Presentation to CILIP event on the Economics of Digitisation.

1. A MARKET-FACING VIEW OF DIGITISATION 25.03.09

2. Why Digitise? What is your ROI? The Product Development Cycle The market for your content How Consumers use Digital content Bringing content to market Costing the breakeven point for your content Constructing a Business Case for your Digitisation project Contents

3. “ In recent years, a growing understanding of the costs of digitisation, in terms of both time and financial resources, has placed a greater emphasis on developing digitisation initiatives and programmes which realise tangible and strategic benefits for the institution and its users, rather than opportunistic or short-term projects that are limited in their scope or focus.” The trend for market-facing Digitisation... Digitising Collections: Strategic Issues for the Information Manager Lorna Hughes Facet Publishing

13. The demand is fundamentally for content which works with the grain of user behaviours – embedded, integrated, free and available irrespective of context or platform... The reality for the vast majority of libraries, archives and other cultural providers is that we don’t have the capacity, reach, infrastructure or resources to bring our content direct to market. A big part of the future picture is likely to be working to supply mainstream media with content to be incorporated into public service broadcast and publishing. How Consumers use Digital Content

14. Content is nothing without a vector The product is the end-user experience, which depends on the integration of content and platform (viz. iTunes, iPlayer, 4OD) The current model is web-publishing, moving into web-syndication. In future, a Digital asset is likely to be pretty useless unless it is packaged into a usable artefact and made available for delivery by 3 rd parties – which means your costs go up. A challenge to a sector in which PI’s and authority depend on bringing users into a controlled context. Future funding is likely to be dependent on content being re-purposable (including licensing) by 3 rd parties such as aggregators and content channels Bringing Content to Market

16. Costing a break-even point for your content £ Units Total sales Total cost

21. Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/themes/eresources/sca_ithaka_sustainability_report-final.pdf Digitising Collections: Strategic Issues for the Information Manager (Hughes, L) http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/reading.shtml i2010: A European Information Society for Growth and Development http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52005DC0229:EN:NOT Deciding to Digitise (JISC Digital Media) http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/crossmedia/advice/deciding-to-digitise/ Key references

22. Contact... Nick Poole CEO, Collections Trust www.collectionstrust.org.uk www.collectionslink.org.uk www.culturalpropertyadvice.gov.uk