Digital Content Quarterly 3
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In this issue, we consider how organisations can take a ‘sharper, smarter, stronger’ view of their sustainability strategies and business models. Paul Lima from the Canadian Heritage Information Network and Katie Pekacar from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council consider how the cultural heritage community on both sides of the Atlantic can take a proactive approach to the economic downturn and build a stronger, leaner digital offering.
Keep calm and carry on
Plus! with this issue
4-page Fluency in Film and Sound supplement (interactive version requires Adobe Acrobat 9)
Contents
News
Becta announcement
On 24 May 2010, as part of the government’s plans for reducing expenditure in the public sector, the planned closure of Becta was announced.
The Department for Education has made it clear that the reductions Becta faces are not a reflection on Becta’s staff, whose work and contributions over recent years have been significant.
Becta is continuing to have discussions with government, to consider, where possible and appropriate, schools, colleges and learners can continue to benefit from the savings and support, materials and guidance, that Becta has provided. More details on how this will be realised will be made available in due course.
Digital content news roundup
Strategic Content Alliance sponsors’ news
International
Any other business
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Welcome to the Summer issue of Digital Content Quarterly
Following the volatile events of spring – the first coalition government since 1945, global economic uncertainty, the budget deficit and looming public sector cuts – Digital Content Quarterly (DCQ) is championing those digital projects, initiatives and services that provide ‘best practice’, positive examples and opportunities for emulation in increasingly austere times. Our coverline, taken from the now famous Ministry of Information propaganda poster that was pulped in 1945 and only unearthed in 2005, says it all: Keep Calm and Carry On.
With DCQ’s broad range of voices, features, issues and solutions from cultural heritage to education and research, health to public-service broadcasting, we hope to challenge, unravel and clarify some of the issues around the future of digital content provision across the public sector in the face of funding cuts.
In this issue, we consider how organisations can take a ‘sharper, smarter, stronger’ view of their sustainability strategies and business models. Paul Lima from the Canadian Heritage Information Network and Katie Pekacar from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council consider how the cultural heritage community on both sides of the Atlantic can take a proactive approach to the economic downturn and build a stronger, leaner digital offering.
This issue is also packed with features, hints and tips, from the widest spectrum of organisations yet, from the Internet Archive to Wikipedia.
We are also delighted to feature an interview with academic, journalist and BBC TV presenter, Aleks Krotoski who gives a candid and enticing view of the television of the future as well as a glimpse of her new role as researcher-in-residence at the British Library.
In the mid-section of the magazine, for this issue only, you will also find a pull-out supplement with four pages of features, video, sound and images to complement the work of the JISC Film and Sound Think Tank. Innovations and inventions, discussions and discoveries from rich and diverse media are presented in this supplement alongside the relevance of these forms of content and the strategic and policy debates around use, delivery and preservation.
As always, do pass on the magazine to your colleagues and feel free to tweet, blog, bookmark and email as widely as possible. We would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on the magazine, so please do fill in our:
Online feedback survey
You can keep up to date with Alliance news and events on the Twitter feed and on the blog. However, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.
Stuart Dempster and Sarah Fahmy
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IPR, the Digital Economy Act and you
Naomi Korn, SCA IPR consultant, looks at the implications of the Digital Economy Act for public sector bodies such as libraries, schools, universities, colleges and museums.
The Digital Economy Act 2010 was passed in the wash-up of the last government, implementing many of the measures outlined within the Digital Britain final report. It includes provisions relating to the UK’s communications infrastructure, public service broadcasting, online infringement of copyright as well as security and safety online and in video games. Many of these measures will come into effect immediately, whilst others will require further public consultation and in some cases approval by Parliament, before they can be implemented. Specifically, the Act includes provisions relating to online infringement of copyright by placing obligations on internet service providers (ISPs) to work with rights holders and, if a future secretary of state deems necessary, to take technical measures against infringing subscribers for alleged infringements. The Act also provides a power for the secretary of state to introduce regulations for rights holders to seek a court injunction to prevent access to specified online locations for the prevention of online copyright infringement.
A briefing paper produced by LINX (the London Internet Exchange) has outlined a number of scenarios in which internet access is provided by organisations such as public sector bodies and businesses. This has highlighted the potential difficulties that may be faced by libraries, schools, universities, colleges and museums under the various definitions in the Act and as a result, extra costs which they might incur as well as the possible limitation or suspension of their network and internet access. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has also issued guidance in which it acknowledges that ‘Without examining the situation for each university and their relationship with JANET, it is not possible to say whether JANET is acting as an ISP or not; nor is it clear whether a university is a subscriber, ISP or is simply not in the scope of the Bill. As such, we cannot say simply who the ISP is and who is the subscriber, only that this is something that each university would have to look at and establish for themselves’.
