Digitisation in Europe
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Digitization in Europe Nick Poole, CEO, Collections Trust
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Presentation to the Smithsonian Digital teams about the current state of Digitisation in Europe's museums, libraries and archives
Transcript of Digitisation in Europe
Digitization in Europe
Nick Poole, CEO, Collections Trust
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I spend time in places like this….
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…and this…
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…and sometimes even this
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Collections Trust Mission
“Working with and on behalf of our members, we promote excellence and innovation in Collections Management and positively champion collections and their public value within the museum, arts & related heritage sectors.”
We make things…
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A single point of access to 23m digital cultural assets, of which 20m were published as open data under CC0 yesterday
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Things to talk about today...
1. Digitization supply and demand
2. Making the business case for Digitization
3. Putting Digitization into action
The continuum of use…
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CONTENT
METADATA
A BIT A LOT
The continuum of use…
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CONTENT
METADATA
A BIT A LOT
FUN
The continuum of use…
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CONTENT
METADATA
A BIT A LOT
FUN
RESEARCH
The continuum of use…
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CONTENT
METADATA
A BIT A LOT
FUN
RESEARCH
LEARNINGOUTREACH
The continuum of use…
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CONTENT
METADATA
A BIT A LOT
FUN
RESEARCH
LEARNING
DATA MININGCOLLECTIONS
MANAGEMENT
AGGREGATION
OUTREACH
The continuum of use…
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CONTENT
METADATA
A BIT A LOT
FUN
RESEARCH
LEARNING
DATA MININGCOLLECTIONS
MANAGEMENT
AGGREGATION
OUTREACH
Digitize relatively few things & invest in depth, description & promotion
The continuum of use…
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CONTENT
METADATA
A BIT A LOT
FUN
RESEARCH
LEARNING
DATA MININGCOLLECTIONS
MANAGEMENT
AGGREGATION
OUTREACH
Digitize relatively few things & invest in depth, description & promotion
Digitize lots of things and put relatively little effort into description & promotion
To put it another way…
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In the future, our Digitization strategies need to be based on evidence, not faith.
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How much would it cost to digitise everything in Europe’s museums, archives and libraries?
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“The estimated total cost of digitizing the collections of Europe’s museums, archives and libraries is €100bn, or €10bn per annum for the next decade, factoring an efficiency gain of 0.5% per annum.”
“The ‘eligible’ collections of Europe’s museums (ie. collections not too fragile to digitize or otherwise not considered appropriate for digitization) include approximately 221m natural objects and 265m man-made artefacts”
“Digitizing these collections would cost between €13.75bn and €63.27bn (mean €38.51bn)”
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There’s no way any sane person would approach the problem this way…
First, you have to prioritise the collections by significance
Then you have to decide on the end-product that would satisfy your intended use
Then you have to account for your institutional capabilities
Then you have to decide whether to do it yourself or go into partnership
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All (admittedly incomplete) evidence suggests that monetising collections content & metadata costs more than it yields
Where institutions are monetising, it is on the basis of strong brand equity, unique or iconic items and added-value assets (eg. 3D models)
Cultural institutions rarely apply full economic costing when assessing the revenue potential of image licensing
There is no evidence to support or counter the principle that open access to collections cannibalises commercial revenue
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What do we know about how museums, archives & libraries are approaching Digitization?
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83% are digitizing
c.20% of eligible material has been digitized already
34% have a written Digitization Strategy
31% have a policy for how Digitized collections will be used
23% have a Digital Preservation Strategy
87% of Digitization funding is sourced internally
3.3% of staffing works directly on Digitization
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Digitization is an industrial process which benefits considerably from economies of scale
The efficiency of digitization, quality control and enhancement improves significantly over time
The better-integrated digitization is into the existing practice, policies and workflows of the institution, the more efficient it will be
Digitization models…
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CONTROLLED BY PARTNER
CONTROLLED BY INSTITUTION
LOW CAPITAL
COST
HIGH CAPITAL COSTS
PPP
DISTRIBUTED
COORDINATED
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Open Digitization Project
A collaborative initiative between the Collections Trust, Open Rights Group, Open Knowledge Foundation, Google, Wikipedia and cultural institutions
Defining a new workflow for Digitisation that emphasises the creation of open, re-usable assets through participation at key points in the process:
SELECTION CAPTURE DESCRIPTION DISTRIBUTION PRESERVATION
www.opendigitisation.org
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What did we learn?
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The digitization model has to be tuned to the nature of the material and the needs of the audience
Digitization is not a project – it works best when integrated as a core element of service delivery
Long-term strategy, short-term priorities (and shorter-term funding)
You have to start somewhere and learn on the way – the worst thing you can do is wait until you have all the answers in place
Keep in touch!
Nick Poole@NickPoole1
www.collectionslink.org.ukwww.slideshare.net/nickpoole
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