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The Digital Classics research group has been instrumental in transforming the cultural capital of the ancient world online, through changing the way that information about the ancient world is found and can be used. It builds transferable tools and has established a set of international standards for exploring and visualising the ancient world online. For example, Barker's Google Ancient Places (GAP) project has built an innovative web platform for reading texts spatially while the Pelagios network, using the infrastructure of the Internet, links data from international archives and museums in creating a world wide web of antiquity.
This impact derives from Wootton and Walda's archaeological research into the Roman sites of Libya, including the GIS mapping of site locations, and study and conservation of Hellenistic and Roman mosaics. Against the difficult background of Gaddafi's regime, its fall and the aftermath, they have, by invitation, provided training and advice to the Libyan Department of Antiquities in the documentation, conservation and management of archaeological objects and sites, especially mosaics. They provided Blue Shield, on request, with a watch-list of sites with GIS co-ordinates to enable NATO to target their airstrikes to avoid them. The primary beneficiaries are the Libyan people, to whose national pride and identity this patrimony is crucial, and the Libyan Department of Antiquities. The secondary beneficiaries are the international community, to whom Libya's rich Roman-period cultural patrimony is of major concern.