simon tanner - mcn 2009 presentation

www.digitalconsultancy.net

© Tanner, KCL 2009

Economics 911:

The economics of digitizing cultural collections

Simon TannerDirector

King’s Digital Consultancy Services

King’s College London

[email protected]


© Tanner, KCL 2009

Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH)

www.cch.kcl.ac.uk/research/projects/


© Tanner, KCL 2009The nature of projects/programmes now

On-line publication

Multi-disciplinary / inter-disciplinary

Multiple technologies

Multiple source types & formats

Multiple audiences and uses

New methodologies

Stakeholder needs over-ride technical demands


© Tanner, KCL 2009

Introduction

Cost factors in digitisation projects

Human intervention and digitisation costs

Reducing costs = optimising the human factor

The importance of the human factor


© Tanner, KCL 2009

Cost Factors

Effective utilisation of resources in developing digital content and establishing digital collections equals:

Start up costs of creating or purchasing digital content

Implementation costs for establishing access

Implicit costs in managing and maintaining digital resources in the future

Digitisation cost – the key factors:

Nature of the original item to be digitised

Digitisation processes possible

Information, content and delivery objectives


© Tanner, KCL 2009

Human cost factors – central thesis

The higher the human intervention in any process the greater the likely cost of the process.

Selection for digitisation

Handling original artefacts for imaging/scanning

Managing digital objects

Describing digital resources and other metadata

In other words – consider aspects of optimal performance

Physical

Intellectual

Management


© Tanner, KCL 2009

Cost Reduction in Digitisation

http://www.minervaeurope.org/publications/costreduction.htm


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Cost matrix of potential factors


© Tanner, KCL 2009

Reducing human cost factors

Reduce cost of labour:

Outsource – e.g. offshore

Automate

Deskill activity through better tools and guidance

Offer alternate opportunities to low cost labour

Optimise productivity:

Invest in training

Improve workflow – remove inefficiencies

Value and reward ability and reliability


© Tanner, KCL 2009

Reducing human cost factors

Quality Assurance:

Ensure is focussed and systematic

Goal of QA is to find errors in process, workflow or human errors

Use QA to optimise activity - make QA proactive and pervasive

Handling originals:

Can be very costly – consider mechanisms to ease this

Training again can reduce costs as can some automation


© Tanner, KCL 2009The continuing importance of humans!

Management and vision

User needs

Intellectual activities are not easily replaced, for example:

Descriptive metadata

Selection of content

The ends of information are human ends

Digitised information exists because humans

create it

consume it

desire it


© Tanner, KCL 2009

1st Top Tip for Success

Planning and communication are essential!

“Planning is an unnatural process. It is much nicer to just get on with the job: failure then comes as a complete surprise instead of being preceded by a period of worry and doubt.” Sir John Harvey-Jones

Technology project fail because:

32% - inadequate project management & control

20% - lack of communication

17% - failure to define objectives

17% - lack of familiarity with project scope & complexity

14% - incorrect technology & project sizeFigures courtesy of KPMG


© Tanner, KCL 2009

2nd Top Tip for Success

Employ a great project manager!

Great collaborative projects are “owned” by everyone

The project manager just owns all the projects problems

Do you want to be that person?


© Tanner, KCL 2009

3rd Top Tip for Success

Generate trust and honour your partners!

Binding agreements

Mutual benefit

Mean what you say

Don’t be mean

Value and protect the relationship

Listen to each other


© Tanner, KCL 2009

4th Top Tip for Success

Remember your infrastructure!

Infrastructure survey: can your goals be achieved with the technology available?

Ensure it is sustainable and you have a digital preservation strategy

Ensure early scheduling of equipment delivery

Remember: IT staff cannot guarantee success, but they can definitely deliver failure


© Tanner, KCL 2009

5th Top Tip for Success

Read the F’ing Manual! (RTFM)

Quote from a technology magazine:Product Manuals: “introduce you to religion through a series of parables.Possibly. We haven’t read them, as we are men.”

A huge amount of failure and mis-communication can be avoided by reading the manuals or documentation