JISC Grant Funding Call Name of Programme & Strand:

Cover Sheet for Proposals
JISC Grant Funding Call
Name of Programme & Strand:
Programme Tags:
Name of Call Area Bidding For:
Name of Lead Institution:
Name of Department where
project would be based:
Full Name of Proposed Project:
Name(s) of Partner HE/FE
Institutions Involved:
Name(s) of Partner:
Full Contact Details for Primary
Lead and/or Contact for the
Project:
Length of Project:
Project Start Date:
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Funding Broken Down over
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Project Description / Abstract:
Keywords describing project:
I have looked at the example FOI
form at Appendix B and included
an FOI form in the attached bid
I have read the Call, Briefing
Paper and associated Terms and
Conditions of Grant at Appendix
D
1
Information Environment 2011 Programme: Deposit of research
outputs and Exposing digital content for education and research
"INF11" and "JISCexpo"
• Strand B - Expose
King’s College London
Centre for e-Research
SAILS: Shipping Archives and Integrated Logbooks of Ships: Linking
WW1 Naval Records
King’s College London, Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies
Met Office ACRE initiative, The National Archives
Name: Lorna Hughes Position: Deputy Director
Email:[email protected] Tel: 020 7848 2426
Address: CeRch King’s College, 26-29 Drury Lane
Postal Code: WC2B 5RL
12 months
30th June 2010
29th June 2011
£76484.52
2010/11: £63537.09
2011/12: £12947.43
The core of this project is a digital collection of ship’s logs from
1914-1918. Digitized by the Met Office ACRE initiative, their
climatological data has been extracted to generate a series of historic
weather datasets and visualisations. However, these records also
have great value to the social and military history community as they
include detailed information about the movement of ships, and about
ship’s personnel. They have even greater value if linked to records
and source materials from other collections, such as the Royal Navy
Service Records in The National Archives. Linking the Service
Records to the Logbooks will, effectively, ‘put sailors back in their
ships’.
SAILS will expose and link the data in the ships logs with data in the
Service Records, thereby:
1. Developing a methodology for structuring and linking data from
disparate sources in order to enhance data available to researchers.
2. Implementing this methodology around specific research questions
related to WW1 naval history.
3. Putting the linked materials online as a resource and
demonstration of the method used.
This project will have enormous value for researchers of WW1, and
provide an important demonstration of linking and exposing
structured data for interdisciplinary research.
Linked data, federated searching, RDF, semantic web, history,
climate research, WW1
YES
YES
B. FOI Tick list
FOI Withheld Information Form
1. We would like JISC to consider withholding the following sections or paragraphs from disclosure,
should the contents of this proposal be requested under the Freedom of Information Act, or if we are
successful in our bid for funding and our project proposal is made available on JISC’s website.
2. We acknowledge that the FOI Withheld Information Form is of indicative value only and that JISC may
nevertheless be obliged to disclose this information in accordance with the requirements of the Act.
We acknowledge that the final decision on disclosure rests with JISC.
Section / Paragraph No.
Section G, Budget: Non Staff:
National Archives
2
Relevant exemption from
disclosure under FOI
s.43 Commercial Interests
Justification
TNA Licensing arrangements
and fee.
C. Fit to programme objectives, value to JISC community
Shipping Archives and Integrated Logbooks of Ships: Linking WW1 Naval Records (SAILS) will expose and
link structured historical data related to naval history from 1914-18, and to historical climatological data: ships'
logs, digitized by the Met Office ACRE project to analyse historic climate data; navy service records digitized
and held by The National Archives (TNA); and climatological data itself. Presently, these materials are
accessible to historians and researchers in limited ways, and cannot be cross linked despite having many
common elements. SAILS will make it possible to search for individual sailors through the service records and
then link their records to the logs of the ships they served on during WW1. This will effectively ‘put sailors
back in their ships’, something that has not been previously been possible with existing digital collections. In
addition the project will link to climatological data held in the datasets of climate observations maintained by
ICOADS (International Comprehensive Ocean Atmosphere Dataset), and, at a later stage, to climate data
from the log books themselves which is currently being digitized by the Galaxy Zoo project (funded through
the JISC Community Content Call): these linkages will be of great value to the historical study of climate
change, and will be relevant to an even wider circle of stakeholders.
