The document summarizes the British Cartoon Archive Online, a digital archive of over 140,000 British editorial cartoons housed at the University of Kent. It describes the Archive's collection, digitization process funded by JISC, and features like advanced search capabilities. The summary highlights how the Archive serves as an open educational resource that encourages remote research on cartoon and comics studies through open access of its digitized word and image content.

1. Enabling Cartoon Art
Digital Research:
Notes on The British Cartoon Archive Online.
[A Digital Humanities Perspective].
Dr Ernesto Priego
@ernestopriego
#CiC12
Cradled in Caricature 2012, Friday 27 April, University of Kent, Canterbury

2. Digital Humanities?
 Ongoing definitional phase.
 A diverse and still emerging field that encompasses
the practice of humanities research in and through
information technology and the exploration of how
humanities may evolve through their engagement
with technology.
 Studies the impact of digital technologies on cultural
heritage, libraries, archives and memory institutions
whilst developing new tools and research methods.
 Often too much emphasis on quantitative text
analysis tools, not that much on multimedia or text-
and-image content. Emphasis on annotation,
metadata (TEI).

3. MLA Guidelines for Evaluating
Work in Digital Humanities and
Digital Media
 “Humanists are adopting new technologies and creating
new critical and literary forms and interventions in
scholarly communication. They also collaborate with
technology experts in fields such as image processing,
document encoding, and computer and information
science. User-generated content produces a wealth of
new critical publications, applied scholarship,
pedagogical models, curricular innovations, and
redefinitions of author, text, and reader. Academic work
in digital media must be evaluated in the light of these
rapidly changing technological, institutional, and
professional contexts, and departments should recognize
that many traditional notions of scholarship, teaching,
and service are being redefined.”
<http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital>

4. “A British Cartoon
Archive! Who knew?”
-BBC anchorman

5. Linking!
 Mine is an end-user (external) perspective of the
British Cartoon Archive (BCA) Online.
 I am interested in showing how the BCA Online
represents a model example of the relevance of
digitisation and online access and user engagement
with open educational resources for cartoon and
comics studies.
 I would like to discuss the BCA Online as a digital
humanities tool; an open access educational and
scholarly research resource encouraging remote and
non-niche engagement with its collection and
platform.

6. British Cartoon Archive
(BCA)
 Previously known as the Centre for the Study of Cartoons
and Caricature. Established in 1973 as a research centre
and picture library.
 Located in Canterbury at the University of Kent’s
Templeman Library. It has a library, archive, and exhibition
gallery, and is dedicated to the history of British cartooning
over the last two hundred years.
 Dr Nicholas Hiley is the Head of the British Cartoon Archive.
 The BCA is freely open without appointment during Library
hours.
 Holds the national collection of cartoons of social and
political comment from British newspapers and magazines.

7. Mission Statement
“The British Cartoon Archive, at the
University of Kent at Canterbury,
exists to encourage and facilitate the
study of cartoons and caricatures
published in the United Kingdom. This
is achieved by collecting, preserving,
cataloguing, exhibiting, and
distributing the work of cartoonists
and caricaturists, and by encouraging
and publishing studies of their art.”

8. Unique Collection;
Unique Resource
 The BCA holds the artwork for more
than 150,000 British editorial, socio-
political, and pocket cartoons,
supported by large collections of
comic strips, newspaper cuttings,
books and magazines. The collection
of artwork dates back to 1904 and
includes work by some of the most
prominent British cartoonists.

9. Other Cartoon Art Resources
<http://cartoons.osu.edu>
<http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/coll/230_swan.html>

10. BCA Online
 Its website, at www.cartoons.ac.uk is the largest
online academic cartoon resource in the world. (For
comparison, the Caroline and Erwin Swann Collection
of Caricature and Cartoon at the Library of Congress
contains 2,085 items, not all digitised).
 Gives access to 140,000 digitised and catalogued
images, including background material like 200
cartoonists’ biographies.
 Digitisation and online access made possible by Joint
Information Systems Committee (JISC) funding.

