JISC

Start date: 1 August 2000

End date: 31 July 2003

Funding programme: Learning and Teaching (5/99) programme

Project website: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/lemur/

This project is part of the museum content project cluster in this particular programme. The main focus for projects in this cluster is on the development and digitisation of museum collections for learning and teaching.

Background

The University of Aberdeen was founded in 1495. It possesses a number of museum collections of national importance and a wealth of valuable, yet under exploited, educational material. The creation of digital surrogates permits the use of often delicate and irreplaceable items in teaching, particularly to large classes outside the physical museum. Previous experience with creating digital resources for teaching and research has established the methodology for such projects and underscored the University’s commitment to working across departments to create interdisciplinary digital resources targeted specifically for use in selected HE teaching areas.

Aims and Objectives

The overall aim of the project is to demonstrate the value of university museum and gallery collections in the delivery of teaching and in enhancing the learning process. Access to important material in the collections of the University of Aberdeen will be enhanced for learning and teaching across the HE community. The specific objectives are to provide:

• Digitised surrogates of material in a linked database suitable for use in HE teaching
• Learning packages for students studying specific courses
• Digitised resources for use by other courses
• Access to users across the HE community

Project design

LEMUR is characterised by the richness and diversity of both the assets to be created and the teaching experience to be developed. Drawing on one of the country’s most significant museum resources, LEMUR will create a resource base designed to provide robust access for a range of teaching purposes in HE. Within LEMUR, six targeted teaching packages will be developed by teaching partners in Cultural History, the History and Philosophy of Science, History of Art and Physics. These will demonstrate the value of the resource to the Arts, and Physical and Social Sciences, provide teaching resources for the HE community and exemplify the ways in which teaching can be enhanced and independent learning encouraged through the use of the DNER. Lying at the core of the project is the creation of a database which will be a joint undertaking of curatorial and academic staff. High quality digital images and basic cataloguing data will be enhanced by the addition of contextualising material. This will include archival information about the collectors, examples of museum documentation and a virtual recreation of the displays of Marischal Museum. The academic partners in the project will also be responsible for developing teaching packages for use in the specified courses in collaboration with the University’s Learning Technology Unit.

Outcomes

The project will create a resource database of 3500 images principally drawn from the collections of the University’s Marischal Museum and the Natural Philosophy Collection enhanced by selected items from other collections. In addition a Virtual Marischal Museum will be developed to demonstrate how some of this material has been selected for display. The interdisciplinary potential of this material is shown by the partner courses that will act as case studies in the use of digital surrogates in HE teaching. These courses include: Painting in a Stateless Nation: Scottish Art 1707-1837; Crystal structures and the propagation of light; Crystal Diffraction and Optical Imaging; Introduction to Historical and Cultural Anthropology; Culture, Identity and Technology; Material Culture and Museums; and History and Philosophy of Science 1 and 2. The resources created by LEMUR will be made available to the wider academic community offering access to a varied database of high quality digital resources and an online version of an innovative museum display. Of greatest significance, however, will be the dissemination of experience about the ways in which such material can be used in undergraduate teaching.