Ofcom has recently developed a draft code of practice for the first stage notification of ISPs and subscribers. This code provides the framework for the implementation of the measures in the Act relating to ISPs and subscribers, an outline of the types of costs that ISPs and rights holders are likely to encounter, as well as establishing mechanisms for the resolution of disputes between parties. In particular, the draft code sets out how and when ISPs covered by the code will send notifications to their subscribers to inform them of allegations that their accounts have been used for copyright infringement. The code is applicable initially to ISPs with over 400,000 subscribers and is due for implementation in 2011. It was hoped that the code would also clarify the scope of the Act – which organisations are required to act as ISPs and which as subscribers – however, the wording of the Code remains ambiguous particularly regarding the definitions for libraries, universities, colleges and museums.
The Code has been the subject of consultation and, to support public sector organisations’ reponse to the consultation, JISC, the British Library and MLA (Museums Archives and Library Council) hosted a briefing event on 29 June on the Act and its potential ramifications. Issues covered included:
- The ambiguity of the wording in the Act whereby public sector bodies may be defined as both ISPs and Subscribers
- The implications and impact for them in providing online and/or wifi access to students and/or visitors as a result of their potential definition as ISPs under the Act
- The costs that they are likely to incur in ensuring that they have the necessary technological infrastructure in place to comply with any obligations associated with their definitions of ISPs under the Digital Economy Act
- The costs that they are likely to incur as ISPs in instances of copyright infringements by any Subscribers
Presentations and podcast interviews from the event, discussing likely issues and concerns from the viewpoint of libraries, museums, universities as well as other public and private sector bodies, can be found on the SCA blog. The SCA has also issued a briefing document outlining practical measures to remain compliant with the Digital Economy Act, which will be available on the SCA Blog.
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How the $630 Bible adds layers of value
Public domain texts may be freely available to everyone, but a canny US company has identified how to add value to – and make a profit out of – one of the most famous out-of-copyright books of all. Matthew Loy of Ithaka S+R considers the 21st century Bible.
With an increasing amount of free content available online, publishers and other content providers face pressure to identify new sources of value for their users: if the content they are selling is widely available, what will interest customers enough to pay for it? For publishers of out-of-copyright books, selling an annotated scholarly edition is a well-established model for adding value to an open-domain text. But one software company has taken this a step further by building a robust, heavily linked interface around what may be the most widely available book in the Western world.
Logos Bible Software, a US-based content developer, produces downloadable and DVD-ROM versions of the Old and New Testaments that are integrated with an array of other content. Founded in 1991 as a side business by two Microsoft programmers, Logos has grown to a 175-employee operation that turns over $22m (£15m) annually in revenue and has served half a million customers.
The value of Logos’ products is not in the biblical texts themselves, in fact, the Logos website offers free access to six versions of the Bible. Rather, the company has invested over the past two decades in enhancing the core text through products that tag and link the Bible with a variety of other content sources and data: lexicons in Aramaic, Greek and Hebrew, biblical commentaries, scholarly writings, identity records for each person mentioned in the Old and New Testaments, geospatial data linking maps of the Holy Land with biblical verses, and a wealth of other information. Users can compare Bible editions to see how language changes across translations, analyse the frequency of words in the text, map a biblical episode, view a biblical figure’s family lineage and perform a host of other functions, none of which would be possible in a standard public domain text.
The interlinking between biblical editions and other data was designed to meet the needs of clergy members, the company’s target audience. For casual readers, a standard edition of the Bible may suffice, but Bob Pritchett, Logos’ CEO and co-founder, pointed out that pastors must prepare sermons every week and therefore benefit from a richer research interface: ‘We think of the user’s task – preaching a sermon – and we try to think, “What do I wish I could get to from here?”’ To stay in touch with those users, staff across several departments, including user services representatives, programmers, editors and marketers, regularly monitor the Logos site’s user forums and attend professional and scholarly meetings in theology and biblical studies to understand what ministers want from the resource next.
Logos’ overall approach seems to have created a ‘sticky’ experience for its audience: the company found in a survey that half of users spend over 15 hours per week using the software. The products are not inexpensive for an individual user: Logos’ eight basic packages range in price from $265 (£182) to $4,290 (£2,941) for a deluxe edition that aggregates 1,650 resources, and their bestselling software package, the Scholar’s Library, retails for $630 (£432). If the price is any signal, the company has built on the core biblical texts in a way that individual users value highly and are willing to pay for. Today, as many content holders seek to share content as openly and widely as possible, Logos seems to offer a strong case that even where content is free, helping people find it, make use of it, and share it with others can be a valuable proposition.
For more information on adding value to core content, see the SCA-commissioned Ithaka Case Study in Sustainability on the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, a collection of digitised ancient Greek texts
For an example of understanding user needs for an online project, see the Ithaka Case Study on eBird
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Recession busting the Canadian way
Canada’s cultural heritage sector is no stranger to the dark depths of a recession. Paul Lima, Policy Advisor at the Canadian Heritage Information Network, describes how the country has taken a proactive approach to the global downturn.
As Canada struggles to find its footing after a deep recession, the country’s deficits continue to climb. The debt-to-GDP ratio reaches a new peak of 71%, devouring an ever-growing portion of government revenues through interest payments. Cultural heritage institutions brace themselves for the worst, and with good reason. The national broadcaster will see its budget reduced by hundreds of millions of dollars. Funding for the country’s museum assistance programme will fall by a massive proportion. Many more cuts will need to be absorbed before the corner is turned.
