Isaac Newton’s own annotated copies of his works, notebooks and manuscripts are being made available online by Cambridge University Library and the University of Sussex with JISC funding.
Digitised title page from
Newton’s own copy
of Principia
Researchers, students and the public can now zoom in to each page to explore texts like Principia Mathematica in incredible detail and make use of transcriptions to understand Newton’s mind – and handwriting.
Alastair Dunning, programme manager at JISC, said: “The end results of Newton’s work are world famous but his notebooks and annotations give a rather different insight into the process that he went through to get there. JISC looks to share insights like those with as wide an audience of possible and digitising this collection means that researchers and students now have online access wherever they are.”
However, while the two universities have received JISC funding to help expose Newton’s papers to the eyes of the world, a closer look at some of the pages from the newly digitised archive reveals that not all his peers thought his output should be shared so openly.
Several of the manuscripts in the collection contain the handwritten line ‘not fit to be printed’, scrawled by Thomas Pellet, a Fellow of the Royal Society, who went through Newton’s papers after his death to decide which ones should be published.
Project manager Rob Iliffe, Professor of Intellectual History and History of Science at the University of Sussex, said: “The publication of these foundational texts, thanks to funding from JISC, represents the result of a great deal of hard work put in by both the Cambridge and Sussex teams over the past year. It is a significant milestone in the work of the Newton Project, and with access to nearly five million words of Newton's personal, scientific and religious writings, readers can now look at Newton's creativity in its broadest contexts.
Cambridge University librarian Anne Jarvis said: “With great collections comes a responsibility to make these as accessible as we can. Now, through the use of new technologies and with vital support from the Polonsky Foundation and bodies such as the JISC, we are able to open up our collections in ways that would have been inconceivable a few years ago. Wherever possible we will seek to enhance our digital collections by aligning them with scholarly research.
“Our initial collection, the Newton Papers, is a good example. Through our collaboration with the Newton Project at the University of Sussex, we’ve been able to provide superb transcriptions alongside the images of many of Newton's manuscripts.”
Launching the website with more than 4,000 pages of its most important Newton material, Cambridge University Library will upload thousands of further pages over the next few months until almost all of its Newton collection is available to view and download anywhere in the world.
A_L_T: The place of Computer Science in the National Curriculum for England: Slater, John and Schmoller, Seb The place ... http://t.co/AmlduyuN
via Twitter / A_L_T
Slater, John and Schmoller, Seb The place of Computer Science in the National Curriculum for England. ALT.
Creanor, Linda and Dyet, David and Slater, John and Schmoller, Seb and Members of the ALT Scotland Group, . An ALT response to the Scottish Government's White Paper - Putting Learners at the Centre: Delivering our ambitions for Post-16 Education. ALT.
A_L_T: Research in Learning Technology. Open Access from 1/1/12. Link to announcement flyer - http://t.co/qXB8Fxys [PDF] #rlt #openaccess
via Twitter / A_L_T
A_L_T: Research in Learning Technology. Open Access from 1/1/12. Link to announcement flyer - http://t.co/qXB8Fxys [PDF] #rlt #openaccess
via Twitter / A_L_T
A_L_T: Research in Learning Technology - Info card: ALT, ALT (2011) Research in Learning Technology - Info card. ALT. http://t.co/M2aDjRgs
via Twitter / A_L_T
ALT, ALT (2011) Research in Learning Technology - Info card. ALT.
Researchers have today unveiled a new interactive map that reveals London’s social history in unprecedented detail, enabling users to explore everything from the world’s first gay scene to eighteenth century riots.
Alastair Dunning, programme manager at JISC, said: “Researchers in the humanities and social sciences are turning increasingly to geographical analysis as a way of bringing the facts and figures to life. What’s exciting about this resource is that the existing data you can explore today is just the start – the interface could be expanded to include new data sets and new maps, making it potentially useful to scholars in dozens of different disciplines. JISC’s commitment to funding open source projects means that other universities are already looking at how they might reuse the programmes that the Sheffield team has developed.”
Trial accounts from the Old Bailey, tax and population data, and even archaeological records can all be uploaded onto John Rocque’s famous 1746 map of London, now fully referenced to modern geographical coordinates by Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA).