11. British Cartoon Archive
Digitisation Project (BCAD)
 The
British Cartoon Archive Digitisation (BCAD) Proje
- was part of phase two of the Digitisation
Programme funded by the Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC) to unlock a
wealth of unique, hard-to-access material
creating a critical mass of rich, permanent
digital resources for the benefit of the
widest user base possible within the UK
further and higher education.

12. Cartoon Archive Rapid
Digitisation Project (CARD)
 The Cartoon Archive Rapid
Digitisation project (CARD) is
funded by the Joint Information
Services Committee (JISC). It
focuses on two undigitised
collections. The two collections
being added in the CARD Project
are:
 The Cuttings Collection,
comprising 14,500 political
cartoons published in British
national newspapers and
magazines between 2003 and
2011.
 The Director of Public
Prosecutions’ (DPP’s) archive,
recording the prosecution for
obscenity of 1,300 cartoon
seaside postcards between 1951
and 1961.This has received a lot
of media coverage and some
extra public interest.

13. The Carl Giles Collection
 the BCA has catalogued and digitised
over 15,000 original Giles cartoons
and artwork, as well as over 5,000
items of personal correspondence and
objects.
 <http://youtu.be/yusbR6jH1h0>

14. Search!

15. Search!
 Similar resources
require previous
knowledge prior to
search.

16. Enabling Discovery:
Finding the Unexpected
“If you're not sure what you are looking for,
why not check out some of the catalogue
links on this page to get you started?”
 Search tag cloud of popular searches.
 Search by suggested popular artists,
popular publisher, selected images and
user-created thematic groups.
 Search by similar topics and related items.
 Advanced search.

17. Advanced Search, Too

18. Context, Metadata, Annotation
•Reference number
•Caption
•Subjects
•Series
•Archival reference
number
•Copyright holder
•Copyright contact
Details
•Annotation

19. Interactive: User Engagement
 Enabling the creation
of “groups” of content
(user as curator).
 By encouraging users
to suggest “edits” and
comments
 Through Polls
 By requesting
feedback
 Through Social Media
Share Widget
 Through a survey
 Through the CARD
blog

20. Sample Group: Cartoons of the
death of Princess Diana

21. Users Annotate &
Contribute Content;
Users Encouraged to Use Content

22. Users Curate Content

23. Feedback

24. Feedback

25. My Twitter Poll: 55 Replies
(and counting)
<http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5C2YDTP>

26. My Twitter Poll

27. Are Any Yet-Unknown Target
Audiences Out There?
 80% of Twitter poll respondents said
they had never visited cartoons.ac.uk
 83.6% of Twitter poll respondents
said they were interested in what
they saw.
 Yet 59% of 339 BCA Online users said
they would not follow it on Twitter…

28. Example of Online Scholarly
Use
<http://comicsgrid.com>

29. Copyright, Terms of Service
 “The copyright in this database, and the catalogue entries, is held by
the University of Kent. Entries may be printed out for the purposes of
private study, student essays, or academic research, but please contact
us for other uses, including teaching packs.
 All the images on this database are subject to copyright, either in the
cartoon itself, in the cataloguing, or in the digital image. The British
Cartoon Archive has permission to display these digital images, but if
you wish to reuse material please contact us.
 Copyright in cartoons is not calculated from the date of publication. It
usually runs until seventy years after the death of the cartoonist, so
that almost all of the images on this database are in copyright. If you
want to include them in a publication, put them on a website, or
distribute them in any other way, you must get permission.
 The British Cartoon Archive holds contact details for copyright holders,
so please contact us for advice. The images on the website are not
always very clear, however, once permission has been obtained from
the copyright holder we can supply high-quality copies for reuse.”

