"Have all the brewing records in the London Metropolitan Archives been scanned."
It was well meant, but I couldn't help laughing.
Then realised it wasn't a laughing matter. I've taken a few snapshots, but the vast majority of the pages are unrecorded. There are all sorts of ways they could be damaged or lost. What a waste.
There's a huge resource out there, in a highly flammble, rottable, floodable, wormable form. It needs to be backed up.
No way I can do that by myself.
Here's the idea: a community scanning project. Anyone can take part. Scan brewing records and add them to a freely accessible database.
This is the best bit: get beer as a reward.
That's if brewers are willing to join in. Give beer, save history.
Who's in?
Posts
5 comments:
There's something in this. I'll email you when I get chance with some thoughts.
There are some great digital scholarship crowdsourcing projects based in and around London (Transcribe Bentham at UCL is one example) - they may have some advice as far as setup and software. There are a fair few underemployed archivists out there who can help with scanning and metadata standards advice (says this formerly underemployed archivist).
I would be more inclined to have a data sharing club. I've had too much freeloading on my research and writing and editing. Not too much interested in open source given the issues with the community concept.
I never thought my niche passions for beer and metadata would meet!
Indeed, you never know what may happen to an archive: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7921988.stm
Post a Comment