Sustainable infrastructure for the digital shift: upgrading collections access and preservation at the University of Reading

This project will refurbish and upgrade physical and digital collections-based research facilities operated by the University of Reading's Museums and Special Collections Services (UMASCS), to create a step-change in the infrastructure for accessing to the University's outstanding research collections. With the University's research strategy for arts and humanities now closely aligned to the strengths of its collections, this proposal will invest in the essential research facilities that have been instrumental in transforming the University's approach to collections-based research and digital scholarship in recent years. These collections and facilities have already been critical to the successful development of major AHRC-funded research and with further investment will underpin the University's renewed strategy for arts and humanities around centres and clusters of research excellence. These include research projects underway or in development relating to the creative works of Samuel Beckett, the experimental film maker Stephen Dwoskin, modernist publishing, and the design and use of landscapes.

Existing infrastructure managed by UMASCS was established in 2006 primarily to improve physical access and collections management across museums and collections. This unusual integration of museums, archives and library special collections has proved highly effective in supporting AHRC and other grant capture and in instigating innovation in collections-based research and teaching. Refurbishment of galleries and public engagement and learning spaces, supported by NLHF, Wellcome and DCMS Wolfson funding, has raised the profile and hence research and impact activity linked to UMASCS, resulting in growing on-site (over 50,000) and online usage numbers (over 150,000 social media followers). Demand for collections research is substantial, with over 2,400 visits and 16,800 book and document retrievals last academic year, in spite of COVID-19. While recent opportunities to advance digital access and scholarship have brought piecemeal investment in new technologies and skills, this proposal would enable comprehensive improvements and upgrades, particularly to support the digital shift in arts and humanities scholarship, multidisciplinary work and creative engagement. This aligns closely to the University of Reading's strategic goals.
The proposal encompasses five related areas of refurbishment covering the two key sites: St Andrew's, where the main collections reading room, digitisation suite, public engagement and gallery spaces are located, and Worton Grange, an off-site facility holding high-volume collections with associated processing spaces.

The St Andrew's refurbishment will increase the capacity of the reading room that serves the library and archive of the Museum of English Rural Life and the University's Special Collections. This will include new desks, upgraded digital terminals, and an expansion of open access library capacity with new directional signage. The associated digitisation suite will be upgraded to enable better quality and faster image capture, digital asset management and digital preservation. New AV equipment will replace the current ad hoc facilities for digitising time-based media. In the public areas, upgraded facilities for research data capture from the public or specific groups will enable greater flexibility, and be brought onto a common platform with online data capture, enabling a linked open data approach.

At Worton Grange, the collections access and digitisation area will be refurbished to create a collections research lab. This will enable researchers to hot-desk and work alongside collections staff. The upgrade will improve the specification and optimise storage space of including refurbishment of the storage racks to enable a wider range of collections - such as the University's Herbarium - to be brought on-site, so that research facilities can be deployed and shared more effectively.