It sounds grimly familiar but, fortunately for Canada, this script belongs to another era, the 1990s, when mobile phones were still a rarity and terms like ’the web‘ and ’information superhighway‘ were just entering the daily lexicon.
For the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), that decade also proved to be the most challenging – and ultimately rewarding – period in its history. CHIN was created in 1972 as part of the Department of Canadian Heritage and supports hundreds of member heritage institutions of all sizes and disciplines. Since its inception it had been gradually expanding the ways in which it enabled museums to connect with each other and their audiences through digital technologies.
At the heart of CHIN’s mandate was the national inventory of museum objects, Artefacts Canada. By the 1990s, however, CHIN had also taken on responsibility for the maintenance and safeguarding of collections data from contributing institutions on its mainframe computers. By mid-decade, this centralised arrangement had proven to be unsustainable and inefficient.
However, by 1995 the internet had also arrived, and CHIN embraced it. With personal computers becoming more powerful and commercial collections management software now widely available, CHIN began assisting museums with the transition of their collections’ data to in-house management systems. The project was completed in early 1998. One year later, the Speech from the Throne announced the launch of CHIN’s Virtual Museum of Canada initiative, which provided Canadian museums with the resources to develop and make accessible a uniquely Canadian array of curated online content.
Having been obliged to carefully reassess how it could most effectively meet the needs of its stakeholders, CHIN emerged from the 1990s as a stronger organisation with a renewed sense of purpose. Museums, in particular smaller institutions with very limited resources, were in turn given the opportunity to reach new audiences like never before.
Canada 3.0
In comparison with the turmoil it experienced in the 1990s, Canada is today emerging from the current global recession relatively unscathed. While the Canadian government embraced stimulus spending as a means of softening the blow of a slowing economy, its deficit remains proportionally well below the G7 average, and the country is now projected to experience the strongest economic growth amongst its peers. The Canadian government has renewed and stabilised funding for arts and culture programmes until 2014.
It is against this backdrop that public institutions and private industry are turning their focus towards ensuring long-term sustainability in a digital world.
In May this year, the Canadian government launched a national consultation for a Digital Economy Strategy at a major gathering, Canada 3.0. The event was attended by more than 2,000 executives, entrepreneurs, academics, artists, students and thought-leaders. The consultation is organised around the themes of innovation, infrastructure, industry, digital media and digital skills. The goal is to have the resulting strategy in place by early 2011.
Digital future now
While they wait forthe Canadian strategy to be finalised, the country’s national institutions continue to prepare for a future that in many ways has already arrived.
From metadata and other standards to guidance on digitisation and intellectual property issues, CHIN is striving to help museums to fully inhabit the digital world. While targeted at a Canadian audience, CHIN’s resources and the best practices developed through its member museums are available to international audiences through the Professional Exchange website.
The library community, chiefly through the Canadiana.org initiative, is accelerating its efforts to make Canada’s documentary heritage – books, periodicals, archival photographs, film, music, audio and video broadcasts – available online.
Elsewhere in the cultural landscape, the National Film Board (NFB) took a calculated risk during the recent downturn and diverted resources into the development of an online streaming video service. NFB.ca now provides free access to hundreds of documentaries, animations and alternative dramas. As a result, Canadians are sharing their favourite productions through social media links and embedded codes.
So while the economic uncertainty may not have completely dissipated, and the full contours of the cultural heritage sector’s role within a national digital strategy have yet to be defined, it is now taken for granted that the future will be increasingly digital. The sector’s institutions are addressing the need for fiscal restraint by reaching out to each other, and embracing emerging business models that offer the potential for greater long-term sustainability, while bolstering their ability to serve society at large.
Video:
CHIN’s director, Gabrielle Blais, on its recession-busting approachBack to top
The Internet Archive: Surviving and thriving
The Internet Archive, a US non-profit organisation, has an extraordinarily ambitious aim: to provide universal access to all human knowledge by building the world’s largest digital public library. Robert Miller, Director of Books, explains how the organisation has not just survived but thrived through economic adversity, whilst defending the ‘non-profit’ ethos
The seeds of our survival were actually built before the current economic crisis began. In short, we put a lot of thought into where we wanted to end up before we started our project. There were many steps in our process, but the major questions we focused on were as follows:
Phase 1: Where should I start?
Need How broad was the need for our project? In for-profit terms, this was our market.
Deliverables What were the specifications, deliverables and service levels that we would choose to offer and, more importantly, what were we not going to offer? This allowed us to focus our resources and efforts. We chose not to be all things to all people.
Partner selection How do we select partners? Initially we worked with someone who would allow us to ‘fail’, meaning we chose a development partner we could work out the kinks with. And there were kinks!
Funding Where will we obtain initial start-up and sustaining funding from? We raised seed funding for development from a foundation and ruthlessly stayed on budget to ensure that at the end of the development cycle we had a working prototype.
Champions Who should these be? We had champions both within and outside our team who were high enough up in their organisations to make decisions quickly, support to nurture the process was assured and resources could quickly be organised when required.
Competition Who were we competing with and why was what we were offering better or unique?
