The UK’s JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee, supporting the use of ICT in Higher and Further Education) has recently released a new report, Inspiring Research, Inspiring Scholarship, looking at the value and impact of digitised resources.
Written by Simon Tanner of King’s College London, it considers four broad areas in which the creation of digitised resources have has a significant impact. http://bit.ly/9NjGw6

The four themes are

*Inspiring Research*

Digitised resources not only improves access but enable new types of research to be asked, such as the Data Mining with Criminal Intent project that is based on the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 - http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/

*Bestowing Economic Benefits*

The digitisation of journals, such as the Wellcome Trust Medical Journal Backfiles project, provides free and immediate access for scientists. One digitised journal, the Biochemical Journal, receives over 300,000 uses a month - http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitisation/medicaljournals.aspx

*Connecting People and Communities*

Resources such as Great War Archive, gathering digitised memorabilia from World War One, not only provide new material for scholars, but enable new communities and expertise to be developed outside the campus walls -
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa/

*Digital Britain*

Digitising some of Britain’s special collections not only provides new data for educators and learners around the world, but also for a greater appreciation of the nation’s ‘prize jewels’; examples include the Freeze Frame collection of polar photographs, or the Old Weather resource for measuring and transcribing weather reports in Naval logbooks - http://www.freezeframe.ac.uk http://www.freezeframe.ac.uk/

http://www.oldweather.org/