While final work is going on to put all of the many links to the digitised materials into our OER, we’re also now focusing on how we’re going to get our resources seen and used. As well as the university’s own research repository, Sussex Research Online, where we hope eventually to place all of our digitised research data, we have applied to ESDS Qualidata too and are currently waiting to hear whether they will accept our data. We will also be putting our OER and links to the raw digitised resources into Jorum and Humbox. All of the Mass Observation and ephemera materials will also be available in the University’s Special Collections catalogue, which although not currently findable via Google, should become so when Special Collections moves to The Keep next year.
In order to make sure that people can find our stuff, we’re now planning to use this blog as the main location for accessing our raw data resources (eg the Mass Observation correspondent responses and ephemera documents), which are already available on Google Drive. It will also provide the link to the British Library Sound Archive, where there will be a newly-created Observing the 1980s page giving access to full versions of the oral history interviews. Also available here will be the link to our OER which includes multiple extracts from the MO and ephemera materials as well as from the oral history interviews (that ‘multiple’ explaining why we’re still building in all the links!). Using the blog will enable us to optimise the discoverability of our resources in a way that, we hope, will get them as much use as possible.
We’ve also set up a Facebook page and YouTube channel and are excited to have student, Thomas Soud, on board to help us populate the timeline and playlists from our digitised resources and video materials. And finally, as you can see from the Facebook image, we’re updating our Observing the 1980s branding too!