Presentation to the European Member States Expert Group on digitisation, digital preservation and online access to cultural heritage, looking at the outcomes and next steps with the ENUMERATE project to create intelligence about digitisation for Europe.
Text of Update and forward plan for ENUMERATE - Digitisation intelligence for Europe
MSEG ENUMERATE Workshop Nick Poole, CEO, Collections Trust
Introduce the purpose of the ENUMERATE Thematic Network Review
the key findings of the ENUMERATE surveys Answer your questions
& benefit from your insights Plans for the future & key
lessons learned Aims for today
The State Library in Vienna is digitising its entire collection
Having this material in digital form enables them to serve 1000s of
researchers & members of the public every week The library
could not resource physical access at this scale & to do so
would risk permanently damaging the collection, denying access for
future generations Making the commitment to access in digital form
has opened up both new partnership opportunities and new ideas
inspired by their collections, making them more relevant &
helping deliver their core mission in a connected age Context
A defining challenge The digitisation, digital preservation and
provision of meaningful access to Europes vast treasures of
cultural heritage is one of the defining challenges for our
generation. It is the fuel which will help power smart, sustainable
growth, founded in the Enlightenment ideals that created the
European Union.
Why ENUMERATE? Digitisation, long-term preservation and
provision of online access to Europes cultural heritage presents an
immense challenge Meeting this challenge depends on effective
decision-making & prioritisation at institutional, Member State
& European level Good decisions depend on current, accurate and
relevant contextual information The provision of this information
is the aim of ENUMERATE
What kind of process is Digitisation? Digitisation is an
industrial-scale process that happens through a combination of core
management and additional directed activity As such digitisation
cannot easily be separated as a distinct entity from the other
activities of the institution Although there are digitisation
projects, digitisation itself is not a project The efficiency,
impact & sustainability of this process is highly
context-sensitive & different in different sectors
One size does not fit all Digitisation means different things
in different sectors: In the AV & film community, digitisation
is an urgent challenge of conversion from unstable formats In the
library community, success equates to mass-digitisation,
distributed access and discovery In the museum community, success
is about boutique digitisation, curated content & end-user
experiences In the archive community, success tends to be about
management, preservation, discovery and connection
Who are the ENUMERATE Thematic Network?
A European network of expertise ENUMERATE Consortium (10
Project Partners) Core Group (DEN, DIGIBIS, CT, SPK) National
Coordinator Project Manager (CT) Member States' Expert Group (MSEG)
on Digitisation and Digital Preservation Advisory Group (Invited
participants) Coordinator (CT) National Coordinator National
Coordinator National Coordinator
Our role as Coordinator Ensuring that the ENUMERATE project was
managed in accordance with the formal project management framework;
Ensuring that deliverables were delivered on time and within scope
Ownership of the overall project timeline and ensuring that
activities were coordinated and dependencies met; Ownership of the
change management process, and creation of necessary support tools
and mechanisms.
The Core Group Meeting the objectives; Carrying out the tasks;
Authoring the deliverables; Passing the milestones; Ensuring the
quality of the work.
The Advisory Group Reviewing proposals for the ENUMERATE core
and thematic survey methodology; Making recommendations to promote
engagement in ENUMERATE by the stakeholder communities; Providing
technical and other specific expertise to ensure a valid outcome
from ENUMERATE; Contributing to project deliverables
National Coordinators Personal and organisational commitment to
the project; Representation of their National community; Provision
of resources, contacts and perspective; Contribution to the
development and rollout of the survey; Translation, localisation
and analysis. On behalf of the whole consortium, we would like to
thank the National Coordinators, without whom the success of the
project could not have been achieved
Who participated?
Participation by organisation type
Participating countries + important contributions from Cyprus,
Monaco & Lichtenstein
What were the original objectives of the ENUMERATE Thematic
Network?
Objectives for ENUMERATE Objective 1: The development of a
vibrant and sustainable European community of practice, connecting
practitioners in statistical analysis and digital content creation
and preservation and supporting the sharing of knowledge and best
practices Objective 2: The creation, promotion and development of a
statistically-valid open methodology for surveying the
digitisation, use, preservation and associated costs of cultural
heritage materials in Member States
Objectives for ENUMERATE Objective 3: The implementation of a
multi-annual programme of coordinated surveys based on this
methodology, including wide-scale harmonised statistical
data-gathering and more in-depth and analytical surveying of
digitisation activities by European cultural heritage institutions
Objective 4: The creation and maintenance of an open, sustainable
data platform to collate, analyse and promote the use of normalised
data and intelligence arising from these surveys
What did we do to achieve these objectives?
