Ithaka
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 |
Overview
Ithaka is a New York-based independent not-for-profit organisation with a mission "to accelerate the productive uses of information technologies for the benefit of higher education worldwide". It helps promising not-for-profit projects develop sustainable organisational and business models and works with established institutions that are rethinking the way they serve their core constituents.
Ithaka was launched in 2004 by Kevin Guthrie, formerly president of the scholarly archive not-for-profit JSTOR (and its first employee). Ithaka and JSTOR formally merged in January 2009.
Ithaka's work on sustainability
Ithaka has worked with the Strategic Content Alliance to produce a range of materials providing advice and guidance on the sustainability of online resources.
Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources is an initial report that takes a broad look the issues surrounding the mechanisms for pursuing sustainability in not-for-profit projects. It focuses on ‘online academic resources’ (OARs), which are projects whose primary aim is to make content and scholarly discourse available on the web for research, collaboration, and teaching. This includes scholarly journals and monographs as well as digital collections of primary source materials, datasets, and audio-visual materials that universities, libraries, museums, archives and other cultural and educational institutions are putting online. The report is an introductory assessment of the relevant literature focused on not-for-profit sustainability, and it compares the processes pursued in the not-for-profit and education sectors with those pursued by commercial organisations, specifically in the newspaper industry. As well as outlining a range of revenue models, the report also sets out Ithaka's own 'Framework for Sustainable Not-For-Profit Innovation' and tackles the importance of influencing the mindset of those leading the projects.
Two peer review workshops were held to discuss the Ithaka report on Sustainability. A blog report is available that details the discussions from the London event, while Kevin Guthrie's notes from Ithaka's New York session include a list of next steps that were identified for research or concrete measures that would advance sustainability.
In March 2009, a workshop exploring business models and Sustainability (case studies) was held in London. As more materials become available, they will be announced via the Strategic Content Alliance blog.
