Birmingham's Pre-Raphaelite collection is of national and international importance, and is the most celebrated of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery's designated fine and decorative art collections. Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery (BMAG) received funding from JISC to digitise the Pre-Raphaelite collection and make it accessible online for the education community. The resulting Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource provides full record information and allows users to examine images in great detail. The resource received 114,000 visits in its first year.
Previously, only a small number of images were available online. The only other access was by visiting the galleries at Birmingham to see the small number of Pre-Raphaelite works of art on display, or by making an appointment to see specific works of art in the Print Room.
JISC had identified that it was often difficult to access physical collections for the benefit of teaching, learning and research. The project was designed to enhance access to the collection by students, lecturers, historians, art librarians and other members of the education community. The nature of the material is of global academic interest crossing media and subject areas – for example history, literature, theatre, costume, art and design courses as well as the history of art.
The project aimed to:
- create a high quality online research resource
- offer comprehensive access to the Pre-Raphaelite collection to the FE & HE community
- create linkages with the FE & HE community
Users can browse the online collection, make simple searches or use various filters to make specific searches – ideal for study and research. They can also interact with the online collection by creating their own personal collections of images and by discussing the works with the online community. The capacity to view the digitised images in detail is provided through Microsoft's Silverlight programme.
The completed resource has received a lot of complimentary international attention.
The William Morris Society said, via blog commentary, "I can't say too many good things about this remarkable ‘resource'. The images are superb. Access is by a first-rate search mechanism simultaneously providing ease-of-use and an elaborate filtering mechanism, enabling both casual viewing and research by specialists."
A curator from the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Australia said, “Firstly let me say how impressive your new website is. Really impressive. I have so far only spent a very short time looking around it but I shall certainly be returning – and often I'm sure. It is an incredibly rich site, and useful on so many levels to so many different users. You have created a serious – and attractive – resource on the Pre-Raphaelites.”
The website has also been recipient to a number of awards since it launched:
- Interactive Media Award in September 2009
- DADI Award (Drum Awards for the Digital Industries) in November 2009
- BIMA Award (British Interactive Media Association) in November 2009
- BETT Award in January 2010.
The judges said, “The winner of this year's BETT Award in the Digital Collections and Resource Banks category, offers amazing access to an extensive collection of high-quality fine art images… The collection is particularly useful as a classroom resource because of the ability it provides to create private collections and add comments. Learners can log in, use a teacher-created resource, and share their thoughts via the (moderated) panels. The ease of use and attractiveness of the images are what make this collection so compelling: teachers will no doubt find a huge number of imaginative ways of using this resource in the classroom.”
For more information on this case study see the MLA Research Website.