Key activities Project began Feb 2011 Project identity
established March 2011 Survey Methodology delivered December 2011
First ENUMERATE Core Survey January March 2012 Launch of ENUMERATE
Data Platform June 2012 Launch of Thematic Survey December 2012
Second ENUMERATE Core Survey June - September 2013 Reporting of
responses December 2013 Planning future development January
2014
What has the ENUMERATE Thematic Network delivered so far?
Conceptual Framework A conceptual model of how digitisation
activities can be quantified and measured in cultural heritage
institutions
Survey Reports (2012 & 2013) Two comprehensive survey
reports detailing the findings, analysing the data and uncovering
trends
Executive Summaries 4 Stakeholder Reports summarising the key
findings, highlighting national activities and presenting the
data
Communications Wide-scale engagement with the professional
community through social media, newsletters, email and other
networks
Data Platform An innovative, open platform through which the
data can be accessed, interrogated and used, including a dashboard
to facilitate visualisation
Survey sample An approach to sampling cultural heritage
organisations across Europe to ensure a reasonable coverage of
institution types & scales
Multilingual survey Thanks to our National Coordinators, survey
questionnaires were available in: Czech Dutch English Estonian
French Hungarian Lithuanian Polish Slovenian Spanish
Lots and lots of data! ENUMERATE was successful in generating
raw data about digitisation activities across 1951 European
institutions
What did we already know? Some baseline figures...
NUMERIC & SIG Stats Predecessor project NUMERIC provided
core elements of methodology Special Interest Group on Statistics
formed the core ENUMERATE consortium
Digitisation Costs Study Estimated number of books to be
digitised between 59 95m (compared to Google Books estimate of a
total of 135m titles in existence) An estimated 7m rare books,
periodicals and incunabula to be digitised Estimated 265m man-made
artefacts and 221m natural artefacts in museums (with a very
significant margin of error!) More than 350m photographs in museums
& archive collections Approximately 700,000 units of microfilm
in library & archive collections
What were the key findings of ENUMERATE?
Disparity between strategy & action
An ongoing process
A huge variety of collection types
An emerging openness
A preservation challenge
An economic puzzle
Key figures (core survey 1) c83% of cultural heritage
institutions have a digital collection; c20% of all collections
have been digitised and c57% still needs to be digitised (for 23%
of collections over all there is no need to digitise); More than
50% of cultural heritage institutions collect born digital
materials; c34% of institutions have a digitisation strategy; c85%
of institutions use Web statistics to measure the use of their
digital collections; 2 years from now institutions estimate to make
twice as much of their collections accessible through Europeana as
compared to today; On average 3.3% of paid staff in all cultural
heritage institutions is working full time on digitisation.
Key figures (core survey 2) The number of institutions with a
distinct digitisation policy is 36%, which is slightly higher than
it was in 2012 (34%). However, more than 87% of institutions say
they have a digital collection (this was 83% in Core Survey 1) If
we take all types of heritage institutions together, approximately
17% of the analogue collections has been digitally reproduced,
whereas about 52% still needs to be digitised (for an estimated 30%
of all collections there is no need to digitise) If we cautiously
assume that these 17% has been digitised in the past 10 years, it
will take at least 30 years to meet the present digitisation needs
of European heritage institutions.
What did we achieve, what is the impact and what did we
learn?
