Surviving & Thrivingthrough understanding the Value of Digitisation

MMSDA: Planning for

Success

Simon Tanner, King’s College London @SimonTanner www.slideshare.net/KDCS #mmsda

Digital Humanities: the application of digital technology to humanities disciplinesreflection upon the impact of digital media upon humanity

> 50 academics & researchers~ £2.5 million research income per annum5+ million digital objects in 107+projects200+ million hits over the last 5 years

www.kcl.ac.uk/ddh/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp4y-_VoXdA

Digital Humanities methods for historical analysis of Irish Immigrants in 19th Century London, England

Is the value in thewine, the glass or the drinking?

The purpose of digitisation:to educate, enlighten & entertain

Memory organisations are where a

community nourishes its memory, imagination &

creativity.

Where it connects with the past

& invents its future.

The Attention Economy

We will compete: for attention, for eyeballs on our collections and resources, for time and energy from our communities.

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

“Old Bailey Online reaches out to communities, such as family historians, who are keen to find a personal history, reflected in a national story... Digital resources both create a new audience,

and reconfigure our analysis to favour the

individual.”Professor Tim Hitchcock, University of

Hertfordshire

“Digitised resources allow me to discover the hidden lives of

disabled people, who have not traditionally left records of their

lives. I have found disability was discussed by many writers in the Eighteenth Century and that

disabled men and women played an important role in the social life of the time.”

Dr David Turner, Swansea University

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

New areas of research enabled

Effective, efficient and world leading

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

Bringing collections

out of the dark

f. 23 detail

Digitising the Dead Sea Scrolls

Spectral Classification

Use of complete spectrum separates ink, parchment, backing and background

Bestowing economic & community benefits

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

Glasgow Museum's Collection is the city’s biggest single fiscal asset valued at £1.4 billion. It contains around 1.2 million objects. On average only 2% of the collection is exhibited to the public at any one time. Digital access is opening up further access to these collections.

A major impact sought is to increase self-confidence in the populace – to feel less marginalised, less insignificant, less unheard. Increased feelings of self-worth through interaction with the Museums will spill over into every aspect of their lives.

Digitised content & JISC Collections negotiations

save the sector ~£43 million per year

“The Freeze Frame archive is invaluable in charting changes in the polar regions. Making the material available to all will help with further research into scientific studies around global warming and climate change”Pen Hadow, Polar Explorer

Interdisciplinary & collaborative

www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html

On the other hand...

“You want a massive digital collection: SCAN THE STACKS!... You agonize over digital metadata and the

purity thereof...

And you offer crap access.

If I ask you to talk about your collections, I know that you will glow as you describe the amazing

treasures you have.  When you go for money for digitization projects, you talk up the incredible cultural value...

But then if I look at the results of those digitization projects,

I find the shittiest websites on the planet.  It’s like a gallery spent all its money buying art and then just stuck the paintings in supermarket bags and leaned

them against the wall.”

Nat Torkington (@gnat) http://bit.ly/rNHMVr“Libraries: Where It All Went Wrong” The text of a Speech delivered to

provoke the National and State Librarians of Australasia, November 2011

A Digital Death Spiral?

“digitisation = funding”

“Digital is everything today”

“who knows how much it’ll cost, but digital’s bound to be wonderful”

“Planning is so 20th Century, let’s be Agile”

“cos our competition / Google / my mate is doing it”

“cos if we build it, they will come!”

Signs you are in the Digital Death Spiral

Some top tips for

successful digital projects

FEASIBILITYhandling

variation

accurate information

catalogues & indexes

copyright & IPR

skills

time to plan

infrastructure

preservation

benefits

IT DEPENDS...

Nature of the originals

Types of content

Information & access needs

The Project Managers Dilemma

In reality, most projects can have no more than TWO of these!

LOW COST

FAST

Planning and communication are essential!

“Planning is an unnatural process. It is much nicer to just get on with the job: failure then comes as a complete surprise instead of being preceded by a period of worry and doubt.” Sir John Harvey-Jones

Technology projects usually fail because:

32% - inadequate project management & control

20% - lack of communication

17% - failure to define objectives

17% - lack of familiarity with project scope & complexity

14% - incorrect technology & project sizeFigures courtesy of KPMG

Remember your Ecosystem

Discovering

Annotating

Comparing

Referring

Sampling

Illustrating

Representing

Scholarship

From John Unsworth’s Scholarly Primitives

The advantages of setting your data free

http://www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/impact.html

Measuring the Impact of Digitized Resources: The Balanced Value Impact Model

Simon Tanner

King’s College London

@SimonTanner

www.slideshare.net/KDCS

With thanks to Alice Maggs for the Impact illustrations alice.100@hotmail.com