SAILS will therefore provide an enhanced capacity for digital resources, addressing key research and
education questions related to WW1 naval history, as well as providing access to scientific research data for
the climatologist. Exposing and linking this content will be of interest to the broadest user community,
including researchers and archivists interested in the period, schools and teachers; government and military
organizations; those engaged in family history research and engaged in meterological research. Our project
team are well positioned to ensure SAILS promotes the Knowledge Transfer agenda.
SAILS will develop a technical solution for making data available for re-use by linking data from different
collections and in different formats. Our approach will be applicable to many different disciplines, and will
therefore make a valuable contribution to development and innovation in the information environment.
The project deliverables will address all thee areas outlined in the 2/10 Call:
i.
ii.
iii.
The project will make a collection of resources available on the Web as structured and linked
data, to benefit teaching, research and knowledge transfer.
The project will develop a prototype with instructional step-by-step demonstrations and
documentation of our approach, illustrating how our approach can be applied to other collections
and projects.
It will explore and report on the opportunities and barriers encountered by the project,
documenting them, and making recommendations for their amelioration based on our experience.
Example use case
Online access to the naval service records and log books from the First World War will provide researchers
with a direct route into the heart of the subject: namely, the personnel and official records of the naval side of
the war. By themselves, service records allow researchers to rebuild the strands of an individual’s war, and
network of contacts. As for the Log books, they provide the hard facts of naval operations – ship locations,
visibility, location, speed, course – all providing the accurate data vital for analysing the implementation of
naval policy. Logs also provide a window into the routine onboard; and highlight the wider application of naval
forces.
From the information held in these records, it is also possible to make links to biographical information held in
a large number of sources. For instance, it should be possible to link to information in the 1901 and 1911
censuses, databases of casualties held in such resources at http://www.naval-history.net, and information on
Courts Martial (held by The National Archives).
At present, however, it is very difficult to elicit such information on a ship-by-ship base owing to the diversity of
materials in which this information is disseminated and their limited facilities for sophisticated information
retrieval. For example, casualty lists are arranged by month of death and do not offer a search facility by
name. Keyword searching by ship name is possible on the TNA catalogue but this does not extend down to
individual service records. For the maritime historian the tracing of such biographical information is laborious
and often frustrating.
To provide an indication of the web of information that may be available for a user who is researching the
history of those serving on a given vessel the example of the battleship Royal Oak, which saw service in
3
World War I and was eventually sunk at Scapa Flow in 1939 was used: a rich web of information was found
which can readily be related to basic information to be gleaned from the log books: for example, the captain
Kenneth Dewar, who was associated with the Royal Oak mutiny in 1928, can be linked to records of his court
martial, his service record, the authorship of his book The Navy From Within (1939), and his parliamentary
candidacy in the 1931 general election. These links can in their turn be extended further: for instance his book
can be linked to reviews or even sales records. All of this information is available, but it is a laborious process
to find it at present. For less well-known figures, for instance Chief Mechanician Charles Dunk, who served
during the same period, it is much more difficult to find biographical information: it is for these presently
unseen figures at the historical margins, that a project to link and expose data becomes especially valuable.
Linking service records to the ships logs will effectively lift the sailor’s individual service records from the
archives and put them back where they actually served as individuals and groups on the board ships of the
First World War. This unique approach will provide researchers with a more complete picture of naval service
and operations than ever before at such a timely moment as we approach the centennial of a war that is still
much misunderstood.
D. Quality of Proposal and Robustness of Workplan
Our approach
SAILS has the following aims:
1. Identifying the essential data elements from the digital sources as intellectual objects that make them useful for
interdisciplinary research, working with climate researchers and naval historians
2. Developing a methodology for linking data from the logs to data from disparate sources, based on these digital
objects
3. Developing, and documenting, a demonstrator of this methodology
4. Putting the linked materials online as a demonstration of the method and data with a user interface that
highlights the value of the materials for a variety of stakeholders, including researchers, schools, and family
historians.
