Understanding the digital legacy of the World War I: Cymru1914

ABSTRACT

This research paper evaluates the use and impact of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)-funded Cymru1914 online digital archive of primary sources relating to World War One (WWI) from Libraries, Special Collections and Archives across Wales. Commemoration of WWI has seen a boom in project funding, including digital activity, funded through disparate initiatives. However, there has been little formal research or analysis of the use and impact of these digital outputs or their implications for funding policy. This research, therefore, seeks to answer two key questions: what is the use and impact of the Cymru1914 digital resources and secondly, what are the implications for evaluation methods and funding policy for similar projects?

KEYWORDS:

• Digital
• heritage
• methods
• evaluation
• WWI
• wales

Notes on contributor

Ian Anderson is Senior Lecturer in Information Studies in the School of Humanities, University of Glasgow. His research interest is in digital heritage, in particular, evaluating the creation and use of digital content and online information systems in archives, libraries and museums.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge Prof. Lorna Hughes for initiating this project and her support and advice, Dr Leonidas Konstantelos for additional data gathering and analysis, Sian Lloyd Pugh and Dafydd Tudur of the National Library of Wales for their cooperation and lastly, the users of the Cymru1914 website for sharing their experience.

ORCID

Ian G. Anderson http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6529-823X

Notes

1 (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140702162934/http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitisation.aspx).

2 (https://www.hlf.org.uk/about-us/news-features/hlf-support-first-world-war-heritage).

3 (http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/documents/data/statistics/competition-statistics-annual-report-2013-14/).

4 (https://www.hlf.org.uk/evaluation-guidance)

5 (http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/about-toolkit).

6 (http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/case-studies).

7 (http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/selected-references-toolkit).

8 (http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/welcome).

9 (http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/sites/microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk.tidsr/files/7-43_SPHERE_Web%20survey%20report-FINAL.pdf).

10 Technically, a bounce is a single ‘engagement hit’ of which page view is just one of six types.

11 (https://blog.kissmetrics.com/bounce-rate/?wide=1).

12 https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/standard-metrics-revisited-3-bounce-rate/