Electronic Enlightenment (case study)
From Digipedia
Electronic Enlightenment 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).
The Electronic Enlightenment is a resource that provides users with
the digitized correspondence of over 6,000 18th-century authors and
philosophers, including 53,000 letters and documents drawn from
critical editions published by a range of major university presses.
After years of development as a grant-funded project based at
Oxford University’s Voltaire Foundation, the Electronic
Enlightenment moved to a new home at the Bodleian Library, and
began generating revenue to sustain its continued development
through subscription fees through a sales and marketing arrangement
with Oxford University Press.
The project was able to establish strong relationships with other university entities in part because it was able to make a clear case for the value it could contribute to the other organisations. This value has both financial components, as demonstrated by the business plan the project commissioned, and mission-related components, such as advancing the institution’s scholarly goals, or providing valuable infrastructure for future initiatives.
The Electronic Enlightenment was a strong match for a subscription- based model because of the high value of its content to a wide range of academic disciplines, and because it plans to continue adding to and developing the content and functionality of the resource. The subscription was launched in autumn 2008, so it is too early to tell whether the project will meet its target to cover ongoing costs within three years, but initial interest in the resource has been promising. By outsourcing sales and marketing to OUP, the project is able to leverage the press’s extensive network of established sales contacts, and tap into its experience in promoting digital projects to a library audience. However, it has also encountered unexpected challenges related to selling unique primary source content that have led to unexpected demands on project staff time.