We propose to work with a relatively small number of documents, approx. 200 ships logs and 200 service records
from TNA, and any associated records in the ICOADS data referenced by geographical location. Specifically, the
digital resources that the project will initially expose and link are: i. Data held in the digitised versions of ships logs held by the Met Office.
In addition to weather readings, these include details of personnel, detailed information on the position of
each ship taken at least twice a day, and other, often very detailed remarks, recording any incidents that
may have occurred on each day.
ii. Royal Navy Archives held by The National Archives, including Naval Service Records.
These are part of TNA's holdings of Records of the Admiralty, Naval Forces, Royal Marines, Coastguard,
and related bodies (series ADM 188). They include data on place and date of birth, ships served in,
periods of time served and date of death (if in service)
iii. Climatological data held in the ICOADS datasets
These datasets include a large quantity of meteorological readings taken from a wide variety of sources,
both sea- and land-based.
The project will create the resource necessary to make full use of the potential for linkages outlined above by
creating a repository of RDF triples and user-friendly interfaces to allow the forging and querying of the
linkages by those with no technical knowledge. Following the Four Rules for Linked Data outlined by HM
Government, URIs will be assigned to all relevant components of the MET Office datasets, the log books, the
ICOADS climatological data and the service records, and linkages established by a controlled set of
predicates which form part of an ontology to be drawn up with the advice of historians and other interested
parties. These triples will be exposed via an interface which will be fully accessible to the lay user and require
no knowledge of RDF: for more expert users, a SPARCQL endpoint will also be set up to allow more
advanced queries.
4
Project participants and breakdown of work
CeRch: Project management; data structuring, exposing and linkage; user interface development
The National Archives (TNA): Access to service records; input into stakeholder engagement and evaluation
Met Office ACRE project: Advice on extracting and linking information in the ships logs for climate change
research; developing scientific use cases; linking to historic weather visualizations; outreach to ACRE
community and beyond.
Corbett centre: Maritime History content development; stakeholder engagement, evaluation and
dissemination, knowledge transfer to government departments, and the military. .
Timetable
The project will start in June 2010 and will last one year as follows:
Project Deliverables
- A pool of RDF triples linking the diverse components mentioned above
- An online demonstrator linking the records, which will require no
knowledge of RDF
- A SPARCQL endpoint for more advanced users
- A documented methodology for exposing and linking the materials
- A markup and metadata scheme for the ships logs and service records
- An ontology of RDF predicates drawn up with expert advice from the
Corbett Centre and other interested parties
- A final report documenting the project findings.
Project Management
The Project will be managed at the Centre for e-Research, King's College London. PI Lorna Hughes will be
responsible for all aspects of project management and deliverables. Given that this project has several
partners, and stakeholder communities will be represented from a number of disparate communities, including
archives, libraries, researchers, teachers and schools, and the military, it will be necessary for a senior and
experienced project manager to ensure smooth running of the project.
Workplan
WP 1: Project Management – planning, coordination with JISC and reporting of progress. Creation of a
project website, though which the project will be made known to the stakeholder community. Organize all
project meetings, workshops, evaluation and dissemination.
WP 2: Stakeholder liaison: Consult with academics to identify essential intellectual content in the logs historic, geographic, scientific -for structuring content, and key naval history questions related to the materials.
Work with TNA to access to a sample of Navy service records that relate to the individual officers who served
on the ships; development of use cases and educational materials (see section e2).
WP 3: Structuring and exposing data:
Parts i-iii of this work package will be carried out as part of CeRCH's institutional contribution.
