{"id":744,"date":"2020-06-01T09:13:15","date_gmt":"2020-06-01T09:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gobetween.wpengine.com\/?p=744"},"modified":"2020-06-01T19:41:57","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T19:41:57","slug":"our-response-to-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.courtauld.ac.uk\/digitalmedia\/2020\/06\/01\/our-response-to-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Digitisation volunteering: our response to Covid-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

Digitisation volunteering: our response to Covid-19<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although the coronavirus has put our digitisation activities on hold at Somerset House, the pandemic has unlocked an outpouring of creativity amongst our volunteers. By adapting quickly, we have been able to initiate remote activities to advance the cataloguing, interpretation and care of our photographic collections, logging over 1,200 hours of remote volunteering time to date since 18 March.<\/p>\n


\nBackground<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since our first open day in January 2017 over 900 volunteers have engaged with the Courtauld Connects digitisation project, donating over 25,000 hours of time. From the outset we have operated an almost constant programme of outreach, recruitment and training, and maintain an active community of around 230 regular volunteers, some of whom have each contributed nearly 700 hours of time. Activities on offer to volunteers include photography, labelling, copyright research, photographer attributions, transcription, and collection care.<\/p>\n

Our volunteer community is diverse, exceeding targets set for us by the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF), and we cherish partnerships with My Action for Kids, Beyond Autism, and the Terrence Higgins Trust. In 2019 alone we supported 31 students on work placements of periods from a week to three months, and ran corporate volunteering sessions with companies including Willis Towers Watson, Mace, Cirium, LexisNexis, Ashurst, Boden, Sidley Austin, Marsh & McLennan, Tideway, Bank of England, AutoTrader and Facebook.<\/p>\n

\"Volunteer<\/a>
Volunteer group photo taken at Somerset House, Summer 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One belief remains constant: in order to deliver engaging content, without barriers or preconceptions, to the widest possible audience, we include that audience in its creation as fully as possible. Our volunteers’ efforts run through every part of this project, and it is their confidence, creativity and relentless dedication which we celebrate.<\/p>\n

Before Covid-19 we were on target to finish the Conway Library by early 2021 before moving to the largely unpublished photographic archives of Anthony Kersting and Paul Laib. We will return to the studio as soon as guidance and practical considerations allow. In the meantime, this blog post describes a few of the ways in which we moved our activities online and strengthened our connection with the volunteer community which sits at the heart of this radical, transformational project.<\/p>\n


\nTask management during Covid-19<\/strong><\/p>\n

To create and manage programmes of remote working, we record every activity on a master spreadsheet which includes a brief description of the task, links to internal and external documentation, and a priority number to measure how closely it maps onto the project\u2019s core objectives. From this we can identify tasks we want to take forward, whilst refining or shelving those with less relevance or benefit. After an informal discussion, favoured tasks are then documented in detail in a pro forma for internal use which breaks them down under the following headings:<\/p>\n

Title of task
\nOn which material \/ collection is this task focussed?
\nDescription of task,
\nHow many volunteers can participate?
\nWhat equipment is needed?
\nWhere will the task take place?
\nInstructions – how will the task be completed?
\nWho will supervise, and how?
\nWhat skills will participants learn and practice?
\nHow will success be measured and judged?<\/p>\n

No matter how detailed or trivial the task might seem, we also ensure that every one is matched against the same questions we answered in the Courtauld\u2019s original application to the National Lottery Heritage Fund:<\/p>\n

What difference will this task make for heritage?<\/span>
\nWhat difference will this task make for people?<\/span>
\nWhat difference will this task make for communities?<\/span><\/p>\n

If a task reaches this stage and we\u2019re still convinced of its value, we create a volunteer-friendly instruction sheet and launch it at one of our regular online meetings. The staff of the Digital Media Department then provide daily support and feedback through a dedicated channel on Slack, our digital hub for collaborations with our volunteers.<\/p>\n

Although we continue to use Timecounts as a volunteer management system, managing the remote working activities of our large community within tasks requires a level of scrutiny that exceeds anything we had put in place before: one which enables us to log every activity, name, date and state of progress before checking and sign-off.<\/p>\n

