the most useful – Folder Name, File Name, File Path, Extension, File Size, Date Created, Date Modified, File Version, MD5 Hash, and SHA-1 Hash.
Once the metadata has been generated you can import the data into an Excel spreadsheet. In Excel go to Get External Data>From Text and locate the file that has been exported from Karen’s Printer Directory. It does mean that if the digital collection is very large you will have a huge spreadsheet to work with which can be quite slow and cumbersome. However it is far more helpful than working your way through the actual collection.
The metadata for the whole collection will be retained as a permanent record and a second spreadsheet has been created for using as the working document for the appraisal. In terms of the appraisal I am starting to make some progress removing duplicates and other unwanted sections of the collection.
To find duplicates and potential duplicates go to Home>Conditional Formatting>Highlight Cell Rules>Duplicate Values and select the way in which you want duplicate data across cells to be highlighted. This is a more appropriate method than simply deleting cells (Data>Remove duplicates) as you will have a record of the files that can either be flagged as absolute duplicates (using the algorithm – MDA5 / SHA-1) or as files that need to be checked as they have the same file titles. This snapshot of a section of the Excel spreadsheet, with the absolute duplicates highlighted in red gives a sense of how helpful this software can be in the initial weed of the collection:
Section of the spreadsheet showing absolute duplicates in red
Once all the absolute duplicates were removed, I started working my way through the spreadsheet locating sections of the collection that can easily be marked for disposal. In particular I’ve found a large number of set up files for various systems and external media including cameras; music files and links to websites that we won’t retain (although we now have the link listed in the original metadata exported from Karen’s Printer Directory). I have found the spreadsheet quite difficult to work with at times, and it can be painstakingly slow working my way through such a large amount of data. However it has enabled me to highlight whole sections of the collection that I have marked for destruction and it has directed me towards other sections where a quick check of the actual content has informed an appraisal decision.
I’m not particularly sure if the way I’ve been working is the most sensible (or quickest) but the good news is that a spreadsheet that initially had more than 45 000 records is now down to just over 8000. I’m hoping that through the work I’ve been doing so far I will be able to put together some procedures for dealing with completely unsorted collections in the future. It will also form the basis of the guidelines we will put together for individuals who would like to deposit their digital archives with us.
Archives Hub collection highlights – women in education at the IOE
This month the Archives Hub, a gateway to archive collections across the country, is featuring an article by our ex-colleague Kathryn H which highlights our resources on women in education. The Archives Hub enables researchers to search the contents of archives from over 220 organisations across the UK.
Tags: access, Amelia Fysh, archives, Archives Hub, Isabel Fry, Katherine Bathurst, NUWT, The White Family, women, women in education
Library reduced hours this weekend
Due to the poor weather which is likely to make travel conditions difficult, the library will close at 17:00 today and 16:00 on both Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th February. All our digital systems will be working as normal.
Meta-morphosis: what’s the plan?
It’s that time of year where we regroup after Christmas and take stock of progress during the past six months. We have spent much of that time completing pilots, attempting to customise our software and attending JISC mash-up sessions. In the main, however, the team has been reading extensively around the subject to try and garner as much knowledge as possible from the various guidelines, toolkits, workbooks and case studies already written on the subject of digital archives.
The time has now come to begin creating detailed guidance and procedures for our archive depositors, both present and future, who wish to give us digital material. During the next three or four months we will be creating:
Revised donation and deposit agreements for archive material. These are the standard agreements signed by anyone that gives us their archive, which will now have to incorporate clauses relating to the ownership and preservation of, and access to, digital materials.
An additional guideline document for depositors with regard to their digital archives, which will include: initial questions and considerations around issues such as size, format, hardware and software; actions to undertake before the material can pass to the archive; and an outline of what the Institute of Education will be able to take.
A step-by-step procedural document for the intake and processing of digital materials by archive staff – in other words, the workflow for taking them into the Archive.
A metadata template to give to depositors incorporating all the fields the archivists need to add digital materials to CALM and e-prints.
Naming convention and version control guidance for depositors.
As a final output, the Archive team hope to write a detailed LibGuide containing all the information required by potential depositors when they give us their paper, hybrid and digital archive collections.
It all sounds like a lot of hard work and no doubt the documents will be revised and altered many times in the weeks and months to come, but it really feels like the JISC Transformations project will result in a fantastic set of guidelines and best practice. We’ll keep you posted.
Study Afternoon – ‘Tools of the Trade: Historical Textbooks and other Teaching and Learning Resources’ Wednesday 6th February 2013
Our next study day, sponsored by the Friends of the Newsam Library and Archives, is on Wednesday 6th February 2013. The theme this year is teaching resources and there will be talks on a range subjects including the use of teaching resources as propaganda in German schools during the 1930s and 1940s and history teaching and controversy in the 1970s. The day also provides a chance to learn more about the collections of the library and archives and how you can use them to support your teaching and research. Talks will focus on the collections in the archives, historical textbooks and the resource publications of the Inner London Education Authority.
Full details of the programme can be found here. The event is free, to book your place please contact Becky Webster at rebecca.webster@ioe.ac.uk or on 020 7612 6983.
Tags: archives, events, Friends of the Newsam Library and Archives, Historical Collections, historical events, special collections, teaching resources
Ejournal access
The Library is discontinuing the use of Swetswise as a gateway to ejournals when our subscription to this service expires on 31 December 2012. For more details about the move away from Swetswise please visit our page about ejournal developments or read on below for our recommended alternatives.
Journal title search
Please use our eJournal Search service, which is available from the Library home page.
All ejournals that were accessible via Swetswise are available through this service so there will be no loss of content.
Journal publishers
Library links to the main ejournal publishers are also available via our ejournal packages page.
Table of contents (TOCs)
If you have used Swetswise as a table of contents service, the Library recommends ZETOC Search and ZETOC Alerts instead.
Article search
For article searching, the Library subscribes to and makes available a wide range of other journal indexes in education and related social sciences, including:
British Education Index
Google Scholar
Alternatively, it is possible to use Google Scholar (this is IOE Library’s customised link which will present full text where we have access to it).
Support
For more information on finding electronic resources please visit our IOE Libguide Databases A-Z and our page about ejournals developments.
Tags: access, article search, BEI, british education index, ejournals, electronic resources, journals, swetswise, table of contents, tocs, zetoc
