Case studies
From Digipedia
These case studies have been brought together to provide examples of how different organisations have approached the various stages of the online content life cycle.
Contents |
Decision support
Case studies showing how organisations have reflected current policy in the development of their online content, and how good project management has helped deliver the product.
National and international policies
Demonstration of the aims and objectives of the Strategic Content Alliance, providing access to a diverse range of online content from a variety of public sector sources via a single access point.
The creation of a virtual European library, aiming to make Europe's cultural and scientific resources accessible for all. Making European information resources easier to use in an online environment and linking users directly to digitised content from all EU Member States, and accessible in a Web 2.0 environment
Project management
Whole life cycle examples
JISC Digital Media case studies
Examples examining the various media formats together with overarching lessons learned.
Demand and usability
Case studies showing how organisations have researched who will use the online content they intend to provide and how it can be made accessibile to all who wish to use it.
Accessibility
The tool used by UK online centres across England to help web-novices get to grips with the internet and find useful content. It has been designed to be accessible to all.
Audience research
Strategic Content Alliance Guide to Audience Research: Case Studies
Strategic Content Alliance Guide to Audience Research: Illustrative Case Study
Personalisation
Management processes
Case studies showing how phases of the online content life cycle have been managed successfully.
Business modelling and sustainability
BOPCRIS, University of Southampton (case study)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (case study)
The National Archives (case study)
L’Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (case study)
Hindawi Publishing Corporation (case study)
Electronic Enlightenment (case study)
DigiZeitschriften (case study)
Centre for Computing in the Humanities (case study)
Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (case study)
Collection development
Mersey Gateway shows how collections which are dispersed physically can be brought together via the web and the synergies between them explored in creative ways, enabling co-operative collection development across institutions.
The site also includes practical information about how and why the partners decided which materials were to be included on the website, how the digitisation process was carried out, what constraints there were and the technical standards used.
Curation and preservation
A case study from the Digital Curation Centre. Accurate file format information is crucial for preserving access to and the rendering of digital information over time. As such, it is vital that when a digital object is deposited in a repository, the object in question is of the type it purports to be. However, the representation of file formats is easily corruptible - whether accidental or intentional. This is of particular concern to institutions with an interest in preserving digital materials in repositories. The JSTOR/Harvard Object Validation Environment (JHOVE) is an Open Source, extensible framework for the format-specific identification, validation, and characterisation of digital objects.
Evaluation, impact and value
Final report of the evaluation of the People's Network and ICT Training Programme for library staff. Demonstration of the evaluation and impact analysis of a large-scale public sector ICT programme. The evaluation adopted a multi-method approach, with an emphasis on qualitative research methods, supported by quantitative data where available. The primary vehicle for gathering data was a set of sixteen case studies. Regional and Home Country workshops with a wider group of library services were convened between case study rounds to test out emergent findings.
Financial planning
Human resources
Marketing and search engine optimisation
Repository management
Jorum is a JISC-funded Service in Development in UK Further and Higher Education, to collect and share learning and teaching materials, allowing their reuse and repurposing. This free online repository service forms a key part of the JISC Information Environment, and is intended to become part of the wider landscape of repositories being developed institutionally, locally, regionally or across subject areas. Jorum uses a system called intraLibrary, which is supplied by Intrallect Ltd.
Jorum is currently available to UK FE and HE institutions, and is based on an institutionally registered User and Contributor licensing model.
Jorum is run jointly by Mimas and EDINA, the two national data centres based at Universities of Manchester and Edinburgh.
The word ‘Jorum’ is of Biblical origin and means a collecting (or drinking) bowl.
Technical processes
Case studies showing technical choices made when creating online content, providing access mechanisims, protecting rights and exploiting current technical developments to the full.
Access and identity management
Digitisation
DIAMM Virtual restoration of images
The Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music is a portal to worldwide collections of medieval polyphonic music manuscripts (excluding plainchant). The technical information provided describes the processes, procedures and decision-making involved with creating the resource. In particular, it includes information on the virtual restoration work undertaken on the images to return faded fragments of manuscripts of medieval polyphony seemingly damaged beyond repair to a readable state.
Freeze Frame offers a case study of how a large number of images can be presented in an accessible way, appealing to a wide audience and building in a range of web 2.0 tools
Infrastructure
People's Network
Many case studies on public sector infrastructure and online learning environments can be found atPublictechnology.net
Intellectual property rights
This short case study from the Archaeology Data Service gives an account of intellectual property and rights issues relating to an online research archive. It describes the licensing regime in place to protect the creators and publishers of the data, and provides a case study of actions taken to stop unlicensed re-publication of data by a third party. It concludes that clarity is essential in the protection of intellectual property rights and that effort taken at an early stage will be rewarded in the long term.
Developing licence agreements for digitisation. The Fine Art Project
Examining the particular approach it took when gaining permissions to disseminate digital versions of works of art created by various British fine artists who studied at various art schools within the country.
This case study looks at two projects, supported under the New Opportunities Fund (NOF), where the material under question was of confusing copyright status. The Coalfield Web Materials project, based at the University of Swansea, was digitising an archive relating to South Wales coal-mining; the archive, including material from the nineteenth century to the present day, incorporates photographs, pamphlets, newspaper clippings, posters and audiovisual material. Meanwhile, the Hantsphere project, organised via Hampshire County Council, was creating a local studies resource on the history and heritage of Hampshire, digitising, amongst other objects, postcards, photographs and prints form the late eighteenth century to the present day.
Resource description and discovery
Technical and usability issues involved with providing access to cultural materials from many institutions in Europe through a single interface.
Standards and formats
Implementing and exploiting XML
The Newton Project, aims to broaden the understanding of Newton by creating digital editions of his theological manuscripts. The project is a case study showing the importance of providing rich XML (eXtensible Mark-Up Language) encoding to provide a suitably professional digital edition of the manuscripts, which satisfy not only the usual standards of academic rigour but are flexible enough to allow a wide range of intellectual questions to be asked of them. Secondly, and relatedly, it indicates that exploiting such tagging in consistent, scholarly fashion requires time and experimentation - it is not, the experience of this project indicates, something that can be done immediately at the outset.
Web tools
An illustration of how a wide range of material, covering many different subject areas and many different kinds of object has been presented and interpreted on the web, making use of web 2.0 features such as blogs, podcasts and twitter to encourage interaction.