30. The High Cost of Using Images
 “You can purchase high-resolution digital
images of British Cartoon Archive material
for £25 plus VAT for UK customers, £35 for
all others, per image. Copyright permission
must be obtained before ordering images,
and details of copyright holders will be
supplied by the BCA upon request. Once
you have obtained copyright clearance you
can pay for the images electronically from
our e-store, and then receive them by
email or on disk.”

31. “May I use cartoons from the BCA
catalogue in conference papers?”
 ‘You may use material from the BCA catalogue in
presentations at academic seminars and conferences,
including poster presentations, so long as no
publication takes place outside the seminar or
conference venue. You should identify the BCA as
the source of the cartoon, and also give the name of
the cartoonist, the publication, and the date. An
example would be “British Cartoon Archive: Michael
Cummings, Daily Express, 4 January 1965.”’
[My emphasis]

32. Citation Standards as ToS
 If you want to refer to cartoons on this database, we
recommend the following style.
 Single reference: David Low "Waltzes from Vienna",
Evening Standard, 7 February 1936; The British Cartoon
Archive, University of Kent, catalogue record LSE2273 at
<http://www.kent.ac.uk/cartoons/>
 [Subsequently 'Low "Waltzes from Vienna", BCA
catalogue record LSE2273.']
 General reference: The British Cartoon Archive,
University of Kent, at http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/

33. Enabling Digital/
Remote Research
 The BCA Online is a unique resource
in the field of cartoon/comics studies.
 It enables remote access to materials
previously unavailable to those not
able to access original materials.
 It enables and encourages use of
cartoon material for research,
teaching and other academic and
non-academic uses.

34. Encouraging Cartoon Studies
 The BCA Online proves digitisation
and open access availability of
copyrighted word-and-image content
is feasible.
 It incorporates metadata in a creative
way making materials discoverable
and accessible.
 It responds to existing demand but
also encourages non-niche use.

35. Availability Stimulates
Research
 Comics and cartoon studies have
traditionally been the field of those
who have access to objects of study.
 Open digital resources like the BCA
Online do, are able and should make
available content and methodologies
to users that would not have been
considered a target audience.

36. If You Use It, Tell Others
 The BCA Online enables user participation.
 So far it might be known by relatively few
users (700-2000 users?)
 Traditionally digital initiatives are mostly
promoted by their creators and funding bodies.
 Users and colleagues can play more active role.
 Eventually licensing might become a bit more
permissive under Academic Fair Use?
 Citation and attribution is a form of promotion.
 Hyperlinking should be considered essential for
citation of online resources.

37. The BCA Online as OER and DH
 “Digital Humanities” is not merely a trend or label.
Creating digital resources for humanities research
and teaching is DH, no matter the disciplinary or
institutional setting in which the project is framed.
 Since it encourages access, research, educational
use and sharing by collecting, preserving,
cataloguing, exhibiting, and distributing cartoon art
and contextual data freely on the web, the BCA
Online is an open educational resource. It is digital
humanities in action.
 The BCA Online is not a passive repository of
content. It suggests and enables new forms of
digital research, harnessing open web technologies
whilst retaining an important physical presence.

38. Doodling the Future…
 Considerable material is still left to be digitised,
described, transcribed, classified, annotated.
 Room for multilingual translation?
 Perhaps crowdsourcing through a sustainable
engagement campaign would work? (See Transcribe
Bentham, UCL).
 Funding for graduate student volunteers?
 Badges and/or other ways of recognising and
attributing the contribution of volunteers?
 Sustainability and digital preservation when the
funding runs out?
 More collaboration with comics scholars and living
cartoonists and fans?

39. Thank You!
 efpriego@gmail.com
 @ernestopriego
 <http://www.comicsgrid.com/>
 With many thanks to Dr James Baker!

40. License
 This deck of slides has been shared online by
Ernesto Priego under a
Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
License.
 Screen grabs from The British Cartoon Archive,
University of Kent were obtained from http://
www.cartoons.ac.uk/ and reproduced here
under Academic Fair Use
 All other images are copyright their respective
holders.