News

N-RICH Prototype

Towards a National Collection are delighted to be working with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and a range of partners and stakeholders to shape the future of a UK-wide digital collections research infrastructure. Underway this week, the National Research Infrastructure for Cultural Heritage (N-RICH) Prototype, the latest project in the Towards a National Collection programme, is a two-year investment by UKRI in the UK’s world-renowned cultural heritage collections.

Discovery Projects Final Reports

All our TaNC Discovery Projects have now published their Final Reports. These reports present their final findings and outputs, as well as a compilation of recommendations for the sector. 

Policy Recommendations for Digital UK Heritage Collections

Our Towards a National Collection researchers launched a call to action for the UK’s cultural heritage sector to collaborate on building a unified digital collection, or risk losing the opportunity to be a global leader in collections-based research.

Towards Digital Collections

Towards Digital Collections; Resources for Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums, is a training course aimed at Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museum (GLAM) professionals, funded by Towards a National Collection/ UKRI AHRC.

Discovery Projects Second Reports

All of our TaNC Discovery Projects have now published their Second Report. These reports present the primary milestones, achievements and challenges behind the Discovery Projects, and are completely available in our Zenodo community repository.

Discovery Projects First Reports

All of our TaNC Discovery Projects have now published their First Report. These reports present the primary milestones, achievements and challenges behind the Discovery Projects, and are completely available in our Zenodo community repository.

Digital Collections Audit Report

Between September 2021 and the end of January 2022, Collections Trust carried out an audit of digital collections in the UK’s leading cultural heritage institutions. The aim of the audit was to understand the number, scale and attributes of digitally-accessible collections across the UK cultural heritage sector that might form part of a future national digital collection infrastructure.

Art UK: Opening Up Access to the Nation's Art

The report details Art UK’s approach to image rights management, together with the technology used to make images available to view online.

A Culture of Copyright: A scoping study on open access to digital cultural heritage collections in the UK

This report gives an overview of focused on how the UK GLAM sector fares in the global open GLAM landscape, what barriers reinforce a culture of copyright and the potential for open GLAM in the UK.

International Benchmarking Review

The focus of this report are digital initiatives worldwide that fall under two categories: initiatives that are as close as possible to the scope and reach of the TaNC programme, meaning initiatives that are multi sectoral, multi collection, and that connect cultural objects and records at a national scale; and initiatives that offer models for best practice in relevant areas.

Online User Research Literature Review: UK Gallery, Library, Archive and Museum (GLAM) Digital Collections

A proper understanding of who uses digital collections and how, is critical for the success of the UK’s galleries, libraries, archives and museums in the information age. This review looks at available work from 2015 to 2021 to compare ways in which users and their behaviours have been categorised, and to identify areas where further discussion is required.

COVID-19 Projects Announcement

The three digital projects were selected as part of TaNC’s ‘Covid-19 Urgency Call’ to provide a critical and time-sensitive evaluation of the digital practice undertaken by museums during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide scalable lessons to inform future museum practice as well as the overall TaNC programme.

Early Report of the Persistent Identifiers Project

The Persistent Identifiers as IRO Infrastructure project has delivered a report on their early findings on how to take forward persistent identifiers (PIDs) as a core component of infrastructure in support of joining heritage collections together as a ‘National Collection’.

Foundation Projects Interim Reports

Interim Reports from our Foundation Projects are now published. The eight reports make recommendations for the further development of the DigitalHumanities landscape in the UK.