Presentation to the Smithsonian Digital teams about the current state of Digitisation in Europe's museums, libraries and archives

1. Digitization in Europe
Nick Poole, CEO, Collections Trust

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3. I spend time in places like this….
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4. …and this…
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5. …and sometimes even this
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6. 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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7. 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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9. Things to talk about today...
1. Digitization supply and demand
2. Making the business case for Digitization
3. Putting Digitization into action

10. The continuum of use…
CONTENT
A BIT A LOT
METADATA
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11. The continuum of use…
CONTENT
FUN
A BIT A LOT
METADATA
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12. The continuum of use…
CONTENT
FUN
A BIT A LOT
RESEARCH
METADATA
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13. The continuum of use…
CONTENT
FUN
LEARNING
OUTREACH
A BIT A LOT
RESEARCH
METADATA
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14. The continuum of use…
CONTENT
FUN
LEARNING
OUTREACH
A BIT A LOT
AGGREGATION
RESEARCH
COLLECTIONS
MANAGEMENT DATA MINING
METADATA
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15. The continuum of use…
CONTENT
FUN
Digitize relatively few things & invest in
LEARNING
OUTREACH depth, description & promotion
A BIT A LOT
AGGREGATION
RESEARCH
COLLECTIONS
MANAGEMENT DATA MINING
METADATA
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16. The continuum of use…
CONTENT
FUN
Digitize relatively few things & invest in
LEARNING
OUTREACH depth, description & promotion
A BIT A LOT
AGGREGATION
Digitize lots of things and put relatively RESEARCH
little effort into description & promotion
COLLECTIONS
MANAGEMENT DATA MINING
METADATA
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17. To put it another way…
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19. In the future, our Digitization
strategies need to be based on
evidence, not faith.
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21. How much would it cost to digitise
everything in Europe’s museums,
archives and libraries?
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23. “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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24. 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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25. 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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26. What do we know about how
museums, archives & libraries are
approaching Digitization?
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27. 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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29. 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
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30. Digitization models…
CONTROLLED
BY PARTNER
PPP
LOW HIGH
CAPITAL COORDINATED CAPITAL
COST COSTS
DISTRIBUTED
CONTROLLED BY
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31. 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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32. What did we learn?
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33. 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
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34. Keep in touch!
Nick Poole
@NickPoole1
www.collectionslink.org.uk
www.slideshare.net/nickpoole
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