Sustainability for Digitization Programs

1. Sustainability for Digitization Programs January 20, 2006 Laurie Gemmill ALA Mid-Winter

2. Agenda • Welcome and introductions • Mini-workshop - Laurie Gemmill • Sustainability Issues • Business Planning • Guiding Principles • Needs Assessment and Evaluation • Financial Plans • Break • Panel Discussion of Practice        • Bettina Meyer - Western Michigan University • Nancy Allen - Collaborative Digitization Program • Geri Ingram - DiMeMa • Q & A - panel

3. Thanks to Contributors • Indebted to: • IMLS Web Wise 2005 Pre-Conference Workshop: Business Planning for Digital Asset Management in Cultural Heritage Institutions, Feb 2005 • Business Planning for Cultural Heritage Institutions • Authored by Liz Bishoff and Nancy Allen, January 2004 • Published by Council on Library and Information Resources

4. Sustainability • Projects start with grant funding • short term • funding is intended as seed money or only used to fund innovative projects • Projects to programs • Projects: limited in scope, self-contained • Programs: • ongoing • long-term strategic plan • integrated into institutional workflow • economically sustainable • Ongoing projects not as competitive for funds

5. Sustainability • What is sustainability? • What does it mean to be sustainable? • Why it is so important to us? • Particularly for digital and preservation initiatives?

6. Sustainability - Definition “Sustainability . . . refers to all the considerations that go into maintaining the institutional context for creation and maintenance of digital objects and resources, and supporting . . . long-term viability” National Institute for Networked Cultural Heritage (2002)

7. What Does It Mean To Be Sustainable?

8. Sustainable Organizations • Adapt to changing environments and client needs • Develop independent, diversified and dependable sources of revenue • Wean themselves from dependency on external funds • Develop and grow programmatically

9. Why Is Sustainability So Important For Digital Initiatives? • The investment of resources is greater • The promise is greater • The expectations are greater

10. Sustainability Issues for Digital Cultural Heritage Initiatives A Tale of Woe and Intrigue

11. CLIR Survey - 2003 • “Survey of Digital Cultural Heritage Initiatives and Their Sustainability Concerns” • To identify factors compromising sustainability among Digital Initiative (DI’s) • To develop recommendations on ways to counter these factors • http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub118/contents.html

12. Participants and Process • 33 DCHIs – a cross-section of the cultural community • Performing arts organizations • Scholarly and professional organizations • Museum, archive and visual resource organizations • Publishing groups • Standards initiatives • Humanities centers and projects • 5 Funding Agencies • Institute of Museum and Library Services • National Endowment for the Humanities • National Historical Publications and Records Commission • Getty Grant program • Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

13. “Woes” • The Economy – 2003 • Domino effect • Memberships, dues, fundraising • Moratoriums – setback to creativity • Funding Trends and Dependencies • Funding pool diminishing • DCHI too dependent • Serving $ master instead of mission • Digital Initiatives as Organizational “Projects” • “Special projects” rather than programs

14. “Woes” • Missions and Overlapping Domains • Passion projects • Outdated or changing missions • Lack of Standards, Practices, and Preservation • Huge editing and integration costs • Risk of Obsolescence • Unproven Business Models • Various models

15. “Woes” • Growing Pains • Transition periods – high stress • Internal Tensions • Lack of clarity • Competition with other programs/projects • Staff changes • Uncertain Market Needs • Absence of user needs

16. Recommendations • Planning • Training • Repositories for digital assets

17. Intrigue: the Secrets to Sustainability • Create a product (digital initiative) worth sustaining • Develop well-defined programs with discrete objectives and measurable goals • Continually reassess your organization and its programs

18. Business Planning Overview

19. Business Planning • A business plan is a “high-level description of how an organization will implement its strategic plan, for the organization as a whole or from the perspective of a specific project or product” “Planning Process (Bryson, 1995)

20. Business Planning • Before start a project, program or product • Process of determining costs, expectations and financial goals • What are the financial expectations? • Make revenue? • Support project? • ??? • Parallels to grant writing • Components • Experience

21. Business Planning • Cultural heritage repositories/Non profits do many aspects of business planning • The natural outgrowth of organizational planning process • Early days digitization explored technology; today used to advance mission/goals • Need to incorporate at beginning • No single recipe for success

22. Partnerships • Collaboration increasingly common element of sustainability strategy, particularly for digital initiatives • Funders strongly encourage • Can leverage funding • Show governmental bodies and others • CHI work with community for greater good • Higher profile for all involved

23. Successful Partnerships • “The key is to find a compelling shared goal with real added value and to orient the partnership and its opportunity seeking activities around it.” • University of Washington and Eastern Washington Historical Society • UW - expertise in scanning and metadata, technology • EWHS - expertise on Plateau Indians, selection and marketing • Consortial digitization endeavors • Museum Online Archives of California (MOAC) • CDP (Colorado Digitization Program) • Ohio Memory

24. Environmental Scanning Knowing about: • Economic • Social • Technological • Environmental • General business trends • Examples: • Amount of leisure time available for cultural heritage visits • Families are having fewer children

25. Models for Sustainability • Subsidy • For specific period or long term support • Support from operating funds • Understood to contribute to overall institutions sustainability • University of Michigan • Supported by library funds, grants, and revenue sources • Grants (foundation & government) • Self sustaining • Nebraska Historical Society Digital Imaging Lab • Generate own funding to support staff and infrastructure • Combination • Begin with subsidy or grant funding, supplemented in other ways

