In addition to its reputation for academic excellence, the University of Oxford possesses extraordinary library and museum collections that document the history of the world and provide vital support to the University’s teaching. The Cabinet project aims to make these resources more accessible for teaching and research through digitisation (both 2D and 3D) and bringing these resources into a single intuitive and interactive interface. The main aim is to embed images and objects from collections in Oxford and elsewhere more seamlessly into teaching and learning, from tutorial to lecture room, enriching the sources available to students and tutors.
The Cabinet platform provides tools for the exploration, annotation and discussion of collections from Oxford and externally. Designed from the beginning to work seamlessly with mobile devices, it can be used to zoom, spin, annotate and discuss sources, increasing the potential for fruitful individual and collective study. The ease of navigation between sources encourages new connections to be made and new insights to be shared by students and tutors alike. In June 2017, Cabinet was the winner of an OxTALENT Award.
A major feature of Cabinet is the ability to explore full-colour 3D models of objects, ranging from minute artefacts a few centimetres across to entire monuments from the Oxford landscape. Oxford Internet Institute researchers are using Cabinet to learn more about the ways in which both staff and students interact with museum collections in the digital environment.
Cabinet is working across the University’s GLAM collections, and with academics from across all four Divisions of the University. It has been supported by funding from IT Innovation Challenges, the van Houten Fund and the GLAM Digital Strategy.
Oxford staff and students can access Cabinet via Single Sign-On. For more information, please contact us.