Digital content life cycle
From Digipedia
| How useful is this article to you? 1 (not useful) - 5 (very useful) |
| Current average rating: 0 |
| Please login or create an account to rate this article |
Contents |
OVERVIEW
The digital content life cycle describes the stages of managing all digital content projects and programmes, adopting a good practice approach for each to ensure continued success. The process is described as a life cycle because it is cyclical. There are many choices to be made when creating, managing and exploiting digital content; choices that will depend on the context of how the material will be used and maintained as much as choices on technical issues. Providing maximum potential access to that content calls for a comprehensive framework that embraces all aspects of the management and decision-making processes: this is the digital life cycle.
The components of the digital life cycle
The key concept to remember is that each stage of the content life cycle flows from the previous one and decisions made at any one stage will affect the choices and outcomes of subsequent stages, so time invested in planning is time well spent. Access to good advice and guidance to support each stage in the life cycle is important and it is the aim of Digipedia to provide swift and simple access to a diverse range of resources for this purpose. Some are the product of international standards organisations such as NISO while others are guides to best practice or research studies on particular techniques relevant to the creation of particular formats of content or on new approaches to delivery, for example, social networking. There are within this diverse set of resources two particular requirements. The first is to establish the means to decide which is the right resource for the right content and also whether the resource is current and transferrable to different settings. Meeting these two requirements that will define the success of the aggregation and convergence of digital content is at the heart of the Strategic Content Alliance's mission.
Paradoxically, in the context of creating content integration, the design of a digital content life cycle, that supports effective decision making and implementation calls for the disaggregation of the elements of the resources that make up the life cycle. To use the tools and techniques effectively, Digipedia has adopted the seven-stage approach to the digital life cycle set out by Digital New Zealand's Make It Digital good practice guide:
- Selecting: for analogue or new content, selecting what should be made digital
- Creating: putting content in a form to make it usable
- Describing: describing content so it can be organised
- Managing: managing content to keep it usable and available
- Discovering: organising content to make it findable
- Using & Reusing: ensuring content can be used and re-purposed
- Preserving: managing content to keep it usable and available long-term
Selecting
The route to useful digital content begins with a clear understanding of the purpose of its creation (digitisation) or acquisition (purchasing user licences). Questions such as, what are the national or organisational strategic priorities that the digital content will support? What will be the audience and what are their known needs? Are there opportunities for collaboration or sharing of existing resources? How, precisely, will material be selected for inclusion in a programme or project? All need careful consideration before beginning a programme of work.
Make It Digital has developed a good practice framework to encourage selection processes that will make good use of available resources and produce digitised content that can be building blocks for future use. The five principles of the framework are:
- Selection – not all content can be digitised now
- Purpose – digitisation should be for an identified purpose
- Access – digitisation will affect access to the original
- Technique – the digitisation technique will determine usability
- Value – the digital copy should have intrinsic value
Next steps
Read the entire Selecting for digitisation section.
Read JISC Digital Media guidance on selecting for digitisation.
Navigate through the IPR and licensing issues involved.
Use the IPR and licensing toolkit for further advice and see whether the IPR and licensing: scenarios reflect your situation.
Use the Web2rights IPR diagnostic tool to support your decisions.
Consult the Audience analysis toolkit for guidance on understanding your intended audience
Creating
This is the process of actually producing the digital materials that are to be made available to users. It may embrace a multiplicity of formats and types (for example still and moving images, text, interactive features, audio streams) each of which will need the right technologies and standards to be used to ensure its continuing availability. The adoption of good practice allied to careful choices is key.
Next steps
JISC Digital Media provide a wealth of detailed expert advice on all aspects of creating digital materials whether from analogue originals or from scratch.
Read what Make It Digital has to say on the creation of digital resources.
Describing
Describing content according to accepted standards and conventions means that it can then be found, managed, used, shared and re-used over time. It is just as important for users to know what content is available as it is for content and service managers to know how a resource has been created and where it is stored. The use of structured metadata following appropriate, internationally agreed, standard schemas will ensure a sustainable approach.
The NISO Framework of guidance for building good digital collections offers six principles for the creation of good metadata:
- Metadata Principle 1: Good metadata conforms to community standards in a way that is appropriate to the materials in the collection, users of the collection, and current and potential future uses of the collection.
