Coming back from the Content and Discovery programme meeting in Birmingham I was thinking about a phrase that was mentioned a few times over the two days – ‘unintended consequences’ or ‘unintended impact’. We were talking about the stuff that comes about as a result of your project, that you might never have imagined, let alone intended. For us that has already included being asked to participate in the Scarlet + project which creates augmented reality materials to enhance learning and teaching and which fits really well with both our materials and ambitions around OERs. They contacted Sussex simply as a result of reading about what we’re doing with Observing the 1980s. So a great unintended consequence. Mostly we assume unintended consequences will be bad or risky, but this will hopefully be great.
A more planned consequence of this JISC meeting was getting together again with people on other projects, who were at the original start up meeting or various other events since November. By now we’ve got a stronger sense of which projects are similar and it’s good to compare notes with OpenLIVES and Manufacturing Pasts. These projects are nearest in aim and content and have been facing many of the same tasks and issues as us. What’s good to hear is that everyone is finding ways to move forward, and it’s helpful and motivating to get a sense that we’re progressing well and in time with our fellow projects. We plan to keep in touch as a small sub-group to share common issues and help and support each other.
These meetings are also fascinating in terms of finding out about other projects which are wildly different from ours. Much of the talk at this session was about data and aggregation and projects dealing with large data sets many of a bibliographic nature. The technicialities flew right over my head, but it was helpful to get familiar with some terminology and some basic concepts. A little knowledge may be a dangerous thing, however, as I’ve come away with a list of new actions for the ‘to do’ list and a bunch of questions for other members of the project team and our partners.