The following screenshot shows how we record and timestamp volunteer hours across each of the tasks:<\/p>\n

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

The following screenshot shows how we monitor progress across two specific tasks: the creation of draft Wikipedia pages for each of the photographers whose work appears in the Conway Library, and the production of audio transcripts of our blog posts in order to improve the accessibility of our storytelling and research.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The numbers are stacking up. From 18 March (the day following the suspension of in person volunteering activities and the start of remote working) to 1 June 2020 we have recorded:<\/p>\n

1210.30 Volunteer From Home Hours
\n260 Kersting Mysteries solved
\n244 Conway Photographer Wikipedia template pages in progress
\n149 Conway Photographer Wikipedia pages ready for quality checking and publication
\n55 Layers of London records created
\n36 Audio Blog recordings in progress, with 13 ready to upload
\n28 volunteers have completed 752 subjects on Zooniverse.<\/p>\n


\nVolunteering from home: researching the Conway Library photographers<\/strong><\/p>\n

The physical library is arranged by date period, then country, province, city or town. Notable buildings often occupy anything from a single box up to several shelves and, in certain locations, a division between sacred and secular architecture is present. However, for the first time since the library was created, our volunteers are revealing insights into the 400 named photographers whose work forms part of the collection. They inspect each photograph individually, and note down on a spreadsheet whether the name of its creator is present, usually in the form of a handwritten note or stamp.<\/p>\n

Up to now all we knew about many of our photographers was their names. We turned the current situation into an opportunity for volunteers to research each photographer at home, with the objective of creating a biographical page for each on Wikipedia. The first step of the process is to assign to each volunteer a photographer\u2019s name at random. Information they discover, such as her or his academic, bibliographic, and biographical details, references and external links is recorded on a pro forma which closely mirrors the Wikipedia page we will create for them. We communicate remotely with our volunteers every step of the way via a dedicated channel on Slack which now has 261 members, 64 of whom are actively writing photographer biographies. 244 biographies have been drafted so far, with 149 more in progress! The screenshot below shows a typical few days of the discussion currently taking place behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Readers might be surprised to know that, before the project created one, not even Anthony Kersting \u2013 described widely as the greatest architectural photographer of his generation \u2013 had a page on Wikipedia (we hold his collection of negatives and prints, and now expect to begin their digitisation in Summer 2021 ).<\/p>\n


\nVolunteering from home: Kersting Mysteries<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anthony Kersting left his whole collection of negatives and prints to the Courtauld on his death in 2008.<\/p>\n

He also left us his ledger books containing locations, descriptions and dates for almost every single photograph. In February our volunteers finished the massive two-year task of transcribing every one the ledgers, however his handwriting is often difficult to read, and many question marks remain.<\/p>\n

To answer these, we created another Slack channel to which we upload high-res images of illegible entries, opening them up to the volunteer community to discuss, argue the case for a solution, and seek agreement. This involves a lot of Googling, and since we started we’ve all learned a lot about religious sites in Cairo, or alternative names of Eastern European towns.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One of the hardest parts of solving the Kersting mysteries is that he would spell things phonetically, or he might use a local spelling or variant spelling that isn\u2019t used today. Volunteers are busy not only transcribing, but also translating. The product of this research will be the facility to geolocate almost all of his images on the new photographic collections website which this project will create.<\/p>\n


\nVolunteering from home: Conservation<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Conway Library contains several thousand 19th century photographic prints. Many are rare, some are unique, and almost all are extremely susceptible to degradation and decay due to their particular chemical, synthetic and material qualities – the results of individual photographers\u2019 experimentations and craftsmanship. We must understand the vulnerability of these objects to enable us to make the correct decisions and preserve them for the future and, in preparation, commissioned and submitted a Collections Conservation Plan to the NHLF. The period of closure has allowed us to plan and create training resources in the form of videos on handling, cleaning, selecting conservation materials, identifying deterioration, and storage, in anticipation of the digitisation of the Courtauld\u2019s rich 19th century collections commencing soon after our return to the studio.<\/p>\n