Sustaining digital resources: case studies

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OVERVIEW

The twelve case studies summarised here demonstrate different approaches to sustainability, exploring different revenue models to maintain and develop their content and services. The case studies formed the basis of the Ithaka 2009 report Sustaining digital resources: an on-the-ground view of projects today commissioned by the Strategic Content Alliance.

This article presents extracts from that report and is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported Licence

The Case studies report

The Executive summary of the report states:

"The past decade has witnessed a rush to create digital content in the not-for-profit sector, as organisations from a wide range of communities — from cultural heritage, to health care, to education and scholarship — have come to embrace the internet as a means to publish, collect, distribute and preserve the fruits of their work. Despite the great value of the content being entrusted to a digital format, the business models that will ensure long-term access to and preservation of this material are still unclear."

Key findings and factors

The summary goes on to identify five key findings:

There is no clear consensus, even among the 12 projects and organisations studied, of what sustainability is or how to achieve it.

Tension between wanting to share content widely while also needing to generate funds to support the resource was present in all of the cases studied.

Projects are experimenting with a wide range of creative strategies to earn revenue, though this is just one of multiple strategies they use to cover operating costs.

Cost control strategies were at least as important as revenue models in the sustainability plans of the organisations we profiled.

The role of in-kind contributions from the host institution was often significant.

and five factors influencing sustainability:

Dedicated and entrepreneurial leadership.

A clear value proposition.

Minimising direct costs.

Developing diverse sources of revenue.

Clear accountability and metrics for success.

Case studies

Brief descriptions of each of the case studies are taken from Appendix B of the Ithaka report and outline the challenges to sustainability faced by each and the solutions at which they arrived.

BOPCRIS Digitisation Centre Experimentation with sustainability and partnerships.
BOPCRIS projects
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. Early experiences suggested to library leadership that they were not well positioned to host this content locally, so with subsequent projects they began to experiment with different models of partnership with aggregators of scholarly content, such as ProQuest and JSTOR, that enable the library to focus on content creation while the partner organisation takes responsibility for facilitating public access. This case study traces the evolution of the library’s thinking about how best to provide access to these collections, explores the characteristics of the partnership models with which they are experimenting, and highlights some of the benefits and challenges associated with this approach to sustainability, in terms of both content and infrastructure.

Leveraging shared infrastructure and expertise.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities

The Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH) at King’s College London, an academic department focused on the advancement of the digital humanities, engages in a wide variety of research projects that often lead to the creation of electronic scholarly outputs. Using a model that is rare among humanities departments, CCH supplements government and institutional funding for research and teaching with a remarkable number of outside research grants and with revenue generated through knowledge transfer activities that leverage the department’s expertise to provide consulting and development services to the broader community outside the department.

DigiZeitschriften

This case study explores some of the advantages that CCH enjoys through leveraging shared human and technical infrastructure for the benefit of multiple projects, and it discusses some of the implications of creating digital resources in a research-focused rather than a user-focused context.

Library partnership and a subscription model
Digizeitschriften
DigiZeitschriften, a German-language archive of scholarly journals, was created in 1997 with funding from the German Research Foundation. Since its launch as an online service in 2005, DigiZeitschriften has implemented a sustainability model that includes a partnership of libraries contributing time and expertise, and a financial model of institutional subscriptions that has more than covered its operating costs to date. This case study examines the decisions leading DigiZeitschriften to adopt this plan for sustainability, and explores the benefits as well as challenges inherent in a partnership of this kind.

A two-sided market
eBird

eBird

The Information Science Department at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is home to eBird, a site where birdwatchers of all levels – from weekenders to academic researchers – can record their avian sightings and upload them for future use by scientists. The site serves a two-sided market: on one side, the birders who record and share their observations, and on the other side, the scientists who use that data for research. This project is notable for the level of interest it generates from users; for the range of revenue streams it draws from, including a corporate sponsorship and a franchising service for its core software; and for its home in a department that, despite its academic roots, encourages entrepreneurial activities. Through an examination of eBird, this case study approaches several larger questions for digital project leaders: How can academic digital projects think about increasing user interest? In what ways can a project maintain an Open Access core while generating revenue from premium services? And how might digital resource leaders approach the tension between project mission and revenue generation through a combination of sustainability strategies?

Subscription-based resource
The Electronic Enlightenment

The Electronic Enlightenment

After several years of reliance on foundation support, Oxford University’s Electronic Enlightenment (EE) – a database containing the digitised correspondence of over 6,000 thinkers and writers from the long 18th century – needed to transition from a grant-funded project to an independently sustainable research project. After hiring a business planning consultant to help them think through different options, project leadership concluded that a sustainability model based on institutional subscriptions to the resource was the best fit for the project’s needs. In addition to the revenue model, another important component of the sustainability plan was the establishment of a new set of institutional relationships, including the project’s move from its prior home at the Voltaire Foundation to a new base at the Bodleian Library, and the development of a sales, marketing and delivery agreement with Oxford University Press. This case study explores the factors that made EE well suited for a subscription model, the reasoning behind the establishment of its new institutional relationships, and the challenges surrounding the continued development of this unique resource.

Open access contributor pays
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Hindawi Publishing Corporation, a Cairo-based for-profit publisher of science, technology and medical journals, was founded as a subscription-based publisher in 1997. By 2003 Hindawi had begun exploring Open Access models; by 2007 it had become an entirely Open Access publisher, and it now publishes 160 Open Access STM journals. Hindawi’s financial model is based on charging contributors a fee per article published, a model also currently used by BioMed Central and PLoS, among others. Since 2007, Hindawi has continued to refine its business model, in particular through its partnership with scholarly publisher SAGE and by introducing institutional memberships earlier this year. This case study explores Hindawi’s path to choosing this financial model and the opportunities and challenges it has posed.

