A key target for the Alliance has been to develop a framework of best practice to aid, inform and provide guidance to all those involved in the digital lifecycle from creation to curation, from those at a strategic and policy-making level to those at the coal face. The Alliance has published a suite of products covering the different elements of its work, from audience research to intellectual property rights. This is called the Content Framework.
All products have been developed for broad usage across the public sector, with the idea of disaggregation and repurposing in mind. They are, therefore, published under a Creative Commons licence. The publications encompass guides, briefing papers, navigation guides and toolkits covering the following:
- Audience Analysis and Impact
- Business Modelling and Sustainability
- Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and Licensing
All products are available to download for free as PDFs.
THE STRATEGIC CONTENT ALLIANCE
A Guide to the Strategic Content Alliance (2010)
The Strategic Content Alliance briefing paper
Get involved: join the Strategic Content Alliance as an affiliate member
AUDIENCE RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS
Increased demands and expectations from users, coupled with budgetary constraints and the requirement to demonstrate value for money and impact, mean that it is imperative that the services delivered are wanted, needed and valued by the audiences.
The publications below offer useful and practical information about researching digital audiences by key activities in the lifecycle of audience research.
The Audience Analysis Toolkit for public sector bodies has been developed for the Strategic Content Alliance by Curtis and Cartwright Consulting.
The Guide to Researching Audiences (v3.0, December 2009)
The Guide to Researching Audiences: Illustrative Case Study
The Guide to Researching Audiences: Case Studies
Audience Research: Why you should be doing it (series of presentation slides as a PDF)
Audience Research for Practitioners (series of presentation slides as a PDF)
A Concise Guide to Researching Audiences (v3.0, December 2009)
A visualisation guide to researching audiences
Briefing paper: Audience research for cultural sector practitioners
Briefing paper: Audience research for people experimenting with digital media
Briefing paper: Audience research for education and research practitioners
Briefing paper: Audience research for health library and knowledge practitioners
Briefing paper: Audience research for programme, service and research practitioners
Briefing paper: Audience research for senior managers
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS (IPR)
For public bodies, understanding the implications and roles of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and licensing is essential to their role as a provider, aggregator and/or publisher of digital content to ensure that they can deliver publicly funded content from creation to curation. This means that at an operational level, it is essential that the management of copyright and other IPRs, as well as consideration of permissions required, the resources required to seek such permissions, management of works where rights holders are unknown or cannot be traced and how end users will be able to engage with the content, form part of the digitisation life cycle and key project management planning and decisions.
The IPR toolkit and associated material provides resources that staff working with digital content can use to help them deal with the IPR and licensing issues which might arise. This essential toolkit, which is being continually updated, has been developed for customisation and adaptation to suit specific needs and requirements.
The intellectual property rights toolkit for public sector bodies has been developed for the Strategic Content Alliance by the Alliance’s IPR consultants, Professor Charles Oppenheim and Naomi Korn.
Managing orphan works
Managing Orphan Works is a new section of the Strategic Content Alliance blog dedicated to the publications and tools the Alliance had produced to explain and offer practical advice on a sometimes very complex issue.
Case studies mapping the flows of content, value and rights across the public sector
This report is an analysis of seven case studies of publicly funded e-content initiatives, which demonstrate the flow of content, value and rights across the respective seven representatives of the Strategic Content Alliance sponsors.
IPR navigation map (v9.0)
This visualization tool sets out the key steps and decisions involved in dealing with the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and licensing issues associated with content generation and/or use.
Poster
IPR toolkit
This essential toolkit, provides resources that staff working with digital content can use to help them deal with IPR and licensing issues which might arise.
IPR toolkit: Introduction and overview
An introduction to the toolkit, including why IPR and licensing issues are important
Understanding the issues. Outline of relevance of IPR and licensing to the public sector as well as the broader IPR licensing issues
IPR toolkit: Section 1: Background papers
1.1 Creative Commons Licences – Briefing Paper
1.2 Web 2.0 and IP Factsheet
1.3 Web 2.0 and Legal Issues Factsheet
IPR toolkit: Section 2: Practical tools
2.1 Getting Permissions
2.2 IPR Risk Assessments
2.3 Terminology Toolkit
2.4 Top Tips for Issuing Licences
2.5 Top Tips for Requesting Licences
2.6 IPR Model Consent Form
2.7 Model Licence
2.8 Template Email Permission Form
2.9 Template Permission Letter
2.10 Rights Management
2.11 FAQs
2.12 Model Contractual Clauses for Requesting Permission from Staff
2.13 Example Consortium Agreement
2.14 Model Contractual Clauses for Requesting Permission from Students/Volunteers
2.15 Model Contractual Clauses for Requesting Permission from Freelancers/Subcontractors
2.16 Model Terms and Conditions of Service
IPR toolkit: Section 3: Template policy statements
3.1 Draft Institutional IPR Policy Statement
3.2 IPR and Licensing Blueprint for Funding Bodies and Recipients of Funding
IPR toolkit: Section 4. IPR and licensing in practice
Case studies from across the public sector, mapping the flow of content, rights and value
Annex A. Bibliography for further reading
A bibliography of the information sources used for this toolkit, and suggested further reading
IPR toolkit briefing papers
Introduction to the IPR and Licensing Toolkit for Archivists, Librarians, Curators and Digital Project Leaders
Introduction to the IPR and Licensing Toolkit for Human Resources Staff
Introduction to the IPR and Licensing Toolkit for Senior Managers
IPR and orphan works: In From The Cold report (June 2009)
‘In From The Cold’, a report by the Strategic Content Alliance and the Collections Trust, shows that millions of so-called ‘orphan works’ – photographs, recordings, texts and other ephemera from the last 100 years – risk becoming invisible because rights holders are not known or easy to trace. The report was commissioned to find the scale and impact of ‘orphan works’ on public service delivery. Over 500 organisations took part in the online survey to establish the impact of orphan works across the museums, archives, libraries and universities.