Resources Which could/should be delivered in-house or outsourced? We knew what we could deliver internally and what we could afford to go outside for. For example, we did our engineering in-house, but partnered externally on manufacturing. But we were not beholden to any one factor that could ‘tank’ the project.
Phase 2: Next steps…
Once all the issues above had been considered, the output at the end of the development funding stage was that we had a pilot project that could be tested at scale and worked. We had a functional show-and-tell that we could use to move to the next stage.
So to look at the project from the funding perspective:
- The seed funding came from a foundation.
- The pilot funding came from our first partner.
The building/growth funding fortuitously came from a commercial enterprise whose goals were close enough to our mission that we didn’t have to ‘sell our non-profit soul’. These funds would have come from the market that we targeted, but the growth would just have been slower.
Before tackling the issue of ongoing, sustainable funding, we considered the following points and how these issues would be resolved and mitigated throughout the lifetime of the initiative:
Phase 3: Up & running
Issues to consider…
Scale and cost For the most part we could run our operation inexpensively with just one person or in groups of ten. This meant that as funding contracted we could scale back with minimal impact on our costs. Conversely, we could ramp up to address increased need or demand.
Funding timelines We ‘sized’ our project and budgets to the funding available. This sounds obvious, but by paying attention to funding timelines and funding cycles we built our costs and budgets accordingly. In essence, we always operated as if we were about to run out of funds. This kept us hungry and on point.
Chameleon funding We also structured ourselves so our appeal for funding was not limited to just one source. Our initial homework before we started the project suggested that our ‘solution’ would have to appeal to multiple sources of possible funding. That way, if one funding source was down another one might still be approachable.
Phase 4: Sustainability
Here is the punchline, so to speak – funding has come from the following sources:
- Seed funding partner – has stood by us because they were invested in the process. We delivered and they wanted to see further development.
- Primary pilot partner – turned out to be so thrilled with what we did that they rearranged their budgets to keep funds flowing.
- New service partners – pilot worked so well that we had referencable partners who were attracted by the lead partners we worked with.
- Selectively adding services – initial base service was so low cost that partners asked us to develop new services that they committed to support upon completion. So our cost/risk of new development was low.
- Operating style – we were thrifty and did not get bloated with staff. We always operated as if we were going to run out of funds, so we were always looking for new funding sources.
Finally, we also had some luck. By always testing, looking and keeping our options open, we found sources we hadn’t originally thought of. We have never stopped asking questions or pursuing (inexpensively) other sources. We started local, we expanded global. We have worked hard, planned and have never, ever given up.
Video: Robert Miller explains more about the Internet Archive and its funding
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Sharper, smarter, stronger
The museums, libraries and archives sector is facing a rapid and potentially revolutionary overhaul of its funding environment. Katie Pekacar, MLA Policy Adviser: Excellence, Improvement and Innovation, considers strategy, adjustment and the positive, long-term transformation of the sector.
The funding environment for museums, libraries and archives has been changing over recent months, and the pace of change is only set to increase as the government explains how it will meet deficit reduction targets. The Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) has published its manifesto for supporting the sector through a period of rapid change. Sharper Investment for Changing Times sets out how changes in the service need to be designed for changing public need, not be driven by short-term budget cuts.
Museums, libraries and archives are operating in new environments and with new public expectations. Public libraries are increasingly acknowledged as important partners in bridging the digital divide and helping some of the most in need in society to benefit from new information environments. This role needs to be developed and celebrated. Archives are also being challenged to make their collections available to the public online and via community hubs. Additionally, museums need to respond to a new generation of people who have grown up experiencing interactive technologies to provide them with learning experiences.
Over the coming years, local authorities and central government will be challenged to find large savings with the credit crunch already affecting endowments and donations from the private sector. The sector will also be operating in a more integrated funding environment where fewer funds are ring-fenced. Service commissioners will expect that museum, library and archive services will contribute to wider agendas, such as health and wellbeing, children and young people and adult services in order to obtain funding. Our sector needs to be ready for these changes and able to articulate its value locally, nationally and internationally.
Working together
In order to meet these challenges, it will be important to look at new, effective ways to get services to people. The sector already uses mobile options, virtual service delivery and volunteers supporting the workforce to improve and expand services. Consortium approaches to procurement and shared services, working across local boundaries can deliver savings. For example, Bromley, Bexley and Lewisham library services worked together to jointly procure e-books services for their service users. Tyne and Wear have merged their museum and archive services to create one joint service (TWAM), promoting collective working and resource pooling to create better standards and value for all.
In an environment with changing public expectations, services need to listen to the public and design services together with them that meet their needs. Woking Lightbox was designed using a thorough process of local engagement to ensure that it meets the community’s needs. Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library is the busiest library in the country, and this can be attributed, in part, to its audience-focused approach to marketing.
We need to become responsive and flexible so that we are able to deliver against wider priorities and generate diverse income streams. This includes assessing funding options, looking at new governance models and developing an entrepreneurial approach that is able to attract public, private and philanthropic funding. Shepherd’s Bush has a new library, built without using taxpayer’s money. It was funded by the developers of Westfield shopping centre. In 2007, Luton Borough Council agreed to transfer museum, library and arts activities to a charitable trust and company limited by guarantee. The trust’s ability to be more entrepreneurial, and respond more quickly to opportunities, has protected and enhanced local services by overseeing developments in infrastructure and IT services.
