Digital Content for the First World War
2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. It is a landmark event for educators and custodians of cultural heritage alike, offering an opportunity to use digital content to its fullest in helping teachers, learners and researchers in higher education reinterpret, reengage and re-create a new social memory of a war that changed the UK and the globe politically, culturally, economically and socially. To ensure that further and higher education can benefit from the digital activity around the commemoration of the First World War, JISC has commissioned work to better understand teaching, learning and research priorities for the effective study of the First World War. The First World War is one of the most widely covered topics in teaching in further and higher education and is a focus for research across disciplines. Yet despite the growth of exciting multidisciplinary approaches to its study, little centralised information exists on what aspects of the war are being taught, the key research questions in development or, indeed, the digital content available to support education and research in this area. Digital Content for the First World War, undertaken by King's College London, considers the requirements of academics in a teaching and research capacity and suggests a range of recommendations to ensure that digital content provision and development supports these needs, so that digital content can be effectively embedded in academic practice. Whilst the findings and recommendations summarised here focus on the requirements of an academic audience, they will be of interest to a range of organisations who currently create or manage digital content for education and research, from the universities and colleges themselves to museums, galleries, archives, libraries, the creative industries, and public service broadcasters.