The Digital Economy Act
Licences
Embedding Creative Commons Licences briefing paper March 2011 v1-04
Overview Of the ‘Openness’ of Licences Selected by JISC Projects to Provide Access to Materials, Tools and Media (April 2010)
BUSINESS MODELS AND SUSTAINABILITY
As organisational budgets tighten and economic uncertainty threatens, many digital projects struggle to develop coping strategies when the funding to support core operations and/or essential development is not forthcoming.The publications below illustrate the varied and creative ways in which leaders of digital initiatives, particularly those developed in the higher education and cultural heritage sectors, are managing to identify sources of support and generate revenue.
Work on business models and sustainability has been undertaken for the Strategic Content Alliance by Ithaka, New York, and Intelligent TV, New York.
Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-ground View of Projects Today (June 2009)
Ithaka S+R has completed a multi-year investigation of innovative funding models to sustain digital projects, culminating in a summary paper and twelve detailed case studies.
Ithaka briefing papers
Sustaining Digital Resources: A Briefing Paper for Curators, Archivists, and Librarians
Sustaining Digital Resources: A Briefing Paper for University Librarians
Sustaining Digital Resources: A Briefing Paper for Digital Project Managers
Ithaka Case Studies in Sustainability project (July 2009)
Executive summary:
Executive summary: Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-ground View of Projects Today
Full report with case studies:
Report with case studies: Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-ground View of Projects Today
Full report with case studies and a preface for funders:
Full report without case studies:
Report: Sustaining Digital Resources: An On-the-ground View of Projects Today
Full report with a preface for funders and without case studies:
Individual case studies:
Image licensing at a cultural heritage institution: V&A Images
Specialised historical content for a niche audience: The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae
Building an endowment with community support: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Subscription-based resource sold through a university press: The Electronic Enlightenment
Library partnership and a subscription model for a journal database: DigiZeitschriften
The open access contributor pays model: Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Free content and rights licensing as complementary strategies: L’Institut national de l’audiovisuel
Digitisation with commercial partnerships: The National Archives
Early sustainability planning for a grant-funded digital library: National Science Digital Library
Sustainability and Revenue models for Online Academic resources (May 2008)
Ithaka S+R aims in this report to gain a more systematic understanding as well as undertaking a ‘horizon-scan’ of the mechanisms for pursuing sustainability in not-for-profit projects.
Ithaka report on Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources (May 2008)
On Building a New Market for Culture: Virtue and necessity in a screen-based economy (Intelligent TV, June 2009)
A report that investigates new business opportunities to support commercial and educational institutions putting their digital content online.
On Building a New Market for Culture: Virtue and necessity in a screen-based economy (Intelligent TV, June 2009)
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION
The Impact of Search Engine Optimisation on Organisations’ Websites (November 2009)
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of making a website attractive to search engines. The better a website is optimised, the higher its ranking will be in ‘organic’ search result listings – that is results in which sites are ranked according to the relevance of their content to the search terms used. The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has undertaken to investigate the hypothesis that implementing a few simple and inexpensive SEO techniques can increase an organisation’s web visibility and significantly augment traffic to the organisation’s website.
In support of this hypothesis, it undertook case studies on SEO in collaboration with the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) and three UK organisations: Swansea University (www.swansea.ac.uk), the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design (CETLD – http://cetld.brighton.ac.uk) and the Archives Hub (www.archiveshub.ac.uk) and evaluated the case study participants’ current websites and recommend changes to optimise them and remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
The need for this collaboration project was initiated due to the high instance of Internet users accessing information via a search engine and the number of websites, including those within the heritage and education institutional arenas, that are not currently constructed to ensure efficient search engine access. As a result, users can fail to find the information they are looking for and organisations can fail to communicate effectively with their user audience.
The Impact of Search Engine Optimisation on Organisations’ Websites (November 2009 v1.2)