Digital opportunities
Digital services are not a privileged area of work in the museums, libraries and archives sector and therefore they too can be affected by funding reductions. However, they also offer some specific opportunities. In a time when all services will need to demonstrate their relevance and value to the public they serve, digital technologies offer delivery mechanisms that can meet new public needs. e-Books services, such as those offered by Essex libraries, can serve members of the public who may not have time or be able to visit the library building itself. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) systems, which make stock management more efficient and open the way to self-issue of titles for users and self-service kiosks in libraries, are also adapted to the needs of busy sections of the public in Westminster.
Digital resources and online services lend themselves to cooperation and consortium-working across services. The MLA has negotiated a suite of resources for public libraries called Reference Online. This has been taken up by every library authority in England and demonstrates the advantages of centralised procurement for these types of resources. Culture24, funded by MLA to provide an online listings directory and editorial features for museums, exhibitions and collections on behalf of the sector, demonstrates the power of combined online marketing for museums.
Public–private partnerships
While public funding for digitisation may be tapering down, there are opportunities for public–private partnerships to provide online and print-on-demand access to collections. The British Library has negotiated a deal with Amazon to make 65,000 largely out-of-print 19th-century titles available on Amazon via CreateSpace’s print on-demand service and as free downloads for Amazon Kindle owners. Dorset Archives have partnered with Ancestry.com to digitise and make their collection available online in anticipation of future funding cuts.
There are also a number of challenges that must be met in order for these opportunities to be fully exploited. Copyright and IPR issues, particularly relating to ‘orphan works’ (works for which the rights holder is unknown or cannot be traced), can hold up or complicate digitisation and the costs of clearing rights must not be underestimated. New legislation about online copyright infringement in the Digital Economy Act will apply to libraries, museums and archives offering internet access to the public. Organisations should take steps to understand their obligations with respect to the code of practice being developed by Ofcom (as discussed in the IPR column of this issue’s DCQ). The sustainability of digital projects and challenges of preserving digital resources and artefacts also need to be seriously considered in the planning stages of projects, to avoid unforeseen costs in the future.
These are uncertain times, but they can offer museums, libraries and archives opportunities to reassess and refocus the service so that it meets local priorities and increases participation. Rather than making ad hoc cuts, there is a need for long-term, strategic approaches to transforming the sector. This can be a difficult task, but support is available. MLA is targeting investment and resources towards improvement and innovation, brokering digital services and resources, and providing expert information, advice and guidance for organisations seeking to develop their services.
Roy Clare, Chief Executive of the The Museums Libraries and Archives Council
Links
Back to top It’s wikid!
2010 has seen Wikipedia and the cultural sector come together in a variety of different ways to see how relationships can be built between the two communities. Michelle Pauli finds out more.
Liam Wyatt is the first ever volunteer Wikipedian-in-residence at the British Museum and has just completed his month-long stint working on site in London. The official aim was ‘to build a relationship between the Wikimedia and British Museum communities that is mutually beneficial, sustainable and replicable’ or, as Wyatt puts it, ‘ultimately, both groups want to share knowledge with the world, and there is a lot more in common between us than divides us’.
Wikipedia’s not a website but a ‘community based around knowledge’, explains Wyatt, vice-president of Wikimedia Australia. So, rather than treating it like a marketing tool, curators need to focus on improving the quality of the subject pages, which in turn will organically grow traffic back to the museum.
Wyatt worked on a series of events while at the museum to build links between the communities. Backstage Pass brought 40 Wikipedians on site for a day to meet with curators and take tours in the non-public areas. The result was 15 new, high quality British Museum-related articles on Wikipedia and a committed group of Wikipedians who now feel they have a personal relationship with the museum and its objects.
The Hoxne Challenge focused on an important collection of treasures for which the existing Wikipedia article was ‘atrocious’. It was an attempt to see what can be achieved if a museum and Wikipedians work together on a specific topic in a focused effort. This culminated with an on-site tour and intensive collaboration session.
Find out more about Liam Wyatt’s residency at the British Museum on his blog.
Liam Wyatt’s three steps to getting started with Wikipedia
- Talk to your local chapter (uk.wikimedia.org in the UK) who can offer guidance.
- Look at the advice in the cultural sector article on Wikipedia. Type wp:glam into the searchbox on Wikipedia.org and you’ll find a page explaining appropriate kind of account for a cultural organisation, and the best way to use links.
- See the Glam Wiki Recommendations – a 6-page PDF covering all the key issues.
Liam Wyatt, the British Museum’s Wikipedian-in-residence
Britain Loves Wikipedia
Britain Loves Wikipedia was a scavenger hunt and photography contest held in over 20 UK museums in February. Visitors were asked to take photographs of objects in museum collections for the ultimate purpose of illustrating existing Wikipedia articles and inspiring new ones. Photographs were submitted under Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike or Attribution-Only licenses and are available on the Wikimedia Commons. DCQ asked two of the museums involved, the V&A and The British Postal Museum & Archive how useful they found the event.
