Digital.Bodleian News

Digital.Bodleian, the Libraries’ new digital collections delivery interface, was launched on 8 July with a lecture by Bruno Racine.

Matthew McGrattan, our Collections Delivery Architect, will demonstrate Digital.Bodleian on 14 October as part of the Bodleian’s series of lunchtime lectures.

Emma Stanford presented the interface to a group of Engineering Science alumni as part of the University’s Alumni Weekend

—Emma Stanford

Launching the new ORA thesis deposit form

A new thesis deposit form for Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) was launched on Wednesday 23 September, following on from the new article and ORA-Data deposit forms.

This new form is part of a general overhaul of the ORA submission system, dispensing with old forms that were unstable, difficult for depositors to follow and increasingly out of date.

The new form makes the submission process as easy as possible for the depositor, with comprehensive help text available in the form, allowing the depositor to complete their graduation requirement of depositing their Research eThesis to ORA with minimum stress. The new system will be easier for ORA staff to manage deposits, whilst still capturing necessary metadata so that Oxford etheses are easily discoverable, citable and accessible.

Further additions and improvements to the ORA submission system will continue over the coming months.

Thesis deposit can be accessed via the main ORA website: just select ‘Deposit’ followed by the Oxford Research Student – ‘thesis’ link. Our ‘How to deposit’ guide is available via our LibGuide and the ORA team can be contacted at: ora@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

—Sarah Barkla and David Watson

Spreading the word about ORA

On the 1 September Sarah Barkla and Michael Davis presented to the newly formed Research Software Developers Network (RSDN) on the Oxford University Research Archive (ORA).

Sarah talked about the service that ORA provides to the University and the funder requirements that make this so important to the University. Michael talked about the technologies used within the service and the development methodology to deliver the service and to continually improve it. Both sessions were well received by the RSDN members who attended.

—Michael Davis

Seminar—Telling Ancient Tales to Modern Machines: representing Sumerian literary narratives as RDF

We are delighed to welcome Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller to discuss her research on Semantic Web technologies and Assyriology at the Centre for Digital Scholarship.

Portrait of Terhi Nurmikko-FullerWhat: Telling Ancient Tales to Modern Machines: representing Sumerian literary narratives as RDF

Who: Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller

When: 13.00—14.00, Thursday 12 November 2015

Where: Centre for Digital Scholarship, Weston Library (map)

Access: open to all; free; registration is essential

Seminar

Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data have the potential to support and complement traditional scholarship in Assyriology. In this talk, the suitability of three existing Web Ontology Language (OWL) ontologies (CIDOC CRM, FRBRoo, and Ontomedia) to adequately capture and represent the heterogeneous and incomplete narratives published by the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature are discussed and evaluated.

Speaker

Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller is a postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Oxford e­-Research Centre. Her research involves the use of Linked Data and semantic technologies to support and diversity scholarship across a range of topics in the Digital Humanities.

This seminar is open to all. You can download a flyer for it.

Please meet by 12.55 inside the Parks Road entrance of the Weston Library (map: opposite the King’s Arms). If you are already in the Library, you can find the Centre for Digital Scholarship on the first floor of the Weston Library, through the Mackerras Reading Room and around the glass walkway.

This seminar is open to the public. It is free to attend, and reserving a place is essential.

Please note that bags must be left in lockers (£1 returnable deposit) by the entrance.

Digital.Bodleian at Alumni Weekend

MS. D'Orville 301, f. 40r

Euclid’s Elementa in Digital.Bodleian

Last weekend the Bodleian invited engineering science alumni attending the University of Oxford’s Alumni Weekend (18-20 September) to a presentation on the Bodleian’s engineering-related materials. This event was held in the Bahari Room and the Centre for Digital Scholarship at the Weston Library. While Julie-Anne Lambert of the John Johnson Collection showed our guests a selection of printed ephemera related to automobiles and engineering, I gave a brief tour of the old Toyota Project website (created in 1996 to display images of ephemera digitized with funding from Toyota City) and then gave a demo of our new collections delivery interface, Digital.Bodleian. While the engineers were disappointed that I couldn’t currently show them any editions of Newton or Pythagoras in Digital.Bodleian, they showed interest in the technical aspects and capabilities of the site, especially in the ways in which the IIIF APIs and apps such as Mirador can be used to view and compare items in Digital.Bodleian and other repositories.

– Emma Stanford