5
i. Design of markup and metadata scheme
The Centre for e-Research (CeRCH) at King's will analyse the range of data that is derivable from the log
books and devise a suitable markup and metadata scheme, based on XML, to accommodate these.
ii. Markup and structuring of data from Met Office images
All information necessary to provide the initial linkages from the log books will be marked up and structured:
this will mainly consist of geographical locations (for linking to ICOADS) and information on personnel. The
whole will be converted into the XML schema designed by CeRCH.
iii. Creation of FEDORA-based repository for records
We will use the FEDORA repository architecture, in which CeRCH is already highly experienced, to store and
make available the data and the RDF triples which encode the relationships between them. FEDORA is a
fully flexible and extensible architecture on which the necessary interfaces can readily be built using CeRCH's
expertise in Java scripting. It is particularly suitable for XML, in which we will store the data and RDF, as it
allows on-the-fly processing of XSLT.
iv. Encoding of linkages with TNA service records and climatological datasets
The core of this project will be the design of user-friendly mechanisms to allow semantic linkages to be made
from the ships' logs to service records held at The National Archives. The core technology for these linkages
will be the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the project will aim to produce a store of RDF triples
which will reflect the needs of historians and researchers, and a user-friendly mechanism for interrogating
them.
The creation of these linkages will involve the following stages:1. Data conversion as required
Any necessary data conversion will be carried out to expose the contents of each item to be incorporated
into the resource. For example, the service records at The National Archives in PDF format will be
processed as necessary to convert the records into machine-readable data in a form in which each
relevant component can be directly identified and addressed.
2. Assignment of URIs to components
1. A series of unique URIs will be generated automatically and assigned to each component of
these documents requiring a linkage: for example, each person in a log book will receive a unique
URI. Similarly each item in the TNA service records will be assigned a URI independent of the
TNA's own identifiers. For linking to the climatological datasets, each geographical reading will be
assigned a URI which will link to geographical locations recorded in the datasets.
2. These URIs will be linked to their current URLs using a resolver such as PURL, DOI or HANDLE.
These assignments will be checked regularly using link checking software such as Link Sleuth
(http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html).
3. Drawing up an ontology of predicates
1. A number of possible, all-purpose ontologies already exist, including, for instance, one created by
Dbpedia. We shall assess whether this or another ontology are suitable to form the basis of a
bank of RDF predicates (taking advice from the Corbett Centre and other experts in historical
research), before defining the project ontology.
4. Creating linkages
1. A user-friendly interface will then be designed to allow the creation of the bank of RDF triples
which will form the core of this application. This will allow users to establish links between
components using drop down menus to assign RDF predicates. In addition, the bulk assignment
of linkages may also be possible for some of the material. The user creating these linkages will
need no knowledge of RDF to be able to use this system.
2. In addition to creating linkages to service records, the system will also allow linkages to be drawn
up to other materials, including census records and other biographical sources using the same
methodologies. Similarly, linkages may usefully be made from the climatological datasets to
geographic resources.
5. Designing the end user interface
1. The resulting resource will be made available to the wider research community by a user-friendly
search and browse interface, which will assume no knowledge of RDF. The system will allow the
user to follow linkages in a logical fashion and to be able to cross-search the entire collection in a
structured manner.
6
The workflow for these processes is represented diagrammatically below:
WP 4: Testing – the collection of resources and the linking interface will be thoroughly tested in-house using
volunteers, including students from digital humanities courses at King's College: specifically, it will be
assessed for ease-of-use and the extent to which it facilitates collaboration
WP 5: Dissemination and Outreach – working with stakeholders identified in WP2, the project will be
presented and reported at conferences and publications, and to the broadest range of communities.
WP 6: Evaluation –Evaluation results and case studies to be published on project website. A project advisory
committee of stakeholders will review progress. Two evaluation workshops, at the middle and end of the
project, will test and comment on the project and ensure its suitability for broadest community of users.
Risk Analysis
Risk
Action to Prevent/Manage Risk
Pro
babi
lity
(1-5)
2
Severit
y
(1-5)
3
Scor
e
(P x
S)
6
Community
buy-in
1
3
3
Technical
2
2
4
Software
1
3
3
Staff already in place. Continual monitoring to ensure backfilling
handled appropriately. Ensure knowledge exchange between
project staff. Rapid project life-cycle reduces likelihood of ill
effects of staff departure
Proactive engagement with community via existing researcher
networks; consultation with researchers and stakeholder
engagement on dissemination
Factor in additional time for experimentation where appropriate,
ensure that staff are supported
All software open source
Sustainability
2
2
4
Ensure continued use of resources
Licensing
and legal
1
3
3
Ensure all licensing is documented and transparent
Staffing
7
Collaboration
issues
Making
logbooks
accessible
online
2
3
6
1
6
6
Experience project management; good communication, robust
project plan; expectations of partners clarified at project outset
Staff availability and budgeting has been arranged by CeRch to
ensure that the logbooks will be accessible online to ensure
project success
IPR position
IPR issues relating the publishing and licensing of TNA records are covered by the fee arranged with TNA.
