Historical Photographs of Chinathe journey towards sustainability and utility

Professor Robert Bickers and Jamie CarstairsDepartment of History (Historical Studies)

Dr Simon PriceIT Services (Research IT)

Part 1The collection

Cultural Revolution, 1966-69

Destruction of China’s heritage and records of it

Guiding principles and practice

• Open Access• Free• Searchable, … enough• CC licence for low-res, but can relay usage

requests for high-res• We want them to be used

Users include• Teachers and researchers• Interdisciplinary researchers and students

• science, computer science• Publishers• Museums and galleries• UK Embassy in China• Heritage enthusiasts and restorers

Exhibitions& reuse

Part 2Technical Challenges

• Research Data Storage Facility (RDSF)

• Each PI allocated 5TB "forever"• Secure storage, data sharing and

data publication with DOI

Historical Photographs of China was the first

collection to be stored in Bristol's RDSF

Bespoke legacy systems

hpc.vcea.net

visualisingchina.net

Towards a standard sustainable system

• Tried Omeka but found too restrictive for collection.

• Drupal more flexible and larger user community.• Still a one-off solution.• Visualising China would be

another one-off instance.• Future: institutional Digital

Asset Management (DAM)

Website www.hpcbristol.net

Visualising China www.visualisingchina.net

Blog www.visualisingchina.net/blog

中国历史老照片 weibo.com/hpcbristol

HistoricalPhotographsofChina

twitter.com/vischina