Make it, buy it, share it

From Digipedia

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OVERVIEW

The great advantage of digital content is that it is not restricted by physical boundaries. You can use the content from anywhere in the world irrespective of the geographic location of the institution which holds the physical originals. Content from many institutions can be brought together over the web to provide a far richer collection than each individual organisation. Material which is fragile and cannot be handled can be made available in digital form for all to explore and digital content available via subscription (whether from a commercial supplier or another institution) can also be provided.

Thus content for the service being planned can come from a variety of sources: your own collections, those of other institutions and material available via subscription. The range of sources of content will depend on the needs of the intended user base, but it is likely that in order to provide the most helpful service, materials will be drawn from a number of sources.

Make it

It is probable that the majority of content will be digitised from the institution's own collections and that a selection process will have been undertaken as part of the business planning to decide what to make available. There are good practice guides available to support all stages of digital content creation and management as well as information about Digital content and the law.

Buy it

Subscription-based content is available for general reference materials, newspapers, academic journals, electronic books, business, legal and financial information and a wide range of specialist subjects. Subscriptions to many of these resources are managed for the Higher and Further education communities by JISC Collections and for public libraries in England by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council Reference Online service.

Share it

When creating digital content, it is important to adopt an approach which will ensure that the resources are interoperable and can be shared with others. This means that it will be possible for users to search a range of content from different sources in a single operation. Such content and/ or the metadata describing it is often stored in a repository such as JORUM or The People's Network Discover service metadata repository.

Further information

JISC Collections
Reference Online
JORUM
People's Network Discover

[[role::newcomer]] [[role::strategy manager]] [[role::policy maker]] [[role::project manager]] 
[[goal::developing]] [[goal::business plan]] [[goal::managing]] [[goal::secure resource]] 
[[goal::content]] [[goal::sharing]] [[level::basic]] [[level::medium]]

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