2014

For many institutions engaging with their audiences has always been a challenge. Often this has not always been tackled systematically, with a co-ordinated approach to cultural heritage collections, whether physical or digital. Within Library and University Collections at the University of Edinburgh we have used cross cutting groups to address some of the intellectual, cultural and practical issues which affect our ability to engage with academics, students and the wider public. This has resulted in more effective use of expertise across all disciplines, to develop a strategy which delivers a suite of digital resources.

In our presentation we will discuss our audiences and their needs, while exploring their expectations of a leading academic institution. This will be tempered with
a practical look at how this has been resourced, focusing on the key elements of harnessing existing professional expertise, knowledge and workflows. Resources that will be discussed include: cross collection search facilities, backed up with mapped metadata, and the harvesting of our data by pan-European projects. Moreover, we intend to demonstrate that this approach is applicable not just in this institution but across the library, museum and gallery sector.

We will provide a perspective based collaborative paper which shows how disciplines interlink and work towards the same connected output to achieve
a user experience that is both inspiring and engaging. This will be presented from three perspectives: curatorial, systems development and approaches to project management and will lead to a forward-looking aspirational conclusion highlighting the ongoing work at the University of Edinburgh.