Well actually it works on wireless. But we are feeling very chuffed indeed that UCLDH’s and CASA’s QRator project is featured in Wired UK today in a report on the opening of the new Grant Museum at UCL. There is also a beautiful photo gallery which includes a picture of the iPad itself in situ in photo 5. QRator will go live at the launch of the new Grant on 17th March and will allow visitors to join in a conversation about museum objects, by scanning QR codes attached to cases in the museum. These then link them to the CASA Tales of Things website where they can record their views. Or visitors can use an interactive label in the form of an iPad on which they can leave a comment and see those that others have left.

This changes fundamentally the way that we interact with museum objects. At the moment the only label we see in a museum is provided by curators. As a result of this world leading work visitors will now be able to see what curators say, but also join in a dialogue with them and with others about the object and the questions that they feel it raises. We’re very excited to be taking part in this work with CASA and UCL Museums, and can only say thank you again for the vision of Claire Ross, UCLDH PhD student, who had the idea in the first place.

Look out for a Digital Excursion to the Grant in May at which you’ll be able to hear all about QRator and play with all the lovely kit.

On Thursday 10 February Professor Philip Schofield and Valerie Wallace of UCL Laws will be talking about ‘Transcribe Bentham: Taking the Bentham Edition into the Digital Age‘. Venue: Room G32 (Senate House, Ground Floor) from 17:30 – 19:30. Transcribe Bentham is a very exciting project that we at UCLDH are proud to be part of. It uses crowd sourcing techniques to encourage people outside academia to become part of the Bentham project; reading and transcribing scans of original manuscripts which then become part of the digital archive. Come and hear all about their work, and of course sign up to take part in transcription.

Today UCL’s Information Services Department put on a series of demonstrations about web2.0 and online applications. It was nicely timed as Research report about the Challenges, usages and benefits of social media in higher education was released not so long ago, and makes for very interesting reading.

The fact that UCL has recognised that social media is becoming an increasingly important aspect for institutions to consider is fantastic. Not only that, but they thought it was necessary to run demonstrations for anybody interested in learning more about web 2.0. Brilliant. The format worked really well, 15minute demonstrations were run during the day about the most used social media applications, and how they can be used in an academic context. It really broke it down into bite sized chunks. This was also streamed live, so I had the pleasure of watching from the comfort of my office.

What I really enjoyed about this was the direct feedback I received. I started tweeting about the demonstrations and attached a link to the live stream. Within five minutes, whilst watching the streaming I recieved a mention, as did ernestopriego they then answered any questions we had, and dealt with streaming problems accordingly. This is a brilliant example of how utilising different web 2.0 applications for one event can turn into virtual extension of the physical event. Allowing for more conversations and discussions to occur and ideas and collaborations to form.

On that note: the demonstrations and the twitter conversations sparked a series of interesting questions:

If UCL is utilising web2.0 applications:

• Is the content archived?
• What happens when you leave UCL?
• Can you take that content with you?
• Are there IPR issues to be considered?
• Can the conversations, networking and discussion data be captured? should it be?

These are all important questions which need to asked and considered. Hopefully these are questions that the centre for Digital Humanities will be attempting to answer in the coming months.