- Metadata Principle 2: Good metadata supports interoperability. Metadata Principle 3: Good metadata uses authority control and content standards to describe objects and collocate related objects.
- Metadata Principle 3: Good metadata uses authority control and content standards to describe objects and collocate related objects.
- Metadata Principle 4: Good metadata includes a clear statement of the conditions and terms of use for the digital object.
- Metadata Principle 5: Good metadata supports the long-term curation and preservation of objects in collections.
- Metadata Principle 6: Good metadata records are objects themselves and therefore should have the qualities of good objects, including authority, authenticity, archivability, persistence, and unique identification
Next steps
Read the Dublin Core metadata basics.
Have a look at the IMLS/NISO metadata chart to see which schemas best suit your needs.
Managing
Digital content needs to be managed at all stages of the lifecycle to make sure that it can continue to be used and continues to be relevant. Successful content management is not only about adopting good practice in terms of standards and technology but also about working to an agreed policy and clearly-designed workflows. Important issues to consider will be the reason for the resources and how that will affect their ongoing management, for example, what is the long-term value of the content and how does it contribute to other services provided by the instution.
For more on this aspect, read the Make It Digital advice on approaches to managing digital content.
Next steps
Use the Sustainability toolkit to help you manage long-term value and development.
Consult the IPR Toolkit Rights Management Template.
Plan some audience research to ensure your content continues to be relevant to your users.
Discovering
Making sure that users can find and explore content easily is critical to the success of the service. Time invested at the planning stage in audience research to understanding who is likely to use the content and why, will inform not only how that content is made available but also help to identify the best model for service sustainability. At a technical level, it is also important to make sure that content can be discovered by the major search engines as this is likely to be the route taken by the majority of potential users. Content must, of course, be accessible to all users and a holistic approach to accessibility will inform all stages of the lifecycle.
Next steps
Read all the Strategic Content Alliance audience research guidance.
Use Web2Access for advice on an accessible service.
This article on log analysis from Issue 66 of Ariadne may provide some useful tips.
Using and re-using
Any creator of digital content will want to encourage use of that content in as many ways as possible and may wish to make the resources available for re-use in other contexts and services. Understanding and implementing appropriate rights management for the material will be important as it will ensure that users understand what they can and cannot do with the content.
Next steps
Use the Strategic Content Alliance IPR Toolkit for expert advice and guidance on all aspects of copyright and IPR for digital resources.
Start with Top Tips for Issuing Licences and Terms and Conditions of Service.
Also make sure you have an Institutional IPR Policy Statement
You will also find the Web2rights IPR diagnostic tool helpful in defining what your licensing needs are.
Preserving
For digital content to continue to be available and accessible over time, then a digital preservation strategy must be implemented. This will informa all stages of the digital lifecycle and will involve the active management of content to ensure its longevity and security (for example through migration of data as storage formats change, secure storage of master files, depositing material in a digital repository, using emulation techniques as necessary). Processes and procedures will need to be documented and reviewed and a disaster plan put in place to insure against loss should the unthinkable happen.
Next steps
Read the Digital Curation Centre briefing paper on the subject.
Related Digipedia articles
Audience analysis and modelling
Digital content: an introduction
Getting started with digital content
Resource description and discovery
Further information
NISO Framework of guidance for building good digital collections
Harvested links to other resources
- Decoding the digital: a common language for preservation
- A Digital Preservation Coalition and Preservation Advisory Centre joint conference exploring communication and promoting interaction between librarians, archivists, and digital preservation managers. [?]
- Digital Copyright
- A Collections Trust factsheet providing guidance to collections holding organisations on issues of digital copyright. [?]
- Good Practice Guide for Developers of Cultural Heritage Web Services
- A UKOLN resource focussing on the issues associated with income generation and sustainability for digitisation projects. [?]
- Digitisation
- A Collections Trust factsheet. Defines digitisation and the digital life cycle; describes how digitisation works and how to choose equipment types; advice on whether to digitise in-house or outsource [?]
- Computer Graphics
- A Collections Trust factsheet. Discusses the basics of computer graphics: pixels, dimensions, colour, magnification, different types of images and the associated hardware and software. [?]
