BOPCRIS, University of Southampton (case study)
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OVERVIEW
BOPCRIS was chosen by Ithaka as a case study in Sustainability to demonstrate a real world example of a theoretical business model. These business models were outlined in the initial report by Kevin Guthrie, Rebecca Griffiths and Nancy Maron, Sustainability and Online Revenue Models: An Ithaka Report (May 2008).
Background
The University of Southampton’s Hartley Library has been engaged in a number of large-scale, grant funded digitisation initiatives focused on heritage materials such as parliamentary papers and British pamphlets. These projects left them with a challenge familiar to many grant funded projects—developing a strategy to preserve access to the content after the grant period concluded. Southampton’s digitisation initiatives also highlight the challenges of supporting infrastructure without predictable revenue streams.
Early experiences suggested to library leadership that they were not well-positioned to host digitised content locally, so with subsequent projects they began to experiment with different models for partnerships with aggregators of scholarly content, such as ProQuest and JSTOR. These partnerships enable the library to focus on content creation while allowing the other organization to take responsibility for facilitating public access. Although these partnerships are still in early stages, initial evidence suggests that they have helped Southampton answer important questions about meeting commitments to provide long term access to content while eliminating some costs associated with locally hosted resources.
As their most recent grant nears its end, and with no other large projects lined up, library leadership has realised that it must also answer questions surrounding the sustainability of its infrastructure— the hardware, software, and human expertise that have been acquired through a large investment of public money via digitisation grants. The library would like to keep this unit in operation, but needs to develop a business plan to generate revenue to support the costs of its continued activities. In addition to highlighting some of the potential benefits of a willingness to experiment with partnerships, then, these projects raise important points about the importance of understanding life-cycle costs of both content and of infrastructure.
[[role::strategy manager]] [[role::policy maker]] [[role::project manager]] [[role::content manager]] [[role::acquisitions manager]] [[goal::managing]] [[goal::planning]] [[level::basic]] [[level::medium]]
