“ Blood, dirt and sucked sugar stick ” The First World War Poetry Digital Archive Electric Connections Conference, Edinburgh, 11th March 2008 Kate Lindsay, Project Manager Oxford University

Overview Background The Goals of the First World War Digital Poetry Archive The Collections Added Value for Education and Research Public Involvement “The Great War Archive”

Background 1996: JISC funded the Virtual Seminars Project Drew together primary materials on Wilfred Owen scattered across a range of archives and an array of contextual resources (WOMDA) Web based tutorials to advance the possibilities of traditional teaching One of the first multimedia collections designed specifically as a teaching resource -more than 1 million hits.

Goals of the First World War Poetry Digital Archive 1.To make primary source material available to researchers and students which would otherwise be difficult to access 2.To place the material in context thus widening the site’s appeal to include history, military history, women studies, and media studies 3.To add value by providing tools for research and education

The Archive Collections digital images of primary source material (manuscripts, letters, service records) from Edward Thomas, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg, Vera Brittain and Roland Leighton. Online corpora of the full-texts of the poems Multimedia objects (photographs, audio and video) from the IWM. Publications of War (recruitment posters, trench papers etc.)

Added Value: Research Delivery system will allow browsing, advanced searching, comparison, zooming and export of items.

Added Value: Education Workshops and events held with teachers and lecturers to guide development of educational tools and resources Podcasts and audio tours Online tutorials and resource packs Discussion boards Path creation scheme for teachers to build their own online tutorials and resource packs Explore the use Web 2.0 to deliver these resources more widely?

Public Involvement: The Great War Archive What have you got in your attic? Tap into the Internet’s potential for amateur digitization Alternative literatures and silent voices of the First World War Scribal, oral, pictorial histories

Further Information Kate Lindsay, Project Manager