Alison Bean, Web Officer at The British Postal Museum & Archive:
‘There were two key reasons to get involved with Britain Loves Wikipedia – our website gets a lot of clickthroughs from Wikipedia, and there’s a burgeoning community of Wikipedians writing about philately and postal history. However, we found that the main appeal for the majority of those who came was the opportunity to spend a full day at our Museum Store (generally it’s only open to the public for a couple of hours at a time). The vast majority of people were first time visitors. Many of those who came were happy to take photos once we told them about the Britain Loves Wikipedia event, so it was not only a good event for us in terms of encouraging people to visit, but also in terms of creating a better public understanding of what Wikipedia’s about.’
Nadia Arbach, Digital Programmes Manager at the V&A:
‘The V&A got involved because we saw the event as an innovative way for the public to contribute to making museum collections accessible to more people. Participants submitted over 350 photos of V&A objects, ranging from medieval sculpture to Victorian silver. Their creative work can now be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles and expand knowledge.’
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A panoramic view of digital research
Technology has pushed research in new directions, created new landscapes and has changed how researchers interact with information at their disposal. Richard Boulderstone, Director e-Strategy and Information Systems at the British Library, explains how the Library’s forthcoming Growing Knowledge exhibition will explore the future of digital research.
A hundred years before the rise of Hollywood, a popular form of entertainment existed that both educated and entertained. Like the movies of today, scrolls of painted images attached to rollers were slowly unveiled accompanied by a narrator telling tales of epics, battles and historical events, providing mesmerising windows on the world to large and paying audiences. They were called panoramas.
One of the most famous of these panoramas is the Garibaldi Panorama. Depicting the life and times of the Italian politician and military figure Guiseppe Garibaldi, the panorama is 4½ feet high, painted on both sides and at 273 feet long is one of the longest paintings in the world. And until recently, it was confined to the shelves of Brown University Library.
Digitisation has given this epic story of Garibaldi a new lease of life. Photographed 6 feet at a time, melded into a continuous image by Brown University and added to a Microsoft Surface Table, researchers are now able to scroll the entire panorama and watch the story unfold as thousands did a century before, creating the equivalent of a 19th-century movie reel. Audiences at that time may only have had a single chance to see for themselves this unique tale, but now users are able to expand, extract and zoom in on details while gathering around the Surface Table and discussing the story in detail from more vantage points than ever before.
This idea of collaborative research and exploring how researchers will use and interact with these tools is at the heart of the British Library’s new exhibition, Growing Knowledge, the Evolution of Research.
Researchers are using technology to move from the physical to the digital. All of a sudden they are stretching the boundaries of research and have learned that they can transform and repurpose the content of books, newspapers, audio files and massive datasets.
A significant and pressing challenge for the British Library is to define the role it plays in this brave new world, but the Library also has the great opportunity to consult its users to help it understand what services should be provided to support them.
Visitors to Growing Knowledge will find an exhibition they perhaps might not expect to find at the Library. Designed to demonstrate the organic development of digital research and the growth of data using natural patterns, they will experience a new world of research that will seem a far cry from the traditional setting of the Library’s famous Reading Rooms.
Through the Library’s partnership with Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Haworth, users will experience an immersive digital experience in specially designed multimedia research cockpits. Using touch- and multiple screen arrays, each cockpit will provide access to interactive experiences and demonstrations, providing a unique environment for researchers to experience digital research tools of the future. From these cockpits users will be able to explore maps using geospatial technologies, manipulate digital assets across multiple media and see how mobile technologies can be used to support research beyond the desktop.
Audiences were said to be amused, surprised and astonished by a live showing of Garibaldi’s Panorama – the British Library is hoping for the same reaction and is keen to find out what the research community thinks about the apps, content and tools on display.
Critical to the exploration of these technologies is to understand their usefulness. Supported by JISC and implemented by UCL, we have put a huge amount of emphasis into ensuring we have a full evaluation process that will help us understand how different researchers may use these tools in the future and whether or not the Library should be providing access to them.
We can not be sure what the exhibition’s findings will be, but we’re hoping to create a debate that will engage and inspire researchers from a variety of disciplines. This debate will hopefully live long in the life of the Library, much as the audiences who viewed Garibaldi’s Panorama over 100 years ago debated and discussed the stories they heard and the tales they saw.
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Will the virtual revolution be televised?
Academic, journalist and BBC TV presenter Aleks Krotoski talks to Michelle Pauli about how the internet is changing TV for good, and the ethics of a brand new frontier for research.
It’s not often that an interviewee is honest enough to respond to a question with ‘well, DURR!’ But Aleks Krotoski’s refreshingly down-to-earth attitude to all things tech is one of the elements that has helped the American-born academic and journalist become such a success as a popular communicator, from her regular stint as presenter of the Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast to her latest role as the British Library’s new researcher-in-residence for its Growing Knowledge exhibition.