26. Identifying a Sustainable Competitive Advantage • Services or programs of highest quality available • Most reasonably prices services/programs • Most experienced staff • Most variety of services offered • Most highly endorsed services or programs • Barry McLeish – Successful Marketing Strategies for Non Profit Organizations, 1995, 31

27. Identify a Competitive Advantage • You need to build new revenue streams • Need to be creative but follow mission • Digitization Examples • Facilitating photo-duplication • sell images? • Digitization lab • cost recovery • Licensing

28. Mission, Vision, Values, & Goals: Your Guiding Principals

29. Guiding Principles • Mission or Vision Statements • Values • Goals

30. McCarter – Field Museum’s Four Tasks • Continue to believe in the strength of our core missions • Know how generation X, Y, and now Z use information and what they expect • Lead our businesses not only responding to change but also anticipating change • Take seriously the challenge of information overload

31. Museum Institutional Trajectory 21st Century Focused on: • Interdisciplinary • Educational Tools • Engagement (stories) • Layered (multimedia) • Inside Out • Transforming RELEVANT Bill Barnett, Field Museum 20th Century Focused on: • Multidisciplinary • Researched Plans • Object Interpretation • Hands On • Behind the Scenes • Memorable ACCESSIBLE 19th Century Focused on: • Disciplines • Inventories • Object Presentation • Descriptive Info • Staged Scenes • Exotic and Remote Locales AVAILABLE

32. Mission • Remain true to mission • Capitalize on strengths • Utilize technology

33. Mission, Vision, and Values • This should express the purpose of the organization and describe what is distinctive about it • What is the organization trying to accomplish • Marketplace niche • Quality of products/services • Example: Washington Resource Library Consortium • “We saw this idea as a natural extension of the digital library system we were already providing. We have a plan for integrating the new service into the existing organization”

34. Assessment Needs and Program Measures

35. Assessment Categories • Before Beginning Product/Program • Needs assessment or market research • learning about user needs and market characteristics • Measuring Product/Program • Outcomes assessment • how have you changed individual lives/behaviors, or organizational practice, and what difference your program made • Output assessment • data providing information on success in goals

37. Who Are The Users? • College students, faculty, researchers • General public in the region • International web-using public • Physical visitors • K-12 students and teachers • Hobbyists • Businesses • Library organizations and their staff • Museums and their staff • Individuals with disabilities

38. How to Find Out About User Needs and Preferences Expert opinion (librarian or curator judgment) Based on anecdotal evidence Based on curator subject knowledge Often based on knowledge of existing users rather than potential or future users http://www.imls.gov/pubs/pdf/userneedsassessment.pdf Research based knowledge of user preferences: Do-It-Yourself Market Research Web Surveys Phone or in-person interviews Focus group research Social Science-Based Methodologies Demographically targeted Quantitative measures Controlled research

39. Needs Assessment or Market Research • Determine the data elements to be covered • Develop the procedures for collecting the data and monitoring the process • Careful development of focus group and survey questions • Collect and analyze the data • Prepare reports and present the results • Include conclusions

40. Environment and Competition • Basic info on environment and competition • Who are major competitors? • How many customers does each competitors have? • What are their strengths/weaknesses • Demographic trends • Key

41. Evaluation

42. Outcomes Assessment • “Benefits or changes for individuals or populations during or after participating in program activities, including new knowledge, increased skills, changed attitudes or values, modified behavior, improved condition, or altered status.” “Documenting the Difference: Demonstrating the Value of Libraries Through Outcome Measurement, by Peggy D. Rudd, in Perspectives on Outcomes-Based Evaluation for Libraries and Museums, Washington, DC: IMLS.

43. Congruence of Objectives and Assessment • Each objective must have measures of success: • Objective: “Improve teacher awareness of digital resources for classroom use” • Measure: “Though pre- and post- testing, measure workshop participant learning” http://www.cdpheritage.org/about/grants/2001/imls_prop_edu_2001.pdf(further examples, pages 2-7)

44. Project Outcomes Assessment Techniques “How did you change behavior, organizations, lives? What difference did you make?” • Surveys • Written surveys • Telephone surveys • Email surveys (home-done or corporate) • Case study or interview • Focus groups (formal, structured discussions)

45. Output Measures: Data Collection Some indicators of success are measures you can collect without surveys or focus groups • How many uses were there? • Who used it? • How many resources are available? • Were activities completed as promised?

46. Example • Decide that your targeted user group is teachers • Do surveys or focus groups to ask what they need or would use in the classroom • Create digital resources to meet those needs • Follow up with additional focus groups to find out how teachers actually used the digital resources • Modify program depending on results

47. Summary • Base your predicted outcomes on research about user needs and preferences • Build in activities that let you know if you succeeded in achieving the outcomes you planned • Be ready to change course depending on measured results

48. Financial Plans/Costing Analysis

49. Financial Goals • You need to work with senior management to determine financial goals: • What is your margin target? (i.e. profit) • 10%, 20%, 50% ? • Do you need to • Cover fixed costs? • Cover fixed and variable costs? • Just need to break even for now as beginning • Or do you need to earn a 20% margin immediately?

50. Financial Plans • Should outline finances for 3-5 years • Include revenue and expense components • Salaries and fringe • Training • Legal and accounting • Equipment • Promotion costs • Sales costs • Exhibit costs