Locating London’s Past is the result of a collaborative project between the University of Sheffield, the University of Hertfordshire, and the University of London.
Using the new website, people are now able to explore fully geo-referenced detail using Google maps technology to reveal the distribution of crimes, wealth and poverty, mortality, archaeological finds, voting records and much more.
Professor Tim Hitchcock from the University of Hertfordshire commented: “This project has allowed us to add a new, third dimension to our understanding of the first ‘World City’. Text on the page can now be reconfigured around place and space to create a new historical landscape to reveal pockets of crime and poverty, wealth, and illness. It allows us to know the past in a new way.”
18th Century riot trials
Professor Robert Shoemaker from the University of Sheffield’s Department of History commented: “Locating London’s Past makes it possible for the first time to map a wide variety of data from London’s past onto fully geo-referenced historical maps of the metropolis. For me, the most exciting findings concern the spread of crime locations from Old Bailey trials. Rather than simply reflecting the distribution of poverty (or wealth), criminal prosecutions took place in mixed areas, where social tensions were highest. These and other discoveries will transform our understanding of the historical development of Europe’s first modern city.”
Dr Matthew Davies, Director of the Centre for Metropolitan History at the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, commented: “The project’s website provides a new tool for understanding the relationships between the people and places of pre-modern London. It will enable the visualisation through maps of important characteristics of the metropolis during a time of rapid growth, from everyday patterns of family, home and work, to the interactions between inhabitants and institutions such as the parishes, hospitals and city companies.”
A_L_T: IfL's response to Ofsted's conslttn on the Inspection Framework for English FE is strong on LT http://t.co/VzOvxmcb [PDF] @IFL_Members
via Twitter / A_L_T
A_L_T: "Reinventing Education". 45 m. to spare? A gripping discussion between Sal Khan, Peter Norvig, Seb Thrun. http://t.co/VElwxnQj
via Twitter / A_L_T
A_L_T: Volunteers needed to review papers in next year's Research in LT "Digital Inclusion and Learning" Special Issue http://t.co/JoEqEEIo
via Twitter / A_L_T
A_L_T: UCISA's case study based "Best practice guide on engaging academics in the use of TEL". Download as a PDF from http://t.co/XY7fFs3s
via Twitter / A_L_T
A_L_T: David Willetts - Guardian piece: "Results of publicly funded research will be Open Access" #openaccess #rlt http://t.co/bYmI9Bo7
via Twitter / A_L_T
A study of 2.4 million Twitter messages from the time of the riots has found that politicians and other commentators were wrong to claim the website played an important role in inciting and organising the disturbances.
It is published today (8 December) in the Guardian newspaper as part of its Reading the Riots investigation.
Professor Procter, who is based at The University’s Manchester e-Research Centre, said: "In August this year, social unrest spilled over onto the streets of English cities and the summer riots were the largest public disorder events in recent history.
"Politicians and commentators were quick to claim that social media played an important role in inciting and organising riots, calling for sites such as Twitter to be closed should events of this nature happen again.
"But our analysis found no evidence of significance in the data we have analysed that would justify such a course action in respect to Twitter.
"In contrast, we do find strong evidence that Twitter was a valuable tool for mobilising support for the post-riot clean up and for organising specific clean up activities."
Also according to the research team, rumours 'break' quickly in Twitter and the mainstream media lag behind citizen reports.
Examples include rumours the London Eye had been set on fire and animals had been released from the London Zoo – which both turned out to be untrue.
Other stories turned out to be true such as the burning down of a Miss Selfridge shop in Manchester.
Professor Procter added: "Only after a period of time does the influence of mainstream media organisations become critical for determining a rumour's credibility.
"But we do find the mainstream media is perfectly capable of picking up and publishing unverified information from social media without adhering to the usual standard of fact checking.
"Consequently, some stories of this nature, though never verified, go unchallenged."
The research team of the Universities of Manchester, Leicester, St Andrews, Wolverhampton and UCL, draws on the expertise of a wide range of disciplines within the social sciences and computer science.
