Philip Pothen  

Biography - Philip Pothen is the Press and PR manager for JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), which promotes the use of ICT in further and higher education. He previously worked for the Resource Discovery Network (RDN – now Intute) and the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS), both JISC services.

Philip has qualifications in teaching, PR and librarianship and was a founder member and first Chair of the Diversity Group of CILIP. He has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Susses and is the author of the book "Nietzsche and the Fate of Art" published by Ashgate in 2003 and "Engaging with Users: Online PR for Information Services" due to be published by Chandos in early 2008.

Abstract - Making accessible the inaccessible: widening access to resources through digitisation.

Being able to access high-quality resources is key not only to formal learning but also to informal and lifelong learning. JISC is investing over £20m in the digitisation of national resources of importance to the education and research communities. While these resources have these particular communities as their focus, an important principle behind the 22 projects is making the resources created as widely available as possible. This presentation will look at how the JISC Digitisation programme is making available otherwise relatively inaccessible resources to much wider audiences and how mass digitisation can support and encourage wider access to resources of all kinds in support of lifelong learning.

JISC Digitisation programme: www.jisc.ac.uk/digitisation_home.html