Case in point is The Virtual Revolution, the multiplatform BBC TV series Krotoski presented last year. The programme explored how 20 years of the web has reshaped our lives and it involved an online and mobile audience from the very beginning, from promoting debates around programme themes and interviewees to offering rushes and clips for remixing and supporting a full social media backchannel. It created a sensation with its innovative use of the internet to allow an online audience to participate in programme-making, and won not only critical praise from TV and tech pundits, but also a New Media Bafta and a Digital Emmy. But are programmes like this a one off or do they really represent the TV of the future? For Krotoski the answer is obvious.
‘Well, durr! I don’t even have a TV – it’s flat, it’s linear, it’s simply consuming, it’s not actually creating anything and it makes no sense to me that content, programming, is made without this participation. It goes beyond the red button, it goes beyond the making of blogs, it goes beyond the Tweets that surround the making of them, it goes far beyond all of those because that’s pretty run of the mill. It’s about choosing your own path through programmes, it’s about making your own programmes with the content that’s available. It’s about liberating and opening up the opportunities for people to use this incredible content that is being produced. Otherwise, what’s the point? You are only seeing one person’s vision. How boring!’
Krotoski acknowledges that there will always be a demand for television programmes that can simply be consumed, but she is convinced that the age of expecting entire populations to sit and ‘swallow the pill’ of passive television-watching is over. For her, examples such as The Virtual Revolution are just the start.
‘If all of this content is integrated into webs of information which you can navigate, people that you trust will take you through it or people that you’ve never met before will take you through it and you can lay out paths for other people. That’s a completely different experience from just sitting and letting it wash over you…The real genius isn’t just in the invention of a technology but the genius is in the person who uses it in a different way, often to engage a completely different community. It’s the social applications of these technologies that’s the most exciting. And that’s another aspect of what you can do with the internet that you can’t do with television.’
There are dangers, of course, and Krotoski lists them rapidly, from reputational and privacy issues to the way in which gatekeepers are emerging and learning to manipulate social media tools and those using them. She comments that ‘Obama’s election campaign was a phenomenal use of these tools but it was hands-down the most manipulative strategy that I’ve ever come across because it made people think they were in control when in fact they had no control.’ She is also concerned about the way in which social media environments are evolving into places where everyone feels they have to show their best face: ‘The feedback loop rewards self-promotion. I think that’s quite destructive as it turns it into a marketing tool for individuals as well as for companies’.
A social psychologist by training, Krotoski completed her PhD at the University of Surrey last year. She examined how information spreads around the social networks of the web and she believes that the internet has brought a golden age for researchers. Intriguingly, this is, in part, because she has discovered that, for all the dissembling opportunities that online environments offer us, we behave in exactly the same way online as we do offline.
‘People imbue this environment, the network and the technology, as a utopia or a dystopia but it’s exactly the same! I’d be really impressed if someone could go on the internet and create a completely behaviourally separate online identity to their offline self and make that consistent. We’re human beings. We bring to this blank slate, this technology, this agnostic information distribution platform, our human experience.’
The scope to explore this human data now on tap via the internet represents an exciting opportunity, complete with its own set of ethical challenges. This is at the heart of how Krotoski sees her role at the British Library – a place and a project for which she clearly bubbles over with enthusiasm.
‘I’m hugely excited by the possibilities of what different types of technologies we could use to gain information for research,’ she says. ‘In terms of social psychological research it is phenomenal – it is actual behaviour in naturalistic environments. But there are ethics associated with that: what is our responsibility as researchers for the people whom we are studying and are the methods we’re using ethical? How can we ensure that we don’t screw this up?’
She cites examples of ways in which researchers have ‘screwed up’, for example publishing articles that include people’s real handles (the names that they use online) which are directly traceable to their offline self. Yet these kinds of issues are inevitable as the ‘brand new frontier’ for research opens up, and Korotoski is optimistic that the British Library exhibition will help to promote a dialogue between researchers and a better understanding.
‘I’m very passionate about how people use these tools and what we can ethically get out of them and how to help ensure that we can still learn in the future as opposed to everyone just rushing in and taking what we can now because it’s free and because there aren’t any rules’.
Aleks’s top tips on how to use social media
- Think really hard about what it is and what you need it for. Don’t just go in and do everything. You can expand your portfolio later but start by doing one thing right so that you get it right and you get out of it what you need.
- Social media tools take time, they are all investments. You get as much out of it as you put in and if you’re just going to do the occasional blog and let that die then people aren’t going to engage with you. If you just do a Twitter feed that’s ooh, look, announcement, announcement, announcement then you’re not going to get followers.
- Determine what it is that you need. You wouldn’t do a radio ad on TV. So think about what it is that the technology, that actual medium, does for you and what you need it for and then work to its strengths.
Alek Krotoski
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Strategic Content Alliance workplan update
Business Modelling and Sustainability
In March 2010, Ithaka S+R, funded by the Strategic Content Alliance, began a new phase of research, this time to explore how those who fund digital projects think about and influence their long-term success. This work will involve interviewing programme directors and grant officers at a range of funding organisations to understand how they think about what will happen after the grant, and how they help project leaders to consider this at every stage of the process, from application to assessment, throughout the grant period and even post-grant.