Dr Torsten Reimer, JISC programme manager, said: "The influence of social media on society is growing rapidly so we need a much better understanding of their impact on people's lives.
"In the case of Twitter this means analysing gigantic amounts of data, constantly created by millions of people, - a task that requires new tools and methods, supported by a broader digital infrastructure for research.
"We are pleased that we had the chance to support the project team working in collaboration with the Guardian to demonstrate how this infrastructure can be used to understand what happened during the riots in August."
The analysis of messages exchanged on Twitter during the riots was undertaken through a larger, JISC funded project called NeISS: National e-Infrastructure for Social Science Simulation.
The NeISS project aims to introduce social scientists to new ways of thinking about social problems.
A_L_T: Changes in ALT - and a consequent job vacancy - closing date 5 January 2012 - http://t.co/SB1InXs8
via Twitter / A_L_T
A_L_T: Changes in ALT - and a consequent job vacancy - closing date 5 January 2012 - http://t.co/SB1InXs8
via Twitter / A_L_T
Clinical images, videos and other recordings are vital to good teaching and learning within the health care professions. Increasingly these are originated outside the institution that wishes to use them. This raises a number of legal, ethical and other issues relating to their re-use.
Debra Hiom, the project’s manager at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT) at the University of Bristol, added: “Students and teachers increasingly use pre-existing patient images from the web without adequately considering copyright or how they have been consented. The new materials will help individuals be clear how resources can or can not be reused.”
Listen to Debra (Duration 6:02) explaining the issues that professionals face when using recordings and how the new guidance can help:
JISC EMBEDDED OBJECT
The materials aim to help users of clinical healthcare recordings to:
The guidance is aimed primarily at students, teachers or doctors who wish to use a patient recording for learning and teaching. It will also be of interest and use to other clinical and healthcare workers as well as to university staff where patient recordings are being made available for learning and teaching.
Dr Jane Williams, Director of e-Learning in the Centre for Medical Education at the University of Bristol, said: “There is already a wealth of advice and guidance but it is currently overwhelming. The new advice and guidance attempts to provide an easy navigable route through a very sensitive area of professional practice.”
Stuart Dempster, Director of the Strategic Content Alliance at JISC, said: “I am delighted to see that the significant advances being made in medical recordings, networks and other technological innovation within the education, research and health are being matched with clarity in the advance and guidance being offered to clinical and non-clinical staff alike through this project. This work builds on from earlier JISC investments in improving the skills required in the digital age.”
The materials have been created by a collaboration of cross-sector organisations and individuals, including the General Medical Council (GMC), Wellcome Trust, Institute for Medical Illustrators, University of Bristol and Newcastle University.
The project has been funded through JISC’s Strategic and Content Alliance and will be hosted by JISC Digital Media.
Read the advice and guidance
http://jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/clinical-recordings/
A_L_T: Research in Learning Technology 19.3 - http://t.co/UHarTD7y - the final "closed" issue before RLT in its entirety goes #openaccess.
via Twitter / A_L_T
A_L_T: Research in Learning Technology 19.3 - http://t.co/UHarTD7y - the final "closed" issue before RLT in its entirety goes #openaccess.
via Twitter / A_L_T
Tom Boellstorff speaking live in #SL, Dec 1st 4pm GMT - http://t.co/B3sCNnYd #mscel #mscidel
A_L_T: @janeseale @BiIIDutton coediting a Special Issue of ALT's #openaccess RLT on "Digital Inclusion and Learning" http://t.co/1HEBffTW
via Twitter / A_L_T
A_L_T: Digital Inclusion and Learning - Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Research in Learning Technology: @A_L_... http://t.co/ffCOnWdg
via Twitter / A_L_T
A_L_T: @FrancesBell, Co-Editor of Research in Learning Technology #rlt writes about the transition to #openaccess http://t.co/ku8gILRK
via Twitter / A_L_T
A_L_T: @janeseale @BiIIDutton coediting a Special Issue of ALT's #openaccess RLT on "Digital Inclusion and Learning" http://t.co/1HEBffTW
via Twitter / A_L_T
Subscribe to the JISC Podcast via iTunes
Download the podcast