A brief description of some of the projects–past and present–with which I am involved.
Current Academic Research
My current research is about taking a close look at the relationship between libraries and the digitisation of rare materials. My goal is to both figure out what makes certain digitisation projects successful and how these projects fit into the future of libraries. I am doing this through a series of case studies involving the digitisation of materials from the Himalayan region. Given the number of scholars in this area, there are a vast number of projects; quite a few of them have become heavily embedded in the work of scholars. For more information have a look at Digital Dharma, a film being made about one of my cases.
MjU Consulting
http://mjuknowledge.com/
I am partner in a small, international consulting firm specialising in the creation of bespoke knowledge infrastructures for government, cultural heritage institutions, and the private sector. MjU works at the intersection of culture and technology to design ‘knowledge architecture’ — i.e., environments that support the creation, proliferation, and use of knowledge. We provide critical, innovative strategic planning and thorough, scalable systems solutions that can endure rapidly changing knowledge environments.
MaasaiLab
MaasaiLab is conceived as a ‘high-energy education facility’ that cross-wires digital media, traditional education technologies (such as curricula, lessons, assessments), and cultures across the globe. The result is both a place of interactive education, and a space to recreate education for the twenty-first century. The ParakuiyoMaasai of Tanzania have invited an international team to collaborate with them in fundamentally recreating their education system, and in doing so to save their culture. In accomplishing this task, MaasaiLab will provide a localizable and scalable model for similar at risk populations around the world – knitting them together into a global education network.
The first step in this process, MaasaiLab brings together a team of displaced Maasai, exiled Tibetans, students, educators, developers, librarians, and media experts from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the United States. Utilising the image, video and audio capture features of smartphones, the latest augmented reality applications, and open-source courseware MaasaiLab will bring together Maasai students in Tanzania, community college undergraduates in rural New Hampshire, instructors from Europe, Nepal and India for lessons, discussions and exercises aimed at understanding how each group defines their own culture, and each person defines his or her own identity.
MaasaiLab will push the boundaries of what we know about education, learning, and each other.
The Toolkit for the Dissemination of Cultural Heritage Materials Online
I have recently received a small grant from the Internet Society to create an online toolkit/library hat will promote the creation of meaningful, well-designed, and sustainable digitization programs by institutions supporting cultures whose textual artifacts are under threat from the political or natural environment. The idea behind this project is to combine my experiences from Harvard in digitisation workflow design and management with experiences from my current fieldwork in the Himalayas. There is a lot of digitisation going on in small libraries, archives, and monasteries and my hope is to provide a set of good, basic resources for helping these programs make good choices. Post Script: This project needs a new name. If you have any good ideas, please submit them in the comments below. Thanks!
Glimpse Journal :: On the Art and Science of Seeing
Glimpse is the brainchild of the brilliant Megan Hurst, a former colleague from Harvard. It is at once a beautiful experiment in new models for scholarly electronic journals and an interdisciplinary venue that brings together scientists and artists to write about sight and vision. It has recently received a very nice writeup in the Nature Network and I am very proud to be their European Editor.
The Toolkit for the Impact of Digitised Scholarly Resources
http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/
This project (funded by JISC) was first assembled in 2009. It is an effort to provide a set of resources for those interested in measuring the impacts that their online scholarly resources are having. The website is open to contributions and we hope it will be expanded over time.
The Open Collections Program
Established in 2002, with funding from the Hewlett Foundation, I was the founding manager of the Open Collections Program and worked there until 2007, when I came to Oxford. I was hired by Thomas J. Michalak (former head of Baker Library at Harvard Business School) and had the privilege of working with some really fantastic people. Our two main goals were to make parts of Harvard’s rare and unique library holdings available to the public, and to create a new model for building topic-based digital library collections.
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