This is a presentation I gave to students from the Pratt Institute NY and the University of Tennessee Knoxville as part of King's College's Strand Symposium on Digital Scholarship and ePublishing in June 2013. It focuses on the challenges of sustaining digitised resources and offers: - a cautionary tale - some facts and figures - some good examples

1. The end is the beginning:
the challenges of digital
resources post-digitisation
Paola Marchionni, Programme Manager Digitisation
p.marchionni@jisc.ac.uk @paolamarchionni

2. The end of a digitisation project marks
the beginning of the public life
of a digital resource.
That’s why it’s important to plan for its sustainability
as part of the development of the project.
But what is sustainability all about? What are the challenges?

3. 1. A cautionary tale
(with a happy ending)
2. Some facts & figures
3. Some good examples

4. 1. A cautionary tale
(with a happy ending)

5. Once upon a time…
the SALIDAA digital archive
was created:
1. A cautionary tale
(with a happy ending)
- Launched in 2004
- 1000s of images and text
resources on literature, music,
visual and performing arts by
UK-based South Asian artists
- Funded originally by the
New Opportunities Fund
- Initial budget £250,000
-Further grants post-2004
www.salidaa.org.uk
- Today physical archive at
Brunel University
http://bit.ly/14exLxY

6. Today
the SALIDAA digital archive
url takes you to:
1. A cautionary tale
(with a happy ending)
- In 2012 (?) SALIDAA ran
into problems with its
developers who were also
hosting the web site
- The developers held
SALIDAA “at ransom” and
eventually took the
web site down
- And with it went the url
www.salidaa.org.uk
- (The South Asian lawyers
seemed to like not only
SALIDAA’s url but also its
logo’s typeface)

7. Luckily
the SALIDAA digital archive
survives on the VADS site
(Visual Arts Data Service)
1. A cautionary tale
(with a happy ending)
- As part of the digitisation
project, SALIDAA deposited its
digital assets with VADS and
could survive without a
dedicated web site
- SALIDAA has received
HLF funding for new
activities and a web site
- SALIDAA on VADS is top
of Google search results
-However, SALIDAA has
little web presence or
“propagation”
www.vads.ac.uk/collections/SALIDAA

8. SALIDAA Google search results
- successful in top 10 results for
very specific searches (eg South
Asian diaspora”) or artists with little
web coverage (Samena Rana,
AWWC)
- no results for other relevant but
wider searches (eg South Asian
arts) or when artists have coverage
somewhere else on web

9. SALIDAA hyperlinks
- Existing links to
www.salidaa.org.uk take you to the
South Asian lawyers site
- The current SALIDAA page on
Brunel University web site does not
link to VADS!

10. Resources: financial, staffing, in-kind
Technical maintenance
IPR and licencing
Unpacking
sustainability
- SALIDAA could say “No” to
the developers because
archive was on VADS.
- However, sustainability is
not just about robust
technical infrastructure and
digital preservation.
Discovery
Editorial currency
Communication
Use and
embedding
Measuring impact
- It is also about ensuring a
digital resource is kept current
and can easily be found and
used.

11. 2. Some facts and figures

12. Digitisation and post-digitisation context
The majority of UK Higher Education research libraries (RLUK
members) have engaged in digitisation projects
•
97% of respondents to a recent RLUK-OCLC survey have completed at
least one special collections digitisation project and/or have an active
digitisation programme that includes special collections
•
40% can undertake projects only with special funding, while one-third
have a recurring budget for digitisation
•
More than 40% have licensing contracts with commercial vendors to
digitise materials and sell access.