Free content and rights licensing
L'Institut National de l'Audiovisuel
Since its founding in 1974, L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA) has undergone a profound shift in activities, developing from its role as the protector of the audiovisual heritage of France to the more dynamic role of manager of diverse media assets reaching a variety of audiences, including the general public. Today INA places great emphasis on its mission to enhance and communicate the value of its content to end-users, and it supports these efforts through a range of economic models. This case study examines two divisions of the organisation responsible for providing access to and monetising the collection in different but complementary ways: the public website, www.ina.fr, which offers free access to the public while serving as a laboratory for experimentation with online revenue models; and Inamédiapro, an audiovisual licensing service for professionals. Both function as entrepreneurial efforts at the heart of this large not-for-profit organisation. This case study examines them in light of the business models they employ, their focus on understanding users, and the necessary balance between generating revenue and fulfilling the broader missions of the organisation.

The Middle School Portal 2

Early sustainability planning
The middle school portal 2

The Middle School Portal 2: Math and Science Pathways project (MSP2) aims to provide middle school teachers with high-quality materials they can use in the classroom, and to foster greater sharing and communication within the middle school teaching community. The original Middle School Portal was a prototype for the ‘Pathways’ projects funded under the umbrella of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), and MSP2 remains today entirely funded through NSDL. But the project faces a challenge: how will it cover the costs of operation and development when its current three-year grant runs out in 2011? This case study examines how the leaders of MSP2 are planning for the long-term sustainability of the resource. First, they are exploring a range of revenue-generating activities that build on current strengths of the partner organizations involved in the project; second, they are considering a ‘plan B’ of building a community-run site that would rely on a free social networking platform, the technical infrastructure of NSDL, and user generated content – a site that its leaders hope could function even with limited paid project staff.

Digisation with commercial partnerships
The National Archives

The National Archives

The challenges of digitising, preserving and providing access to over 1,000 years’ worth of material held by The National Archives (TNA) are considerable. In recent years, TNA has developed a strategy to digitise content quickly though its Licensed Internet Associates programme. These commercial partnerships, closely managed by TNA staff, have allowed the institution to digitise millions of pages of material at minimal direct cost. This case study explores the model developed by TNA in light of the opportunities that commercial partnerships can provide for public service organisations. This study also highlights the challenges such a partnership can bring to bear on a number of critical questions, including user needs, balancing mission and the commercial partner’s need to drive revenue, and long-term preservation and access considerations.

Building an endowment with community support.
Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
Endowments are often thought of as a source of reliable support for established institutions such as universities and foundations, but in recent years online academic resources have also begun experimenting with the endowment model as a means of sustainable funding. The model holds forth the promise of guaranteeing access to a resource in perpetuity, with the investment returns from the endowment continuously generating funds to sustain the resource. Since 2004, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has successfully raised three-quarters of a planned $4.125 million endowment. This case study highlights the factors that make a project a strong candidate for an endowment model, describes the steps that are necessary for implementing such a model, and explores the advantages and disadvantages of endowment funding.

Specialist historical content for a niche audience.
Thesaurus linguae Graecae

Thesaurus linguae Graecae

Online resources are often described and evaluated in terms of their ability to serve vast amounts of diverse content to wide audiences, but well-targeted, specialised digital projects can have a profound effect on an academic discipline. The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae® (TLG), a digital corpus of over 12,000 works of Greek literature ranging from the ancient era to the modern age, has proven its value to scholars and has been able to convert that value into a sustainability model that incorporates multiple revenue streams. The resource is targeted toward academic classicists and medievalists, who rely on it as the only comprehensive body of historical Greek-language works available online; it also offers a small Open Access selection of canonical Greek works for use by a wider audience. The project, which is hosted at the University of California, Irvine, depends on three main revenue streams: subscription fees, direct financial support from the university, and a project endowment. The endowment was originally intended to supplement the other two revenue streams, but the project’s goal now is for the fund to some day cover all of the ongoing costs for the TLG. This case study looks at some of the questions facing the TLG and outlines the broader implications for other resources with highly specialised content: How does such a project build an audience and keep users excited and engaged? What characteristics make a project a strong candidate for a subscription model? And how do the leaders of the TLG envision their resource – and its funding – evolving in the future?

V and A images

Image licensing at a cultural heritage institution.
VandA Images
For many museums and cultural institutions, the digital environment provides an exciting opportunity to expand access to their collections and enhance their brand. At the same time, the high costs of creating and maintaining digital collections lead some organisations to think about ways to generate revenue from these assets. V&A Images, a department of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s commercial trading company, licenses photographs of objects in the museum’s collection for commercial, educational and personal use. The unit is tasked with the sometimes-competing goals of generating profits for the museum, while also encouraging access to the collections and fostering scholarship in the field of art and design. Its challenges are to compete successfully in a crowded commercial licensing marketplace, to cover costs and to balance revenue-generating imperatives with the museum’s other digitisation efforts. This case study focuses specifically on V&A Images, while contextualising its activities within the museum’s broader digitisation programmes. It highlights some of the factors that are important to the success of an image licensing operation, and discusses challenges related to balancing market imperatives and mission-based goals.

Further information

Strategic Content Alliance workshop on case studies

Kaufman. On building a new market for culture. JISC, 2009

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