We do not anticipate any additional IPR issues.
Sustainability issues.
We do not anticipate any sustainability issues in maintaining the resource on a King’s College Website for
three years beyond the funding period. We anticipate that this project will feed into future funding applications
which will ensure longer term access to the intellectual outputs of the project. See the project sustainability
plan in section F.
E. Engagement with the Community
The project partners represent widest national and international community engagement. CeRch has an
international reputation in all aspects of e-Research. The Met Office ACRE initiative is deeply embedded in
the international climate research community, and was recently funded by JISC to run workshops on historic
source materials for weather data. ACRE’s partners will follow the progress of this project and contribute to its
development and dissemination. The Corbett Centre represents academic researchers from all military history
disciplines, and also has a programme of outreach to military and government departments. The TNA is at the
forefront of access to primary historic documents relating to WW1. The project has three strategies for
engagement:
1. Evaluation workshops in WP6. The second will contribute to the development of dissemination and
engagement activities.
2. In WP2, we will develop use cases reflecting the value of the resource in key areas:
•
•
•
•
WW1 and education;
Research into maritime history and strategy
Linking and exposing primary source materials for climate research.
The development of linked data from disparate digital collections.
3. We will work closely with the JISC communications team to facilitate broader engagement, including the
development of a media strategy given the high-profile nature of the topic and the upcoming WW1
centenary.
4. WP 5 will identify opportunities to use the resource for teaching and education, and to disseminate project
outputs at a number of major international conferences.
F. Impact
Present state of research activity.
A huge investment has been made in digitizing historic logbooks and naval service records, but these have
not been linked. Similarly, a great number of scientific datasets realted to climate research are available
online, but they have not been linked to historic digital content. The opportunities for identifying research
objects within these materials of broad interdisciplinary interest have not fully been explored. While there has
been a great deal of theory emerging around linked data, very few use cases have emerged based on
humanities-based research questions testing linked data research methods.
SAILS will address these areas of impact. Furthermore, our approach and methodology for linking ships logs
8
and service records could have a broad international impact, as similar shipping and military service records
are available for all countries involved in the marine theatre of WW1. No significant attempt has been made to
link these resources at the national level.
Stakeholder analysis
Recent stakeholder analysis has shown that a project that fuses together social and climate histories with
climate science will facilitate broadest multi-disciplinary engagement to and between the following groups, to
support Knowledge Transfer:
1. Academic researchers
Military, economic and social historians of WW1 will benefit from better linkage of a wider range of range of
historical and scientific source materials, and developing a greater understanding of the use of einfrastructures and e-research tools and methods.
2. Scientists and researchers interested in the science of climate change
Those in the scientific and climate change community will benefit from an awareness of new sources for
historic weather data; and of the potential for linkage of these materials to scientific databases.
3. Archives, Museums and Libraries
Archives, museums and libraries will benefit from our approach to enable greater exposure and linkage of
archives. This can contribute to their institutional goals of access, preservation and sustainability (through
greater use) of collections. This will build capacity and encourage knowledge transfer.
5. The Met Office and related public sector organizations
Organizations like the Met Office are the custodians of 'official' data related to historic weather. Augmenting
this data with 'unofficial' historic data from archives presents an opportunity to check the 'official' figures
against those collected elsewhere. It will also enable the Met Office to build a fuller picture of data from areas
where it has not gathered data itself. This project will also facilitate public engagement with Met Office and
official sources, at a time when public engagement with trusted statistics and weather data is urgently
required.
5. The e-Research (and e-Science) community
The international e-Research (and e-Science) community has access to a wide range of digital tools and
computational capacity to deploy them for the investigation of new areas of research. Access to complex,
humanities-based data can explore this existing capacity and infrastructure to its fullest.
