SLIC Innovation & Development Day2nd November 2011

Managing Innovation with Reducing Budgets

Steve Morris

Director of Finance & Corporate Services The British Library

British Library Historical Collection iPad App.

A wealth of resources

British Library 2020 Vision

Guarantee access for future generations

Enable access to everyone who wants to do research

Support research communities in key areas for social and economic benefit

Enrich the cultural life of the nation

Lead and collaborate in growing the world’s knowledge base

www.bl.uk/2020vision

All that….and make the cuts as well?!

• Never any Government funding for digitisation

• 2010 Comprehensive Spending review meant:• 3% in year funding cut in 2010/11• 15% reduction in operating grant• halving of our capital grant

• Represents lowest real terms funding level since BL created in 1972• staffing already reduced by over 200 in eighteen months• major reductions to acquisition budgets• many “discretionary” budgets halved

• Traditional commercial income (Document Supply) in continuing decline

• New delivery models the only way to square the circle• illustrated by evolution of our approach to digitisation

Boutique Digitisation

Characteristics of Boutique Digitisation

Self-selecting i.e. obvious treasures

Drivers: cultural restitution, wider public access

Sometimes private sponsorship, especially for iconic items

Subsume costs e.g. hosting

External Funding. e.g. Dept of Ed

Mass Digitisation

Why Get into Mass Digitisation?

• Digitisation of holdings

Improving access to holdings online – Public Value Remit

• Access to new funding sources

• Using skills / technologies not inherent in the Library

• Revenue

• Positive outcome: PR benefit.

Mass Library Digitisation Projects – Funding and Sustainability Models

• Public Sector / Lottery Funding – usually free, open to all, few, if any user restrictions..

• Traditional secondary publisher models. e.g. Gale, ProQuest,

• Search Engine Model. e.g. Microsoft and Google

• Hybrid Models – Public / Private Partnerships.

The digitisation of newspapers

Newspaper digitisation – British Library and brightsolid partnership

May 2010 – partnership to digitise 40 million pages from the national newspaper collection announced by the British Library and brightsolid

10-year partnership to make millions of historic newspaper pages available online for the first time

First-hand reporting on great historical events (The Great Exhibition, Crimean War, sinking of The Titanic, etc) and a wealth of detail on every aspect of local and national life

A mix of out-of-copyright (pre-1900) and in-copyright material, subject to consent from relevant rightsholders

Digitised pages to be available paid-for via the web or free on-site at the British Library; a creative solution for Higher Education will be found

On expiry of the contract the material will likely be free to the nation

First tranche of material to become available online in 2011

Microsoft – British Library 100,000 19th Century Books

Key Features of the Google deal

250,000 titles to be digitised

Date range 1700-1870

BL chooses (as long as not duplicating)

Off site & overseas

Free to view on Google books

BL free to re-version & reuse as it wishes

- non-commercial use

-eg Europeana

Summary

• nothing unique about the BL I’m sure

• innovative business models not the only way

• traditional efficiency and continuous improvement a crucial under-pinning

• but new approaches crucial to allow us to be credible in working towards our medium term vision and goals

• several new partnerships under discussion• some (not all) will bear fruit

• only when you look back that you realise how far you’ve come!