Background

As 2014 approaches, a range of publically-funded organisations have been scoping national, European and global activity within the cultural heritage/ broadcast/ educational communities around the WW1 commemoration in a ‘real world’ and digital environment. Broadly, activities in all sectors aim to: 

  • Highlight the global nature of WW1 engagement, and ramifications for sectors in society e.g. migrant communities which have resettled in the UK
  • Understand the legacy of WW1 in social, economic and political terms
  • Encourage new academic interpretations around WW1 to challenges on received notions of historical fact and build on new areas of research and study e.g. the Home Front
  • Make WW1 relevant to new audiences through personal connections to the war
  • Provide a range of ways in which end-users wish to engage with the material
  • Provide a mechanism for collaboration between publically-funded organisations to leverage most value from public expenditure and avoid duplication of effort and/or information deluge 

Higher and further education has a key and unique part to play in the WW1 commemoration through an academic appraisal and reappraisal of themes, events and perceptions and how this can be effectively represented through technological means to support innovative teaching, learning and research. Additionally, universities and colleges will potentially be able to capitalise on the teaching, learning and research opportunities that collaboration with the cultural heritage/ public broadcast sectors will provide in terms of ‘opening up’ vast swathes of digital content of use to education and research.

 A large body of work to support WW1 study has already been undertaken by JISC to support teaching, learning and research around WW1 through a range of digitisation and crowd-sourcing projects. An example of this work is The Great War Archive which digitised items contributed by the general public related to ‘someone’s experience of the First World War, either abroad or at home’. This has given rise to similar projects in participating countries e.g. in Germany, ‘Erster Weltkrieg in Alltagsdokumenten’

In order to provide higher education with the widest range of  teaching, learning and research opportunities presented by the WW1 commemoration, digitised content must be discoverable, accessible, comprehensive, open and sustainable for the benefit of innovative teaching, learning and research.