Knitting Content Together - 
A Tapestry of Digital Resources
Alastair Dunning
JISC Digitisation Programme Manager
NoWAL Digital Content Seminar - Salford
9th November 2009
a.dunning @@ jisc.ac.uk
0203 006 6065
What I want to talk about
1. The world of available digital content
2. A content strategy for your institution
3. JISC's strategy in this area
But first, some worries
The world of available digital content
A cliche to list its abudance and its sources
YouTube
Flickr
BBC
e-journals
e-books
reference
material
video
audio
Wikipedia
university collections
cultural
heritage
organisations
Grandmother sucking eggs:
I'm slightly worried that I am 
telling librarians the stuff
they know about already, and
are dealing with in their day-to-
day activities
All these sources have potential use within a 
university setting
choices being faced - decisions about subscriptions, digital literacy, 
use of space, and digital content, infrastructure
library has a key strategic role within the university
These are the kind of 
things I look after in my
role at JISC
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/digitisation
List of UK Digi projects at 
http://web.me.com/xcia0069/uk-digitisation.html 
East London Theatre Archive - http://www.elta-project.org
Freeze Frame - http://www.freezeframe.ac.uk/
InView - http://www.bfi.org.uk/inview/
Cabinet Papers - http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/
theses
"The support to the academic and student communities from the qualified subject librarians, whatever its contribution to the teaching and research roles of the institution, is hard to justify in value-for-money terms at a time when the process of literature searches is substantially deskilled by online bibliographical resources."
Bangor University 'consultation', 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/feb/16/highereducation.careers
In actual fact, the
library
is the only place we 
can find a way through
this content
research data
if you leave the whole thing to the academics, 
there will be resources not used, misused, or
overused. There will be a good chance of content 
getting lost. There will be wastes of money, or other
things that become unaffordable. There won't be the 
tools to work with the all the content, either

Librarians have always been the gateway to physical 
content; now they must also play that same role
for digital content
What kind of digital content do 
you want to prioritise in your university?
What will make your
university unique?
What content and
infrastructure is needed
by staff and students?
Univerisities are increasily asked to specialise
in particular subject areas, whether for teaching and / or research?
Dialogue between library and researchers
and lecturers is essential to help define these
priorities
Special Collections
with apologies to those institutions that don't have special collections
The JISC-funded DISCMap
study is one of many reports
to advertise the richness of 
university's special collections
Special collections provide an immediate
way to provide a unique identity to a university
This is interesting to researchers, teachers, 
communications teams, national and 
international students 
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitisation/reports/discmap.aspx
Of course, you need to find the means to digitise such collections ....
Research Data
ITunes U
Open Educational Resources
Open / Free Content
Any university's digital content strategy can be 
enhanced by the use of open content 
Plenty of this content is on the web
Open Educational Resources are beginning to
make coursework / lecture etc openly available
JISC Digitisation Programme makes open content
for anyone in HE and FE 
Researchers create mounds and mounds of data
What do universities do with it?

Leave it in desk drawers?
Try and give it someone else?
Take responsibility for it ?


Some data you will want to keep if it fits in with the 
content strategy; others can be jettisoned, or at least
dealt with by other organisatiosn
It's the library's job to develop
a strategy for accessing and presenting
this content, and the related tools, 
to the staff and students
Subscription-Based
 Content
Bulk purchasing gives little room
for manouevre
Rising prices / falling pound also
put pressure on existing funds
Means a greater reliance on
What is JISC's strategy in this area?
ICT Infrastructure
Do staff have access to the hardware and
software to use digital resources?
(especially for audio / visual material)
Even with Athens / Shibboleth, does authentication
still prove oo much of a barrier
Can staff find the resources?
Pedagogy
Have staff absorbed the possibilties
for using digital resources?
Do they really want to use them?

Communications
Work in several different strands of
JISC funding covers this work. These
are specific examples from the e-content
team where I work.