Following just over a year's worth of hard work, Ex Nihilo, the University of Oxford and a selection of other collaborators are excited to see the launch of 'Towards Digital Collections; Resources for Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums'. The training course and resources were officially launched at the Towards a National Collection Two-Day Conference 2024 (20-21 November 2024).

Towards Digital Collections is a training course has been developed for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museum (GLAM) professionals. The course is aimed at those starting or continuing their digital collections journey at small and medium sized GLAM institutions, but many across the sector would potentially find the materials useful, for some key facts and stats please see below:

• Online course, freely open and available to all

• 7 modules, covering 'Introduction', 'Selection', 'Cataloguing and Curation', 'Imaging and Digitisation', 'Publishing and Discovery', 'Public Engagement' & 'Researcher Engagement'

• 64 individual training steps across the modules covering a range of topics, with both practical examples and case studies from the UK and beyond

• 10 introductory training videos

• 16 supplementary worksheet or factsheets

• 11 contributing authors and experts from the sector
  
  

Ex Nihilo are looking forward to continue working with the Towards a National Collection Programme until March 2025, to run a selection of events across the UK. We invite anyone working within the GLAM sector and with an interest in digital collections to join us for a free session which will introduce this new set of resources, as well as offering the attendees the opportunity to provide feedback about the course and help us identify any potential future improvements or updates. To access the materials and find out more about these upcoming session please visit https://www.towardsdigitalcollections.org/ 

Here's a short trailer which gives a preview of what to expect from the course: 

Ex Nihilo in collaboration with the University of Oxford have recently been awarded a contract from Historic Environment Scotland (HES), to assess the current landscape of training provisions for digital collections within GLAM settings and produce practical tools and resources that can have an immediate impact to help both small and medium-sized GLAM institutions to begin or continue their digitisation journeys. 

Damon Strange at Ex Nihilo will be joined by the University of Oxford team of Professor David De Roure, Academic Director of Digital Scholarship @ Oxford, Dr Andrew Cusworth, Digital Scholarship @ Oxford Operations Manager and Dr Megan Gooch, Head of the Centre for Digital Scholarship at the Bodleian Libraries, who bring a wealth of expertise and experience in digital humanities and digital learning. Over the next 9 months, the team will work collaboratively to deliver this work, engaging with many stakeholders and organisations across the sector to inform the building of a suite of training materials which can be of benefit in supporting. 

This work to develop Digital Collections Training Materials for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums has been commissioned by the Towards a National Collection Programme - a major five-year £18.9 million investment in the UK’s world-renowned museums, archives, libraries and galleries. Funded through the UK Research and Innovation’s Strategic Priorities Fund and delivered by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

If you have experience of digitisation and/or digitalisation journeys in the GLAM sector, feel free to reach out to one of the team directly, we’d love to hear your thoughts, or get in touch via our website.