These organisations will be from both the public and private sectors; from the UK, USA and Canada; those who focus on the sciences, humanities and the arts; funders for whom supporting digital resources is a mission goal and others who are just beginning to take stock of the digital resources their grants have generated.
For an initial discussion and review of funders’ approaches to developing sustainable digital resources, the Funders’ Forum on Sustaining Digital Resources was convened in May 2010 and brought together public and not-for-profit sector funders in the UK, USA and Canada.
The event provided a forum for a wider audience of organisations who are grappling with this issue. The event highlighted successful business models being used by projects, funders’ methodologies, and new research and emergent trends on the development of effective business models for digital resources from across the globe.
Download Funders’ Forum presentations
Video interviews from presenters and key participants
Ithaka S+R’s research will continue through 2010, and the project will result in a final report identifying better practices for funding agencies and tools to help funders evaluate the sustainability plans of grant applicants. The report and tools will be disseminated by the Strategic Content Alliance in spring 2011.
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
SCA IPR and licensing e-learning module
Plymouth University’s team of e-learning specialists is working with the SCA IPR consultants to develop an Open Access, IPR and Licensing e-learning module to inform and support the professional development and understanding of this complex area.
The e-learning module will accompany the SCA IPR and Licensing Toolkit and provide users with themed scenarios to help them understand IPR and licensing issues and the types of tools they might use.
The e-learning module will be available for peer review by late summer with an intended launch under an appropriate Creative Commons Licence in the autumn.
SCA IPR Toolkit in practice
The Imperial War Museum, St George’s Hospital, the National Library of Wales and the Museum of St Helena have kindly agreed to act as case studies to illustrate the SCA IPR and Licensing Toolkit in practice. These case studies will be accessible as short documents as well as captured on film.
The following new deliverables have been created by the consultants and will shortly be available on the SCA Blog:
- Managing Orphan Works briefing paper
- Digital Economy Act 2010 briefing paper
- Notice and Take Down Policy and Procedures template
- Where to Go for Rights Clearance briefing paper
- Embedding Creative Commons Licences into Digital Resources briefing paper
- How Open are Open Content Licences briefing paper
Finally, the IPR consultants will be involved in another IPR and licensing workshop on 28 September. Further details will be announced in due course on the blog.
Digipedia
The next stage of the Digipedia project – building a prototype service – is well underway and the first interim version of the software and content architecture was launched at the beginning of July for consideration by the Digipedia Steering Group. Subsequently, version two will ingest a range of content to assess the most cost-effective means of producing a ‘gold standard’ digital content lifecycle knowledge base. Discussions have been planned with a number of specialist content providers in the UK and internationally.
In the autumn this second version will form the basis for a final prototype for user testing, tools for social networking and the development of options for cost-effective sustainability. The final pilot service will be launched in April 2011.
Find out more about the aims and objectives of Digipedia
Become an affiliate member of the Strategic Content Alliance
Any public sector organisation involved in the creation or management of digital content can become an affiliate member. This membership allows you to actively participate in the Alliance with no financial or legal obligations.
To find out more contact Sarah Fahmy
Find out more about the Digipedia vision and work programme
SCA upcoming events
30 July 2010, London |
SCA Intellectual Property Rights Workshop28 September 2010, London
All details will be posted to the SCA blog in due course |
SCA/JISC Netskills workshops: Maximising your online presenceAll details will be posted to the SCA blog in due course |
30 November–2 December 2010, London |
Digital Content Resources from JISC
Each issue, DCQ brings you a themed slice of the wealth of resources that JISC has made available through its Digitisation programme. All the resources featured here are Open Access and can therefore be used by anyone, anytime, anywhere!
In the words of bestselling author of The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida, ‘Human creativity is the ultimate economic resource’. So, in this issue we’re focusing on the creative industries and the contribution they make to education and research, the UK economy and society as a whole.
JISC has funded a range of projects and services that help make some of the most important cultural and artistic resources available for everyone to access online.
With the creation of EMI in 1931, the music industry and its artists experienced a period of radical change. The Musicians of Britain and Ireland, 1900-1950 website tracks the changes that affected the music industry as small, local artists were sidelined for international superstars. Focusing on British or Irish musicians or those whose recording careers were largely based in London, this collection has made over 2,000 sides from 78 rpm discs available for anyone to listen to.
The Visual Arts Data Service (VADS) is an online resource for the visual arts. It has provided services to the academic community for 12 years and has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections comprising over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in learning, teaching and research in the UK.
The Museum of Design in Plastics (MoDiP) at the Arts University College, Bournemouth has one of the world’s largest and highest quality records of artefacts demonstrating design in plastics. Contrary to popular belief, plastics are usually less stable than wood, ceramics or metal. Thus this project represents a unique opportunity to capture and share this material before it disappears.
Drawing on ephemera and collections from the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), East London theatres and the archives at the University of East London, the East London Theatre Archive (ELTA) is a resource where researchers can access unparalleled collections of the period. Featuring content from 1827 to the present day, this project helps further our understanding of this period and region, and provides a platform for further debate and collaboration.