6. Students, educators and the public
The Project will have significant education and public impact. It will facilitate collaboration between the public,
researchers, and source materials. This will support knowledge transfer and public engagement with
research.
Sustainability strategy
The resource will be maintained by CeRch on an experimental basis for three years beyond the end of the
project. We also intend to apply for future RC funding to expand the proof of concept to other materials, which
will ensure the continuation of this work.
Evaluation
We will adopt an iterative approach to evaluation as part of overall project management. Regular contact
between project partners and frequent internal review of work as it progresses will ensure that the feedback
and evaluation informs the development of the project.
See WP6 for a description of our evaluation workshops.
G. Budget
Directly Incurred Staff
Apr10– Mar11
Apr11– Mar 12
TOTAL £
Martin Robson, Grade 5, 20% fte
Lorna Hughes, Grade ALC 6, 10% fte
7033.48
6328.46
1406.7
1265.7
8440.18
7594.16
Developer, grade 6, 20% fte
7852.06
1570.42
9422.48
Richard Gartner, grade 6, 20% fte
Katrin Tiedau, grade 7, 5% fte
7430.72
2319.26
1486.14
463.85
8916.86
2783.11
Total Directly Incurred Staff (A)
30963.98
6192.81
37156.79
9
Non-Staff
Apr10– Mar11
Travel and expenses
8000
National Archives records (inc VAT)
7000
MetOffice Consultancy (inc VAT)
3500
Total Directly Incurred Non-Staff (B)
Directly Incurred Total (C)
Apr11– Mar 12
TOTAL £
4000
12000
£
7000
3500
27500
4000
31500
49463.98
10192.81
59656.79
Directly Allocated
Apr10– Mar11
Apr11– Mar 12
TOTAL £
Staff
£
£
£
Estates CeRch
4136.7
827.34
4964.04
Estates Robson
1659.63
331.92
1991.55
Directly Allocated Total (D)
5796.33
1159.26
6955.59
17257.89
3451.59
20709.48
6903.16
1380.63
8283.79
Total Project Cost (C+D+E)
Amount Requested from JISC
79421.36
63537.09
16184.29
12947.432
95605.65
76484.52
Institutional Contributions
15884.27
3236.858
19121.13
Indirect Costs (E) CeRch
Indirect costs Robson
Percentage Contributions over the
life of the project
No. FTEs used to calculate indirect
and estates charges, and staff
included
JISC: 80%
No
FTEs
0.75
Partners: 20%
Total: 100%
Which Staff: Hughes, Robson, Gartner, Developer
H. Previous experience
King's College London Centre for e-Research (CeRch) www.kcl.ac.uk/iss/CeRch builds on the expertise of
the Arts and Humanities Data Service (funded by JISC and the AHRC) and the AHRC ICT Methods Network.
CeRch undertakes research and development into all aspects of the management, use and sustainability of
data from all disciplines. CeRch is presently involved in a number of nationally funded initiatives in the digital
arts and humanities, including arts-humanities.net and AHeSSC; and the EU funded DARIAH project.
The international ACRE initiative (http://www.met-acre.org/), based at the Met Office Hadley Centre in the
UK but with a wide international set of partners and linkages. ACRE is engaged with the wider science, social
science and humanities communities, expanding the breadth of material and data being recovered and
digitised under, and linked to, this initiative. ACRE is collaborating with Galaxy Zoo on a JISC funded project
to develop a community approach to transcribing and tagging to the ships log’s records. JISC also funded an
interdisciplinary ACRE workshop on historic weather data.
The National Archive (TNA) have digitized and made available a large number of naval service records that
relate to the WW1 period. They have agreed to allow the project to access a selection of these ship’s logs and
service records.
King's College London's Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies part of the Defence Studies
Department, King’s College London at the Joint Services Command and Staff College. The aim of the centre
is to enhance the understanding of maritime affairs through the development and support of research driven
education via links to academic partners, policy-makers and other individuals and institutions with an interest
in the maritime, through research driven teaching and knowledge transfer between academia and the military.
