Wednesday. The last day before the conference. We're all excited about the conference, at least I am. I think it's going to be very good.
E-Government is the theme of the day. Great fun was had by all...
We set off from school and took the tube, and then walked to 70 Whitehall where we were sitting right above 10 Downing Street and heard about e-Government. We were led by none other than...
...our fearless leader, Anthony Watkinson, also known affectionately to us as "Whitebeard"!
Along the way we passed the ever-so-characteristic guard on horse that no London visit should be without.
In the background of this photo, behind the cool car, we can see a monument to fallen heroes. I'm not sure which one this is, because there were two, one for the women and one for the workers. 
As we were walking toward 70 Whitehall, we passed an anti-war protest. An interesting thing to note about this day is that it was the day that Blair handed over the government to Brown, so the protesters thought it was a good time to let the new PM know that they had truly had enough of this insane war.
A protester selling T-shirts.
From here we could see the Houses of Parliament. Very exciting.
Here we are at the entrance of 70 Whitehall. Here we were asked to surrender our cell phones and told that we could not take photographs. So that's the end of the pictures, except for one irresistible one that De. took inside the bathroom, you will understand why....
The bathroom at 70 Whitehall won the "loo of the year" award. How hilarious is that?!?!
Seriously now, once inside we were brought into a very elegant conference room where we were served coffee, tea and biscuits of various kinds (a lot of shortbread during this trip). And then our lecture began.
The presentation was given by Alan Pawsey, the Head of Publishing Services at the OPSI, the Office of Public Sector Information. The responsibilities of this office are to manage Crown copyright, Parliamentary copyright, advising on all manner of governmental publication, and they themselves physically publish all UK Legislation and Official Gazettes.
Interestingly, in recent years most of the publishing done by the HMSO (Her Majesty's Stationery Office) has been privatized through a bidding process. Currently most governmental publishing is done by TSO, The Stationery Office, Ltd. The OPSI manages the Legal Deposit requirements, as well, which ensures that a copy of every official document is deposited in each of the six legal deposit libraries in the UK (among which is also the British Library).
In 1995 they started publishing many documents online, and as of 2005 there is a growing number of publications that are available only online. So e-publishing is gaining more and more ground for governmental publications, as broadband internet access becomes more and more universal. The demand for print copies of documents has been declining steadily, which has encouraged the publishers to increase their online only output.
After this presentation, we took the train to Kew and walked to the National Archives, where we first had lunch, followed by two presentations.
The first was given by Dan Jones, Head of business development. He spoke to us of the projects in e-publishing initiated by TNA (The National Archives), and it was an extremely interesting presentation, both conceptually and because it was fascinating to hear how these huge projects are physically executed.
TNA has embarked on many digitization projects to ensure preservation of many fragile original documents, and to provide greater access to the same. Of course, there is also a commercial aspect. Genealogy is a great passion of the English, and it has been and continues to be the main driving force behind these digitization projects.
The largest project attempted to date was the digitization of the Census. Anecdotally, Dan told us how in the first hour of the Census going online, the site was hit by such a deluge of requests that it crashed and remained down for eight months. A lesson learned, of course.
TNA employs a mixed business model for these e-publishing projects. There are programs that are internally funded and delivered via the TNA website, for example Documents Online. Then there are externally commercially funded projects that are licensed to private companies under a licensing program called LIA. The LIA projects are entirely managed and also delivered by the commercial partners. And then there are Then there are grant funded projects (for example by JISC), which are delivered by either or both of the above providers.
Additionally, there are also a number of academic projects conducted in partnership with higher education institutions and run together on a non-exclusive basis.
When discussing the commercial partnerships, of interest were the pros and cons of the operations: on the pro side there is the fact that the risk is entirely taken on by the commercial partner; on the con side, there is the potential for loss of control on the part of TNA.
The second presentation was given by a gentleman called Alan Jones, who runs the Docs Online helpdesk. His presentation was highly entertaining, as well as being informative. He gave us a demonstration of one of his favorite e-publishing projects, which involved digitizing the wills in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury from 1384 to 1858. He demonstrated how one would search for a will, what it would look like, and so forth. It was great to see these original documents, all written by hand, some very difficult to read, but so beautiful as artifacts. And of course the intrinsic value of such documents is immediately apparent, for historians, sociologists, students of economics, social history, and so forth. The search results give the transcription of the first few lines of each will, enough to enable the searcher to figure out whether this is the will he or she was looking for. Once a will is selected, however, the original document scan is pulled up, and it is up to the user to decipher the handwriting, which can be very challenging. This presentation was great fun.
