Join us in the library on Friday 10th September, 12:00 - 3:00pm, for the public launch of Lancaster Digital Collections, part of our Library Festival.

Lancaster Digital Collections shares and preserves unique and distinctive visual and multimedia collections created by Lancaster University and its partners. 

It is the outcome of a collaborative partnership with Cambridge University, and is based on their Cambridge University Digital Library platform.  It follows the University of Manchester’s launch of Manchester Digital Collections in 2019, and is the third of what we hope will become a vibrant community partnership of digital collections platforms.   

The event will include the formal launch of Lancaster Digital Collections by Professor Simon Guy (Pro Vice-Chancellor Global, Digital and Sustainability) as well as a series of presentations by Lancaster University researchers about existing and forthcoming collections.

Edwardian Picture Postcards

Professor Julia Gillen will talk about the Edwardian Picture Postcard collection, particularly focussing on postcards from the Lancaster and Morecambe Bay area. She will point out some comparisons with today’s social media.

From the West Indies to the Western Front: The Satterthwaite and Welch Collections

This short talk will showcase two of the first collections added to the LDC platform: the Satterthwaite Letter Books and the John Welch Letters. Both collections afford unique insights into the experiences of local people during revolutionary periods in the region’s past.

The Lake District before the map: Digitising the Ordnance Survey’s Name-books

How was it that places got the names that appear on the Ordnance Survey’s maps? This short talk will delve into this question and offer a sneak peek of one of our forthcoming online collections: the OS name-books for Cumberland and Westmorland.

Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive

Members of the Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive research project, a three-year project funded by the AHRC, will explore their experiences of working towards displaying their holdings across Lancaster Digital Collections, their own bespoke website and, for the first time, as itemised items on the Lancaster Library’s catalogue system.

The Davy Notebooks Project

Professor Sharon Ruston and Dr Andrew Lacey (both of the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing) will provide an overview of the Davy Notebooks Project, which launched in May 2021. This AHRC-funded project is crowdsourcing transcriptions of the c. 70 manuscript notebooks of Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), one of the most significant figures in the scientific and literary culture of early nineteenth-century Britain, Europe, and beyond. After editing, the crowdsourced transcriptions will be hosted on Lancaster Digital Collections.

This is a hybrid event with in person and online participants. You are registering to attend the event in person at Lancaster University Library.  Further guidance for joining the event will be emailed to you two days prior to the event.

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