Funding digitisation

Case study: Testing new business models for collaborative digitisation

Over the years, Jisc has played a fundamental role in supporting digitisation of archives and special collections to foster innovative research, teaching and learning within the Higher Education (HE) but also heritage sector. In recent years Jisc has been testing alternative business models for a more strategic, coordinated and sustainable approach to digitisation.

‘Digitising 20th Century social movements ‘ is based on a variation of a ‘library crowdfunding’ model of joint funding between 13 universities and Jisc. Institutions purchased early access to Reveal Digital’s ‘Independent Voices’ collection, which was also created through a programme of ‘library crowdfunding’ in the US and is now openly available. Part of the libraries’ access fees was supplemented by Jisc to fund the digitisation of more UK-based content. The project tested the a new collaborative and financial model and has digitised content from some of the participating libraries, including a collection of women’s pamphlets during the inter-war period drawn from the archives of the London School of Economics and records of the National Union of Women Teachers from University College London. The project also worked with Digirati to explore how we can use the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) standard to support metadata enrichment and more efficient digitisation and cataloguing workflows.

‘Digitising the History of science in Great Britain‘ is another collaboration Jisc initiated with international publisher Wiley, to increase access to digital collections. Jisc and Wiley co-funded the creation of a new digital resource, The British Association for the Advancement of Science—Collections on the History of Science (1830s-1970s) and worked with Jisc HE members to identify material drawn from universities’ archives and special collections. The new collection includes nearly 1 million pages of documents from 12 UK university archives and library collection and is delivered through the Wiley platform. The collaboration is the first to offer universities a chance to influence what material is digitised by a commercial publisher. All Jisc members institutions and affiliates, such as national libraries, have free access to the collection and after ten years from publication, this resource will become open and authentication/password-free globally.

This ‘mixed economy’ of digitisation funding can be a strength, enabling institutions to spread risk and continue digitisation even if one funding source fails. However it also impacts strategic and sustainable digitisation, leading to a patchwork of short-term projects with uneven coverage, and often a focus on the front end rather than on preservation or on robust data and metadata creation.

There is also a need for advice specifically on assessing digitisation costs and models which need to take into account the very variable costs of digitising different types of collections items. Some items may need a bespoke approach because of size or complexity, while others can follow more standardised mass digitisation workflows.

The survey also highlighted particular challenges for small cultural institutions, who may lack the expertise, track record or resources needed to make funding bids. Making multiple bids on an ongoing basis, which can be necessary for sustainable funding, is resource-intensive. One approach for addressing this on the part of national collections institutions is the Centres of Excellence model set out above, which could build partnerships between institutions large and small with complementary collections or expertise, and could provide not only advice on applications to funding bodies, but also mentoring through the process and a channel for collaborative joint bids.

Crowdfunding is an area that some institutions have used successfully, but relatively little to date to fund digitisation. While the traditional crowdfunding model of exchanging monetary support for tangible ‘rewards’ may be difficult to envisage for digitisation, some innovative adaptations of this model are emerging. Reveal Digital is a good example of a US-based initiative that uses ‘library crowdfunding’ to digitise collections and publish them openly based on a cost-recovery open access model. Jisc piloted this model in the UK with 13 University libraries, and are now digitising new content based on a joint-funding approach. Nesta has also led an arts and heritage matched crowdfunding pilot on the Crowdfunder platform, in which the £251,500 in matched funding provided by Arts Council England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund within the pilot helped leverage an additional £405,941 from a crowd of 4,970 backers.

Another area to explore is digitisation ‘on demand’ or as a service, whether commercial, at cost, or free to the user (for example, funded by grants). In natural sciences, the EU-funded SYNTHESYS+ project for research access to European collections, led by the Natural History Museum, ​launched a new fund​ in 2020 for Virtual Access – effectively to fund digitisation on demand for collections that meet research community needs and support research into sustainability goals. The first round of funded projects include digitisation of bat specimens to support research including future virology research into ​​coronaviruses.