Transcript Sustainability and JISC

Sustainability and JISC
20th August 2010, Royal School of Needlework
Presentation for ‘Look Here’ project at
Visual Arts Data Service
http://www.vads.ac.uk/lookhere
Alastair Dunning
JISC Digitisation Programme Manager
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/digitisation/
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Sustainability Problem Exists
Everywhere
Any project will have only limited funding
 Also difficult where money is not the
prime motivator for the project in the
first place (e.g. Environmental
sustainability)
 Particularly true for innovation, where a
project depends on a broader
infrastructure to maintain it
 Very true for digital content – technology
changes
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Find these JISC projects !
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Lemur: Learning with Museum Resources
◦ Aberdeen University, £183k , 2000-2003
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National Fine Art Collections
◦ The Surrey Institute of Art & Design, £? , 2001-2003
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Bioscience ImageBank
◦ University of Leeds, £113k, 2000-2003
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BuilDNER: Databank of Building Images for the DNER
◦ South Bank University, £26k, 2000-2003
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Virtual Norfolk
◦ University of East Anglia, c.£350k, 2000-3
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Find these JISC projects !
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Lemur: Learning with Museum Resources
◦ http://www.abdn.ac.uk/lemur/
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National Fine Art Collections
◦ http://www.fineart.ac.uk/
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Bioscience ImageBank
◦ http://bio.ltsn.ac.uk/imagebank/
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BuilDNER: Databank of Building Images for the DNER
◦ ?
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Virtual Norfolk
◦ http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20050606184058
/http://virtualnorfolk.uea.ac.uk/welcome.html
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Sustainability is not just technical
“I think it is important that you [update] partly
because I when you look at a website and it
says last updated more than 12 months ago
you just immediately think this is being
allowed to wither on the vine and you don’t
trust it. So I want to be able to if nothing
else to say on our homepage, last updated or
we have the version number 4.2 you know
date July 2006 is a way of assuring the users
that we are still paying attention.”
p29, Claire Warwick et al (UCL, 2006)
Log Analysis of Arts and Humanities Resources
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Sustainability is not just technical
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Of the NOF digitisation projects, 85%
(104 out of 122) were still running five
years after launch.
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However, only 35 of these 122 had clear
indication of having had their content or
interface updated
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Digital Sustainability means
Running a service your users can rely on
 Adding new content when necessary
 Updating functionality
 Responding to users pointing out mistakes
 Building partnerships and new users; offering
multiple ‘products’
 Looking fresh
 Having a healthy base of committed users
 And having sufficient income to keep the
service going
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Multiple methods required
Direct income streams
Sponsorship and philanthropy
Different audiences
Community engagement
Institutional buy in – senior management, use
in research and teaching
 Continued project funding
 Larger collaboration
 Added value
 Leadership and ingenuity
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Institutional Support
Senior management perhaps sceptical of
external benefits
 Internal benefits - Cost-saving, as well as
value-adding
 Embed resources in teaching and learning
 Win multiple friends in organisation
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Revenue Streams
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Getting people to pay for your content,
either digital or printed
Been tried for quite some time
Start up costs are expensive
Who is keen to pay for digital content?
Can work in larger institutions; more difficult
in smaller institutions
Might others want to licence your content?
Vision of Britain example
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Vision of Britain
Social, political and economic information
on every town in Britain
 Strongly geographical interface
 Integrated numerous different data
sources
 Attracted UK and EU funding
 Achieved licensing deals with private
companies
 Google Ads bring in c. £6k a year
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Added Value
Presenting digitised content as part of a
larger suite of information or services
 Great example of British History Online
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◦ Works as a digital library, offering access to
primary and secondary resources
◦ Digitisation is only part of the offer
More ways to become essential rather
than useful for your users
 What else do you want to offer? As a
single institution? Or as a group?
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Larger Collaboration
E.g.VADS and Look Here !
 Working with similar partners to goals
common
 Sharing costs and infrastructure
 Builds critical mass within a subject area
 But who is responsible for leading a
consortium? Everyone wants someone
else to pay
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Different Audiences / Products
Not just academic users who are
interested in your content
 Particularly true in the visual arts
 But content needs to be repackaged to be
presented to different users
 Alternatively, split up your academic users
 Old Bailey example
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Old Bailey Online
Tim Hitchcock (Hertfordshire) and Robert
Shoemaker (Sheffield)
 Have achieved multiple funding successes
 Are building a sustainable platform for
multiple resources
 Inspired a BBC series; have their own
popular history book
 Publishing academic monographs as eBooks,
with accompanying data
 And, most importantly, are altering history
within their field
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Partnerships
Finding new audiences
 There are others companies, groups,
societies better placed than you to access
users
 They need ways to keep their users
engaged
 You need users to keep your content
sustained
 eBird Example
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eBird
Website for amateur and professional
ornithologists
 Started with heavy research focus. Only
took off when public was involved
 Has now achieved sponsorship, licensing
of software and development of kiosks
for interested parties to use in specific
places
 Only small fraction of institutional funding
now required
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Sponsorship & Philanthropy
Why restricted to larger institutions in
UK?
 Smaller sums can still help
 Relationship needs to be carefully
managed
 Requires expertise in fundraising
 Those outside universities keen to gain
the lustre of being involved in an
educational / digital project
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Leadership and Ingenuity
Working in your traditional role will not
allow for sustainability
 Building out external partnerships,
undertaking new roles, forgetting parts of
the day job.
 Doing new things with digital content
 Examples cited all rely on leaders not
constrained by the traditional definition of
their jobs.
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Links
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Strategic Content Alliance case studies on
sustainability -sca.jiscinvolve.org/wp/businessmodelling-publications/
eBird website - http://ebird.org/
Old Bailey Online - http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/
Vision of Britain - http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/
British History Online - http://www.britishhistory.ac.uk/
Digitisation in the UK http://web.me.com/xcia0069/uk-digitisation.html
JISC Content - http://www.jisc-content.ac.uk/
And VADS – http://vads.ahds.ac.uk/
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