And now, a note on the weather. During this entire trip it has rained every day. Not continuously, and not hard. We have never been hindered by the rain, and whenever we had to walk for any distance (it was quite common for us to have to walk for about half an hour from one place to the next) we were never rained on.
The exception to this rule occurred today, when we left the National Archives. We were done for the day, and were free to make our way back to the train station and head back to London. We were encouraged, however, to visit Kew Gardens, which were right behind the train tracks, as it happens. Unfortunately, it really did begin to rain quite hard as we were walking toward the station, and we were discouraged. It's been a long two weeks, and tomorrow the conference begins. As much as the gardens were enticing, we were exhausted, and went home instead.
So, until tomorrow, good night to all my friends and loved ones.
The presentation was given by Alan Pawsey, the Head of Publishing Services at the OPSI, the Office of Public Sector Information. The responsibilities of this office are to manage Crown copyright, Parliamentary copyright, advising on all manner of governmental publication, and they themselves physically publish all UK Legislation and Official Gazettes.
Interestingly, in recent years most of the publishing done by the HMSO (Her Majesty's Stationery Office) has been privatized through a bidding process. Currently most governmental publishing is done by TSO, The Stationery Office, Ltd. The OPSI manages the Legal Deposit requirements, as well, which ensures that a copy of every official document is deposited in each of the six legal deposit libraries in the UK (among which is also the British Library).
In 1995 they started publishing many documents online, and as of 2005 there is a growing number of publications that are available only online. So e-publishing is gaining more and more ground for governmental publications, as broadband internet access becomes more and more universal. The demand for print copies of documents has been declining steadily, which has encouraged the publishers to increase their online only output.
After this presentation, we took the train to Kew and walked to the National Archives, where we first had lunch, followed by two presentations.
The first was given by Dan Jones, Head of business development. He spoke to us of the projects in e-publishing initiated by TNA (The National Archives), and it was an extremely interesting presentation, both conceptually and because it was fascinating to hear how these huge projects are physically executed.
TNA has embarked on many digitization projects to ensure preservation of many fragile original documents, and to provide greater access to the same. Of course, there is also a commercial aspect. Genealogy is a great passion of the English, and it has been and continues to be the main driving force behind these digitization projects.
The largest project attempted to date was the digitization of the Census. Anecdotally, Dan told us how in the first hour of the Census going online, the site was hit by such a deluge of requests that it crashed and remained down for eight months. A lesson learned, of course.
TNA employs a mixed business model for these e-publishing projects. There are programs that are internally funded and delivered via the TNA website, for example Documents Online. Then there are externally commercially funded projects that are licensed to private companies under a licensing program called LIA. The LIA projects are entirely managed and also delivered by the commercial partners. And then there are Then there are grant funded projects (for example by JISC), which are delivered by either or both of the above providers.
Additionally, there are also a number of academic projects conducted in partnership with higher education institutions and run together on a non-exclusive basis.
When discussing the commercial partnerships, of interest were the pros and cons of the operations: on the pro side there is the fact that the risk is entirely taken on by the commercial partner; on the con side, there is the potential for loss of control on the part of TNA.
The second presentation was given by a gentleman called Alan Jones, who runs the Docs Online helpdesk. His presentation was highly entertaining, as well as being informative. He gave us a demonstration of one of his favorite e-publishing projects, which involved digitizing the wills in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury from 1384 to 1858. He demonstrated how one would search for a will, what it would look like, and so forth. It was great to see these original documents, all written by hand, some very difficult to read, but so beautiful as artifacts. And of course the intrinsic value of such documents is immediately apparent, for historians, sociologists, students of economics, social history, and so forth. The search results give the transcription of the first few lines of each will, enough to enable the searcher to figure out whether this is the will he or she was looking for. Once a will is selected, however, the original document scan is pulled up, and it is up to the user to decipher the handwriting, which can be very challenging. This presentation was great fun.
And now, a note on the weather. During this entire trip it has rained every day. Not continuously, and not hard. We have never been hindered by the rain, and whenever we had to walk for any distance (it was quite common for us to have to walk for about half an hour from one place to the next) we were never rained on.
The exception to this rule occurred today, when we left the National Archives. We were done for the day, and were free to make our way back to the train station and head back to London. We were encouraged, however, to visit Kew Gardens, which were right behind the train tracks, as it happens. Unfortunately, it really did begin to rain quite hard as we were walking toward the station, and we were discouraged. It's been a long two weeks, and tomorrow the conference begins. As much as the gardens were enticing, we were exhausted, and went home instead.
So, until tomorrow, good night to all my friends and loved ones.
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