Transcript Keys to sustainable digital collaboratives

Keys to sustainable digital
collaboratives
Liz Bishoff, Director
Digital & Preservation Services
February 12, 2010
www.BCR.org | 800.397.1552
Welcome and Agenda
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Introductions
Seven Keys Overview
It’s the mission/vision thing
It’s all about the customer
Partner contributions
Trust and responsibility
Managers as leader
Digital collaborative leadership
Planning and flexibility
Additional hints
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Seven keys
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Understanding the mission
It’s all about the customer
All partners must contribute
Share trust and responsibility
Leadership must come from Partners senior
management
• Commitment from digital collaborative
managers
• Plan, plan, plan
• Celebrate success
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Balancing different missions
• Collaboratives
mission vs. member
organization mission
• Project mission vs.
program mission
• Funder mission vs.
collaborative’s
mission
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Missions/purposes that work
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The Mountain West Digital Library seeks to support the teaching and
learning of the citizenry of Utah and Nevada as students and teachers
at all educational and cultural heritage institutions. These digital
collections expressly seek to support an informed citizenry and the
pursuit of life-long learning
Alabama Mosaic a repository of digital materials on Alabama's history,
culture, places, and people. Its purpose is to make unique historical
treasures from Alabama's archives, libraries, museums, and other
repositories electronically accessible to Alabama residents and to
students, researchers, and the general public in other states and
countries.
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Some that don’t work
• Volunteer Voices, as the state's digitization
program, seeks to increase access to
Tennessee's cultural institutions by creating
more grants, adding more projects to the
program, offering training activities, and
providing access to best practices in
digitization and digital preservation.
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It’s the customer…
• Who is your
customer?
– Your partners?
– Your partners
clients?
– Your funders?
– All of the above
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Why is it important to understand the
collaborative’s customer?
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Define programs and services
Define funding sources
Minimize confusion
Avoid competition with partners
Other?
How do you do this?
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Partner contributions
• What types of
contributions do
your partners make?
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Content
Technology Infrastructure
Organizational Infrastructure
Metadata creation
Promotion
Fund raising
Other
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Trust and responsibility
• Critical component of a collaborative
• Demonstrated
– Adoption of standards/best practices
• Metadata
• Content creation
• Quality standards
– Rights Management
• Copyright/Intellectual Property rights
– Authenticity
• Content
– User Authentication
• Shared risk/shared responsibility for program
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Managers as leaders
• Continuous support
from member
leadership
• Roles they play
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Vision
Advocacy
Funding
Commitment of
resources
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Digital Collaborative
leadership
• Digital Collaborative manager makes the
program a success
• Must have a passion for digitization AND
collaboration
• Must be an advocate for the collaborative
AND the partner rationale for belonging to the
collaborative
• Active member of Board/Advisory Committee
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Digital Collaborative Manager
characteristics
• Understands how to create teams
• Effective at working with volunteers
• Knowledge of digital collection development,
digital policies, digital curation
• Experienced in project management, fund
raising, metadata, marketing, content
creation, digital preservation, human resource
management, public relations—WOW that’s a
plus
• Leaps tall buildings
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Planning and Flexibility
• Digital collaboratives require plans
– Must be beyond ‘let’s get a grant’
• Must advance the mission of the members
• Must address the needs of the members
• Variety of plans
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Strategic plans
Business plans
Governance documents
Preservation plans
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Governance documents
• Formal and informal agreements
– Memorandum of understanding
– Roles and responsibilities
• Policies
– Collection policies, including Digital rights
management policies
– Metadata best practices
– Content creation best practices
– Accessibility policies
www.BCR.org | 800.397.1552
What worked and what didn’t
What worked
• Respect one another
• Collegiality – based
conversations
• New solutions that
represent hybrids
between museums and
libraries
• Periodic face to face
meeting
• Liberal use of
Technology-based
communication
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What didn’t
• Being too prescriptive
• Too many assumptions
without discussion.
• Forgetting to talk about
project users/visitors.
• Not enough face to face
communication to start
things off.
Your thoughts—Your
questions
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