Library and Archival Organizations in UK Discuss “New Business Models for Digitisation” (Workshop Report)

From a JISC Blog Post:

We know, both from desk research and anecdotal evidence, that there is still a strong desire for more digitisation, especially to tackle the black hole of content produced over the last hundred years or so. We had been thinking a lot about this and how, in an era of dramatic changes in the funding landscape, we could continue to support digitisation activities. The idea that we should seek to develop a new business model for digitisation was strongly endorsed by our Digital Archival Collections (DAC) advisory group, a subgroup of the Jisc Collections Content Strategy Group (JCCSG).
We also engaged and garnered support from our co-design partners SCONUL and RLUK, and knowledge sector partners the British Libary and The National Archives; all strongly interested or active in the digitisation of collections. So, to effectively explore ideas about future digitisation activities, we jointly designed workshop around finding and developing aspects of one key business model.
On 20 November 2017 we brought together librarians, academics and archivists to explore the opportunities for joint action. The key message we heard was that there is a great need for a flexible approach to address multiple needs, rather than a single solution. Big themes should be addressed, but not through a single approach. Rather, we should seek to harness our collective knowledge and resources to address such themes.

The resulting workshop report: Summary Report: New Business Models for Digitisation sets out a direction of travel. It suggests that there is a need for coordination at a national level, to enable the effective involvement of knowledge organisations in the delivery of digitised content. How can we share resources, knowledge, and potentially infrastructure to both digitise and deliver content more strategically?

Direct to Full Text Report: “New Business Models For Digitisation: A Jisc, BL, RLUK, SCONUL and TNA Workshop”
72 pages; PDF.

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