Other stakeholders in Corbett Centre activities are militaries, in particular naval forces (UK, NATO and
overseas), and government bodies such as the Ministry of Defence.
10
Project Team
Lorna Hughes CeRCH (PI)
Richard Gartner CeRch,
Developer, CeRch
Martin Robson, Corbet
Centre, KCL
Rob Allan, and Philip
Brohan, Met Office Acre
Initiative
Edward Hampshire, TNA
Deputy Director of CeRch. Extensive experience managing and delivering
digital humanities projects. Recent projects include: AHRC ICT Methods
Network; and arts-humanities.net, Arts and Humanities e-Science Support
centre (AHeSSC), ‘enabling uptake of e-infrastructure services’ project.
CeRch Information and Knowledge Specialist, expert in electronic
information provision, including metadata for digital libraries. Recent projects
include: METS Awareness Training project (Digital Preservation and
Records Management Programme (4/04)), Internet Library of Early Journals
(ILEJ) project. Author of three JISC Technology and Standards Watch
reports (02-25, 03-06 and 08-01).
A software developer from the CeRch pool will be deployed on the project.
We will ensure that they have suitable skills and experience in RDFs and
linked data technologies.
Visiting Lecturer and Research Assistant at The Corbett Centre and an
Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies at the
University of Exeter. Former Caird Senior Research Fellow at the National
Maritime Museum and the author of several books on naval history. Has
extensive experience of commercial sector project management in
traditional and electronic publishing delivering print and web content in an
educational environment.
Climate researchers, have worked extensively on land-based records, ships
logs and related materials, to recover, image, digitise, archive and visualise
primary source materials related to historic instrumental weather records.
Advice on, and access to, WW1 Navy service records.
I. Supporting letters
1. King’s: Karen Stanton (ISS)
2. Corbett Centre DoD Director;
3. Royal Navy: Commander Tim Ash
4. Met Office
5. TNA
Appendix:
Related JISC funded projects at CeRch
Other JISC funded projects at CeRch include: CEDAR, BRIL; CLIF; Embedding GeoCrosswalk;.FishNet;
GMan;OcroPodium; Historical Hansards; PEKIN; R4R; SPIL, STG and a recently complete VRE landscape
study.
ACRE:
ACRE is collaborating with Galaxy Zoo on a JISC funded project to develop a community approach to
transcribing and tagging to the ships log’s records. JISC funded an interdisciplinary ACRE workshop on
historic weather data.
11
From: Captain CLW Page MA CEng FIMechE FRHistS RN Rtd
Naval Historical Branch (Naval Staff)
Ministry of Defence
24 Store, PP20, Main Road, HM Naval Base, Portsmouth, Hants, PO1 3LU
To whom it may concern
Telephone (Direct Dial) 023 9272 4917
(Registry) 023 9272 5300
(Fax) 023 9272 4003
Your Reference:
Our Reference: D/NHB
Date: 19 April 2010
The Naval Historical Branch provides historical perspectives on current issues
for the Naval Staff, Ministry of Defence and Central Government, but also
responds to a wide variety of questions on naval and maritime history for the
general public. The Historical Branch's archive dates back to the point at
which the Historical Section was first founded by Winston Churchill in 1914. It
is the official repository for the Royal Navy's Corporate Memory (collecting the
current operational records of all RN ships and Fleet Air Arm Squadrons,
RFAs, and Royal Marines units). The total holding is about 120,000 records.
The proposed project to provide linkages between Royal Navy log books
digitised by the Met Office and the Service Records of personnel held in The
National Archives is an important development in academic research of the
Royal Navy during the First World War and a timely initiative with the
impending centennial anniversary of the conflict. It will most certainly place
the individuals who served during the First World War back into the ships,
itself an important development, but the inclusion of log books provides a
more comprehensive view of many important aspects of the naval side of the
war. It is certainly hoped that the project will develop from this scheme to
include operational records which will add to the already considerable value of
the project and hence provide an unrivalled resource for researchers and
academics investigating the history of the First World War.
This project will provide an excellent research tool which will undoubtedly be
of use to the NHB in providing information on events in the First World War,
and prove a model for expanding the project in due course to incorporate later
records when they become available.
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