13. Digitisation and post-digitisation context
Special collections are recognised as strategically important to
institutions
•
“special collections and archives play a key role in differentiating each
institution from its peers” (RLUK p15)
•
“over 80% [of respondents] agreed that digitized special collections are
critical to our current strategic direction” (ARL)

14. Digitisation and post-digitisation context
However, not much is known about users and how collections
are being used
•
Although overall use of special collections (not just digitised) by all types
of users has increased, 90% of user “type” is not known (RLUK p16)
•
Outreach and fundraising , among others, identified as biggest
challenges and areas where staff are in need of training (RLUK p16)
•
No established metrics for assessing user services (RLUK p16)
•
Once collections have been digitised, little investment is made in
understanding the needs of audiences: 43% of libraries gather analytics
but far less conduct any qualitative research (ARL)

15. Digitisation and post-digitisation context
Sustainability of digitised collections still relies on fairly
traditional models
•
Many projects draw support from host institution typically for storage,
preservation, access, but this is not budgeted or guaranteed (SCA-Ithaka
p4)
•
No much effort or budget goes towards enhancement of resources
created (ARL p2)
•
No much effort goes towards revenue generation activities (SCA-Ithaka
p4) often seen in conflict with institutional/open mission (ARL p24)
•
Revenue generation activities (eg content licencing or print on
demand), gain only on average 21% of the total cost of maintaining the
collection in the previous year, median only 10% (ARL p27)

16. Digitisation and post-digitisation context:
useful publications
• Survey of Special Collections and Archives in the United Kingdom
and Ireland. http://bit.ly/11IjKHa
RLUK-OCLC, 2013
• Sustaining our Digital Future: Institutional Strategies for Digital
Content. http://bit.ly/11Ijrfr
Jisc/SCA-Ithaka S+R, 2013
• Appraising our Digital Investment: Sustainability of Digitized Special
Collections in ARL [Association of Research Libraries]
http://bit.ly/11IjQOT
Ithaka S+R, 2013
More publications on sustainability and business models from
Jisc/SCA at http://bit.ly/120ABEI

17. 3. Some good examples

18. Sustainability: revenues
Vision of Britain
http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk
- Very popular resource of
historical maps and data
- Not much institutional
support from Portsmouth
University
-But a very dedicated
academic champion
(can have its drawbacks)
- Average 200k
visitors/month (not typical
for academic web sites!)
-Revenue from GoogleAds
Dec2012-May2013 over
£10,000
- Successful because v large
user base and ‘findability’

19. Sustainability: revenues
Connected Histories
Manuscripts Online
www.connectedhistories.org
www.manuscriptsonline.org
- Aggregators of digital
collections for
federated searches
- Humanities Research
Institute, Uni Sheffield
- Charging matrix: cost of
adding and storing new data
- Successful because costs
are transparent and small
(£1,000-4,000 per collection)
- Costed to achieve surplus
-CH doubled number of
collections added since
launch (22 total as of Jun`13)

20. Sustainability: discovery
Manufacturing Pasts
www2.le.ac.uk/library/manufacturingpasts
-Digitised resources for
teaching and learning
British industrial past
- Uni of Leicester Library
-Discovery based on open
technical and licensing
approaches eg:
- CC-BY-NC content licence
- CC0 metadata licence
- enabling re-use by
aggregators such as Jorum,
Culture Grid, Europeana,
Summon through API, OAIPMH and social media
“Discovery” case study http://bit.ly/10i3Mpq
-Collecting usage data

21. Sustainability: discovery
Social media
- Pre-Raphaelite Online
Resource: links in Wikipedia
to Home page and deep
links to other pages
-Wikipedia top referral site
after direct access to site
-Manuscripts Online:
Facebook is third top
referral after Google and
direct access
-Bomb Sight: web site went
viral after Twitter frenzy
and spiked at 360 visitors
per minute

22. Sustainability: impact
Toolkit for the Impact of
Scholarly Digitised
Resources
microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr
- Resources, tools and case
studies on how to measure
usage and impact
- Popular ones:
webometrics (links analysis),
analytics, citations, content
analysis, referrers analysis)
- General principles:
See also Measuring the Impact of Digital
Resources, Simon Tanner http://bit.ly/12neaIP
view multiple sources of evidence
integrate impact measure in
design of resource
monitor regularly but don’t
become bogged down with it
impact takes a long time

23. Thank you
Paola Marchionni
p.marchionni@jisc.ac.uk
@paolamarchionni
Image credit cover slide http://www.l2l-edu.com/2013/01/every-end-is-new-beginning.html
Slide 10: http://moving.about.com/b/2007/03/14/are-you-tired-of-unpacking.htm