JISC

JISC Portfolio for Senior Managers: Employing technology to support your business goals

As budgets tighten, will scholarly digital content be able to survive and thrive? JISC has made significant investments in licensing and creating online resources for higher education, providing access to digitised previously difficult to access material such as journals, newspapers, books, theses, photographs and sound recordings.

As well as providing new avenues for research and teaching, such online resources provide an opportunity to forge links with communities outside tertiary education, thus increasing impact and exploiting the potential for knowledge exchange. They can also help to spread the cost of digitisation across the community (education and public sectors) so that it is not borne entirely by the host institution.

Two examples of this type of digital community building in action are the First World War Poetry Archive and East London Lives 2012. The former has not only published online the manuscripts of noted war poets such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, but has fostered and encouraged the involvement of the general public with contributors digitising, documenting and describing their own diaries, medals, posters and other First World War items. The latter is a digital archive project that documents aspects of change in the lives of East Londoners towards the hosting of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. The archive not only contains interviews, videos and images of residents’ thoughts and opinions in the build-up to the Games, but also acts as a place for researchers working in this field, both now and in the future.

The JISC-commissioned report by Chris Batt, Digitisation, Curation and Two-Way Engagement, addresses how universities can use such resources to respond quickly to and successfully interact with new communities, and in some cases, help foster those communities.

JISC’s leadership role in the Strategic Content Alliance has provided new findings and new strategies for the host of issues that arise in creating, managing and delivering online resources. Working with the BBC, the British Library, BECTA, the NHS and MLA (Museums, Libraries and Archives Council), the Alliance has developed models and strategies for vital issues such as business models for sustainability, intellectual property rights and audience analysis.

Running a community collection project

The team behind the Oxford Great War Archive are running a series of dissemination activities to show other institutions how similar initiatives could be run. The project will also provide a range of software tools, documentation and workflows to support embedding this activity into other institutions.

Running a community collection project (RunCoCo)

Sustaining digital resources: An on-the-ground view of projects today

This study outlines the stages that successful projects undertake in developing sustainability models: from empowering leadership and developing accountability structures, to crafting a strong value proposition that responds to user needs, to securing the resources needed to help the project thrive. By highlighting the benefits and challenges of a wide range of models, this work is intended to serve as a starting point to understanding the options and obstacles facing digital scholarly content projects today.

Sustaining digital resources: An on-the-ground view of projects today

Briefing papers

These have been developed to highlight key factors for sustainability against a set of personas. Specifically developed for university librarians, scholarly digital content project leaders and archivists and curators, they highlight suggestions that might be especially useful from the Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-Ground View of Projects Today guide and case studies.

Briefing papers

Sustainability and revenue models for online academic resources

This study looks at the factors influencing the sustainability of not-for-profit digital resources. It has created a framework for thinking about sustainability and suggested a number of financial models that digital projects could pursue. The study has stimulated a lively dialogue within the community about ways to strengthen the long-term prospects for non-profit digital resources.

Sustainability and revenue models for online academic resources

Strategic Content Alliance toolkits

By sharing best practice within many public sector organisations, the Alliance has created a number of strategic toolkits designed to tackle the problems in creating and managing digital resources. These include:

Business Models for Sustainability

Intellectual Property Rights

Audience Analysis

Video playlist