Locating Communications Heritage

Project update and prototype screenshots

mia — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 18:28:56 +0000

This summary of the project outcomes was put together for the AHRC BT Research Networking Final Event at the University of Leicester on Monday 10th January. The morning session was devoted to presentations from each project team about their work to date and ideas for the future, so we put forward some of the projects achievements and learning outcomes, whilst giving people a chance to have a go on the Hidden Histories app.

The presentation includes information about the pilot’s aims and vision, our target personas, what we achieved and some of the issues raised along the way, as well as screenshots of the prototype ‘Hidden Histories’ iPhone application developed for the pilot: Hidden Histories AHRC BT talk (PDF link).

Initial Designs

Tilly Blyth, Curator of Computing and Information — Thu, 06 May 2010 10:26:49 +0000

We’ve been working through some initial designs, which is a really interesting process as it gets you to think about how the user will interact with your content and where different types of content should be held. Its also asked us to think about what we mean by objects in a landscape – are they points of interest (e.g. a birthplace of a person), buildings that still exist or are they actual objects held within museum collections? Not surprisingly the team have different answers and different perspectives.

Connecting Collections: Successful partnership working across the heritage sector

Tilly Blyth, Curator of Computing and Information — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:53:21 +0000

Bookings are now open for this free event on Friday 5^th March hosted by BT Connected Earth and the Collections Trust.

Date: 5^th March 2010

Time: 9.30am – 4.30pm

Venue: BT Centre, 81 Newgate Street, London EC1A 7AJ

The day will celebrate successful collaborative partnerships across museums, libraries, archives and beyond, showcasing projects that have found exciting ways of making collections accessible to new audiences.

Through breakout sessions and a panel discussion, the event will also highlight how these partnerships can inspire future projects.

Speakers include:

Roy Clare, MLA – Keynote address
Nick Poole, Collections Trust – Introduction
Jason Webber, Museum of London – Exploring 20^th Century London
Siân Wynn-Jones, BT Connected Earth – Contemporary Collecting in Partnership: a reality matrix
Simon Floyd, Renaissance East of England – SHARE
Liza Giffen, University of Leeds & Kirsty Shields, M&S Archive – Marks in Time
Tilly Blyth, Science Museum – Locating Communications Heritage
Anra Kennedy, Culture 24 – Caboodle
Almut Grüner, Thackray Museum & UKMCG SSN – Medicine at the Movies

Lunch and refreshments will be provided, and there will be plenty of opportunity to network with colleagues and discuss current issues.

To reserve your free place, please complete the booking form at: http://tiny.cc/Ib08K

locating communications history in London: help needed!‏

jonagar — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:25:45 +0000

Do you know places in London that are significant for the history of communications, computing and information technologies?

We are looking for suggestions that will help us in an experimental project to guide mobile users through the UK’s rich history of technology. The project is called Locating Communications Heritage. In the pilot phase we are finding out how best to guide people walking around London with a mobile phone, using the locatability function of recent smartphones to reveal the significance of sites.

The idea is to link places to objects as well as to link to further contextual and archival information. There will also be the ability to record users’ memories of the history of communications technology.

So for example, if you were walking down the Strand you will see on your phone that UK’s pioneering BBC radio transmitter, 2LO, operated from Marconi House. By clicking, you could find out more about the 2LO, an extraordinary object, at the Science Museum. If your grandmother was a 2LO operator, you could record her recollections.

Places could be the sites of interesting machines (such as 2LO or the LEO computer at Cadby Hall), places of invention (such as John Ambrose Fleming’s thermionic valves in Bloomsbury), birthplaces, buildings (such as the BT Tower), or places where communications were vital (such as the London Stock Exchange).

Examples could be from the deep or recent past.

If you have examples you would like to share, or if you would just like to stay in contact with this experimental project, then please email me at ucrhjea@ucl.ac.uk,

and/or

leave a message for us by replying to this blog message.

cheers

Jon

Dr Jon Agar

Welcome to our Research Network

Tilly Blyth, Curator of Computing and Information — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:20:42 +0000

Imagine you are on a journey across Britain. The landscape you pass through is rich in historical meaning, yet the knowledge of this history is compartmentalised: some lies in everyday experiences and memories, some lies in scholarly monographs, some is found on display (and even more, behind the scenes) in our great museums. We live in an old
country – but its meaning can be disconnected and hidden. Surprisingly this situation is true even for the aspects of our lives that seem so modern, so vivid, so everyday: the communications technologies that we use to organise our lives.

This research network will look at how we can reconnect this meaning to our lives. It will explore the potential benefits of and barriers to the creation of a mobile and web service in the history of communications. The project will develop a small pilot service to look at what happens when users can access, view and create the history of communications technology in relevant locations. Through the pilot project the research will share knowledge across a network of academic historians of science and technology, museum professionals, commercial partners, and users.

Find out more about this project, its research themes and participants.

The research network is a collaboration between UCL, Science Museum, Illumina Digital and BT. If you would like to know more about the network then please contact:

Dr Tilly Blyth
Curator of Computing and Information
Science Museum
Exhibition Road
London SW7 2DD
tilly.blyth@sciencemuseum.org.uk
0207 942 4211