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Heinrich Böll (1917-1985) was one of post-war Germany's leading writers and public intellectuals. The Edition of Böll's complete works, prepared by a seven-strong international research team which included Finlay, has had significant impact across a number of areas, including commercial publishing (spin-off publications, marketing opportunities); digital humanities (software and platform development for large-scale critical editions, significantly changing working practices); culture and heritage (in particular in the city of Cologne); the media and the public sphere (public debate on the writer's legacy and the Heinrich-Böll foundation's cultural programme in 30 countries).
Regional and national audiences have benefited from enhanced perceptions of the linguistic and literary heritage of the West Midlands. Cultural capital has been created by engaging members of the public in the discovery of their linguistic and literary past through their unprecedented access to and understanding of a manuscript written in the dialect of the medieval West Midlands. Increased national interest in the region's cultural heritage has been generated.
William Wordsworth's poetry is of lasting value to our cultural and national identity and to perceptions of the Lake District. The desire to communicate core Wordsworthian principles shapes and informs the research undertaken by the Wordsworth Centre, Lancaster University, which seeks to vitally reconnect poetry and the region in the twenty-first century. Such research has produced an increased engagement with Wordsworth's poetry and transformed the understanding of his work and its continuing relevance for a range of beneficiaries.
Two research projects undertaken through collaboration with the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere have realised considerable impact in the assessment period through three main channels:
1) a pioneering website, designed for diverse users, containing the first digital versions of selected Wordsworth manuscripts, which has received over 580,000 hits;
2) contributions to the visitor experience at Dove Cottage, Grasmere;
3) 40 `Wordsworth Walks' around Grasmere and its environs involving over 950 participants from a range of different groupings (business, public sector, general public).
Research at Sheffield has led to international cultural and conservation impact, as well as commercial impact in the UK. Two free international exhibitions designed to attract visitors of all ages and nationalities (Royal Armouries 2007/08, 20,000 visitors; and Musée national de l'Armée, Invalides, Paris (2010, 80,000 visitors) were underpinned by research on illuminated manuscripts of Jehan Froissart's Chronicles of the Hundred Years' War (covering the years 1325-1404). The exhibitions were inspired by the desire to raise awareness, regionally and nationally, of the culture of the Book and of Franco-English relations in the later Middle Ages. Miniatures from the manuscripts depicting key events were displayed alongside items selected from each country's national collection of arms and armour; interactive displays showed how the manuscripts were copied and illustrated. The research enabled an SME to be launched and opened up new access to major aspects of French cultural heritage whilst enabling the preservation of the originals' integrity, part of the intellectual and artistic patrimony of Western Europe.
Professor Nicholas Cronk, has in collaboration with others, created an app which is an enhanced edition of Voltaire's Candide, freely available, for use on tablets. Candide is a timeless and universal text with perennial appeal, and this digital edition renders it accessible to a wide variety of new readers. Cronk has been encouraging engagement with Voltaire's texts through more traditional channels but this latest innovation has won new readers for Voltaire, especially among a young generation often more familiar with new media than with traditional books. The app, with its dual level of annotations, illustrations, manuscript images, commentaries, and the Polyadès recording, has been well received by a wide range of readers, and functions in a curatorial capacity to preserve an important work of French classical literary heritage in a new, sustainable format. The Candide app represents a revolutionary tool for both independent learning, and also for classroom teaching.
Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (GPC) is a historical dictionary similar to the Oxford English Dictionary, and is the acknowledged authority on the spelling, derivation and meaning of Welsh words. Apart from its scholarly uses, it is used in all areas of the Welsh public sphere, providing the lexical information necessary to produce terminology for bilingual documentation in fields such as government, education, health, law and business. GPC has always had a network of voluntary readers and informants, and uses both old and new media to seek examples of contemporary usage and to promote public interest in the language. A concise version of the dictionary has been freely available online since 2003, and a full version will be launched in 2014.
Between January 2008 and July 2013 The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland resource [hereafter RPS] has been accessed over 1.99 million times by users from all over the world. Whilst the principal purpose behind the publication of RPS was to further the study of Scottish history, this level of access reflects widespread engagement with the resource from a broad spectrum of users outside the traditional university sector. In 2007, following an editorial and research programme which lasted over a decade, the Scottish Parliament Project at the University of St Andrews published a full edition of the proceedings of the parliament of Scotland between the 13th century and its union with the English parliament in 1707. This edition of parliamentary texts was published online as a free-to-access and fully searchable website. Its value in supporting informed public debate in Scotland during a period of rapid constitutional change has received the recognition of major political figures and has been noted in UK and Scottish print and broadcast media. The online edition and associated research behind its production has also contributed to the continued enhancement of the history curriculum within the Scottish secondary education sector and its use in the field of Scots Law.
Contributing to the preservation of literary materials through innovative use of technology, DMU's Centre for Technology and the Arts (CTA) — subsequently renamed the Centre for Textual Studies (CTS) — pioneered new digital techniques for analysing, editing and presenting literary-historical manuscripts of international significance. These techniques revolutionized the scholarly task of capturing data about manuscripts, permitting new kinds of analyses, editing and dissemination, now widely practised to facilitate public access and cultural enrichment. In particular, the CTA/CTS invented a manuscript description standard taken up by major libraries across the world, the International Standards Organization (ISO) via the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and by commercial publishers.
This case study focuses on the impact of research carried out at the University of Cambridge into the history of evolution by Professor James Secord and co-workers, notably the impact of two research programmes: the Darwin Correspondence Project and Darwin Online. These projects have contributed to a substantial reorientation of public discourse on the history of evolution. The impact has been achieved through web resources; museum and library exhibitions; teaching materials for schools and universities; and radio and television programmes. These outputs have encouraged public understanding of the range of contributors to science, including women; an awareness of the diversity of positions in the evolutionary debate; and an appreciation of the complex relations between evolutionary science and faith. The projects have shown that the highest achievements of scholarship can be made freely accessible to a global audience.
The online, fully searchable edition of the Old Bailey Proceedings has been consulted during the assessment period by over 3.5 million unique users, including genealogists, non-academic historians, and students across dozens of countries, reaching millions more through the TV and radio programmes it inspired. It has enriched the cultural lives of individuals and enhanced the educational experience of university students across the world. Users have deepened their understandings of their personal ancestors and of the societies in which they lived, and have been stimulated to conduct their own research and write their own histories. Those interested in the law have developed an appreciation of the historical evolution of the criminal trial and the importance of the public dissemination of accounts of legal proceedings. The innovative and interactive method of presenting history online has been replicated in subsequent publically available online resources, including London Lives, 1690-1800, created by the same project team.