Achievements: Community Providing continuity of effort with
previous networks/SIG Creating a vibrant network across Europe
Securing participation from 27 Member States & MSEG A huge
voluntary contribution of time and effort Effective engagement with
European/sector-wide initiatives A strong identity and good
brand-recognition Excellent knowledge exchange
Achievements: Process Creating & refining a viable
methodology Building on past achievements/survey activity Achieving
consensus on standards & definitions (normalisation) Delivering
a solid body of multi-lingual survey activity Providing full
documentation of methodology & rationale A significant advance
in the state-of-the-art & a good foundation for future
efforts
Achievements: Intelligence A body of evidence highlighting key
strategic challenges and opportunities in digitisation An open data
platform, providing strategic sector intelligence for public &
private sector use A corpus of professional analysis and insight
into the digital transformation of Europes cultural heritage sector
Connection to long-term, coordinated evidence-gathering at
European, Member State and institutional levels Improved, current
data about European cultural institutions
Objectives Community of practice Valid open methodology
Coordinated surveys Data and intelligence ENUMERATE has achieved
significant advances in the field where previously activity was
diffuse and fragmented, our future efforts can now be built on a
foundation of best practice, tried- and-tested methods, standards
and definitions
What didnt go so well? Cannot claim statistical validity on the
basis of the sample from the 2 ENUMERATE Core Surveys There is no
single, authoritative way to measure digitisation activity across
all domains Concerns about validity of findings relating to AV
material (partly as a result of non-participation by AV community)
In-depth survey activity hampered by lack of resources
Lessons learned Critical success factors include: Existing
policy environment Strategic commitment by organisations &
agencies Individual personal commitment Structure of the sector in
each Member State Consistency of personnel in institutions
Continuity of previous efforts (NUMERIC, SIG STATS) Embedding into
existing frameworks for reporting Longitudinal data-gathering and
analysis
Impacts At a European level, ENUMERATE has impacted on policy
(MSEG) and delivery (Europeana v3) At a National level, ENUMERATE
has informed national policies & funding programmes (for
example in the Netherlands and UK) At an institutional level,
ENUMERATE has encouraged organisations to revisit their policies
for digitisation & preservation At a professional level,
ENUMERATE has promoted collaboration, knowledge-sharing &
networking between experts
How does this relate to other initiatives?
European Statistical surveys EGMUS Conference of European
National Librarians (CENL): European Association for Library &
Information Education and Research (EUCLID) European Bureau of
Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA)
European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA) European
Confederation of Conservator-restorers' Organisations (ECCO) Europa
Nostra pan-European Federation for Cultural Heritage The EUROPEAN
FORUM of HERITAGE ASSOCIATIONS European Network of Cultural
Centres/Historic Monuments (ACCR) ICOM-Europe International Council
of Museums Europe Alliance NEMO - The Network of European Museum
Organisations
Interaction outside Europe Institute for Museum at Library
Services (Washington) Smithsonian (Washington) Instituto Brasileiro
de Museus (IBRAM, Brasilia) Board of Museum Computer Network
(United States) ISO TC46 SC8 (Quality - Statistics and performance
evaluation) WG11 International museum statistics
National Registration/surveying A key component of our future
success lies in securing the integration of the ENUMERATE core
methodology into National statistical work We need to liaise with
National Coordinators to understand and improve our modelling of
national statistical efforts & how they can connect up into an
overall European picture
Private sector market analysis Survey data had been requested
for download 30 times as at February 2014 7 Universities requested
the full data for research projects 3 private companies including
Boston Consulting Group requested access to the full data
Engagement with the Google Cultural Institute and digitisation
project to share further insights and intelligence
Where do we go from here?
Critical Success Factors Digitisation is a long-term transition
for Europes cultural heritage sector Effective monitoring &
strategic intelligence depends on longitudinal analysis We need to
embed this as an ongoing data-gathering process: At European level
(eg. in bi-annual reporting to MSEG) At Member State level (eg. in
annual Registration processes) At Institutional level (eg. in
Performance Indicators/reports)
Europeana v3! Digitaal Erfgoed Nederlands (DEN) and the
Collections Trust have joined the consortium for Europeana version
3 Bringing the ENUMERATE methodology to bear on providing
statistical data for Europeanas planning and development as a core
service platform At least one more year of survey activity A
channel to promote and disseminate the findings
ENUMERATE Partnership Agreement We are committed to sustaining
the effort and impact of ENUMERATE to inform future work The
purpose of this Agreement is to set out a framework of agreed
actions and activities to support: Ongoing access to the data and
documentation developed by the EC- funded ENUMERATE Thematic
Network; Networking and knowledge-sharing activities to promote the
future development of the ENUMERATE methodology; Collaboration to
embed the ENUMERATE methodology and Conceptual Framework into
institutional, National and European data-gathering initiatives on
Digitisation.
ENUMERATE Partnership Agreement Participants commit to: Promote
awareness of ENUMERATE and its findings Promote the findings of the
ENUMERATE Thematic Network Meet annually to review progress and to
identify opportunities for further development; Encourage the
embedding of the ENUMERATE methodology and national data-gathering
efforts Develop key messages and policy recommendations to inform
decision- making by the European Commission; Work to identify
future opportunities to build on ENUMERATE
We need you! Sign up to the Partnership Agreement Promote
awareness of ENUMERATE in your community Where possible, embed the
methodology in your national statistical work Encourage your
communities to participate in the work for Europeana v3 Tell us
your ideas!