- Practical Steps for Compliance with the Digital Economy Act
- What are the implications of the Digital Economy Act for your organisation? For anyone providing public Internet access, the DEAct is an important piece of legislation. Although primarily aimed at HE/ [?]
- Copyright for Culture
- This network exists to bring together people with an interest in Copyright in museums, archives and libraries to share knowledge and expertise. It will also provide a focus for sharing information abo [?]
- Report to the EC on Digitisation and Digital Preservation in the UK
- Every two years, each EU Member State has to report to the European Commission describing their progress against a set of Recommendations for Digitisation, Digital Preservation and online accesibility [?]
- SPECTRUM Partners
- A network for SPECTRUM Partners. SPECTRUM Partners are the only collection and digital asset management software vendors who have a licence for the commerical use of SPECTRUM with their products. [?]
- Digital Access
- A network for people interested in extending access to and engagement with culture through technology, including Digital content creation, digital preservation and related subjects. [?]
- Encouraging Digital Access to Culture
- A groundbreaking report from Jon Drori for DCMS, this brings together the thinkers, movers and shakers in Digital Culture, exploring how Government can respond to the lessons learned in thelast 10 yea [?]
- Talk Web
- Delivering digital applications to the collections world, like we have done here for this website. [?]
- Digital Preservation Guidelines for Museums
- This is a great entry-level guide to the main issues to consider when developing Digital content so that it is more sustainable and capable of being preserved in the medium to long-term. The Guideline [?]
- Family photography going digital
- 'Family Photography Going Digital', a paper by Gillian Rose. Looks at family snaps, thinks about the importance of family photos and considers how they construct notions of home and family. Notes tha [?]
- Managing Digital Media Collections
- This one day course will offer a model of digital collection management, based upon open source solutions. Attendees will gain hands-on experience of planning, building, managing and delivering a digi [?]
- Digital Media Restoration
- Analogue media deteriorates at an alarming rate and few digitisation projects can hope to retrieve great signals from aged collections. In order to archive maximum usefulness some basic digital remast [?]
- Copyright Creative Commons
- A Collections Trust factsheet. Defines Creative Commons as an online initiative offering digital content producers the opportunity to select from a range of licences that permit access to their conten [?]
- Managing the Digitisation of Library, Archive and Museum Materials
- A National Preservation Office leaflet on the management of the digitisation process, of digitisation projects, and of digital image archives [?]
- Culture Grid opens up UK collections online
- Over one million objects from collections from museums, galleries, libraries and archives from across the UK are now accessible together online for the first time, thanks to the Culture Grid, a new [?]
- Read all about it!
- Find out more about the Collections Trust and how they can help you manage you collections by ordering your free copy of OpenCulture, the Collections Trust newspaper. The newspaper showcase [?]
- Collect: The Collections Management Exhibition
- Collect: The Collections Management Exhibition Date: 28 June 2010 Opening times: 10.00am - 4.00pm Venue: Kingsw [?]
- Rachelb
- Rachel Bhandari<br/>Museums Galleries Scotland<br/>Development Manager (Digital Access)<br/>rachelb@museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk<br/> [?]
- JISC Digital Media
- JISC Digital Media<br/>Organisation<br/>Bristol<br/> [?]
- New partnership to support Scottish museums
- Museums Galleries Scotland and The Collections Trust are delighted to announce a new partnership which celebrates a shared vision for Scotland's museums and galleries. The partnership builds on man [?]
- Collections Trust partnership with Scottish university museums
- The Collections Trust and Scottish university museums have announced a new partnership to make collections available online using the Culture Grid. [?]
- chilesl
- Lawrence Chiles<br/>National Maritime Museum<br/>Digital project manager<br/>lchiles@nmm.ac.uk<br/> [?]
- ptaylor10
- Paul Taylor<br/>Digital Estate Corporation<br/>CEO<br/>paul.taylor@arcalife.com<br/> [?]
[[role::newcomer]] [[role::strategy manager]] [[role::policy maker]] [[role::project manager]] [[goal::managing]] [[goal::planning]] [[goal::content]] [[goal::describing]][[level::basic]] [[level::medium]]
