Cultural heritage technologies, user experience design and research, digital humanities
For more information, see the page about my MSc Dissertation: crowdsourcing games for museums. The beta games I made are hosted at Museum Metadata Games (and have recently been updated to include some of the million images the British Library have released on Flickr Commons). The initial data was loaded from APIs from the Science Museum and Powerhouse Museum.
An incomplete, retrospective list of work, talks and more in 2007…
I started to teach on a new Digital Humanities course in the Spring/Summer Term 2007 at Birkbeck. 'Introduction to Digital Humanities' was a new postgraduate course at Birkbeck College which combined aspects of media studies, humanities computing and literary studies to foster an appreciation of the core methods and practical, political/philosophical and pedagogical issues in digital humanities.
I devised and taught classes on:
I also gave a class on 'Computer assisted interpretation; integration of finds and site sequence' for the Birkbeck MA Archaeology Module "Archaeological Post-Excavation and Publication".
I gave a paper: Buzzword or benefit: The possibilities of Web 2.0 for the cultural heritage sector at the CAA (Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology) UK Chapter Meeting, January 24 – 26, 2007, Tudor Merchants Hall, Southampton
I gave what was possibly my first paper at an MCG conference, Sharing authorship and authority: user generated content and the cultural heritage sector (so web 2.0!) at Web Adept: UK Museums and the Web 2007, Leicester, June 22, 2007.
I started a blog for the Museum of London (so 2007) – 'first post', 'What does a database programmer do in a museum?'. A hilarious attempt to make my bio relatable: 'My job title is 'Database Developer', which means I am a specialised kind of computer programmer. I spend a lot of time working with the big databases that people like curators, collections managers, archaeologists and archivists use to record, analyse and publish their data. I talk to them to understand their requirements, then update or create applications to help them. I also help with geek stuff for the websites'. The blog didn't last, as so many didn't, but I still think 'About my museum job' posts were a great way to make museums more inclusive by showing all the different types of careers you could have in a museum.
I published a report: Nick Holder, Mia Ridge and Nathalie Cohen, The Tony Dyson Archive Project: Report of a pilot study investigating the creation of a digital archive of medieval property transactions along the City waterfront, Museum of London Archaeology Service. The linked file is a PDF version of the report, without mapping and plan diagrams.
I also contributed to the Çatalhöyük Archive Report 2007; an excerpt of my main bits is at https://doi.org/10.17613/3n8z-9z11. Blog posts on/from Çatalhöyük include:
An incomplete, retrospective list of work, talks and more in 2006…
I gave a talk on the Design and development of the Dyson Archive of medieval London property transactions (Powerpoint slides) at a seminar on 'The Dyson Archive of medieval London property transactions: a seminar to discuss future work', June 12, 2006, London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre. I also published on The Tony Dyson Archive Project, with Nathalie Cohen and Nick Holder: a 'report of a pilot study investigating the creation of a digital archive of medieval property transactions along the City waterfront'.
I worked at Çatalhöyük in Turkey over the summer and in the off-season, some of which is documented in Archive report: Çatalhöyük Archive Report 2006; there's an excerpt of my main bits at https://doi.org/10.17613/2shn-2v07.
Çatalhöyük blog posts, 2006:
I gave a paper: Clay pipe recording at MoLAS and the stamped makers' mark website at the SCPR Annual Conference, September 16, 2006, London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre, Mortimer Wheeler House: 'The paper discusses the process from initial specification through requirements gathering, database design, development of the database application and website, to publication online'.
I gave a seminar paper on 'The IT Strategy for Exploring 20th Century London' for the Exploring 20th Century London Project, September 25, 2006, at the Museum in Docklands, London.
After working in Turkey I travelled through Romania, Moldova, Transdniestr, and Ukraine.
An incomplete, retrospective list of work, talks and more in 2005…
In 2005 I did more fieldwork at Çatalhöyük and gave a seminar on 'Not One Voice But Many: The Çatalhöyük Database' while I was on-site in July 2005. Some of my work is documented in the Çatalhöyük Archive Report 2005, including work on ground stones, macro botany, and figurines reports, as well as my own brief database report Çatalhöyük 2005 Archive Report Database and IT Team.
I gave a paper on 'The IT Strategy for Exploring 20th Century London' at the Museums Association Conference, October 24, 2005, Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London.
I also did a talk on the '20th Century London' Project IT Strategy at the On Line Galleries and Narrative Workshop, Manchester City Galleries, Manchester Museums Consortium, December 12, 2005.
An incomplete, retrospective list of work, talks and more in 2004…
I went out to work on-site at the Çatalhöyük Research Project near Konya in Turkey for the first time. Some of my work is documented in reports including Figurines and the Çatalhöyük 2004 Archive Report Database and IT, and some general background to the database and IT work we did on site is in Some of the history of the Catalhoyuk database.
I also gave a paper on 'The development of the Ceramics and Glass website' at the Ceramics and Glass Seminar, November 18, 2004 (Powerpoint slides), Mortimer Wheeler House, London.