Presentation at the 2nd ICA International Council of Archives Annual Conference supporting the use of digital statistics.

1. Measuring benefits of
digital open archives
Trilce Navarrete
ECA | BCN | 2014

3. Motivation
• Archives serve for memory | accountability
• Universal right to information | past | future
• Digital distribution can exponentially increase access
• Technology and user behavior continue to change
• Digital access | use metrics are being developed

4. The Netherlands
• How much has been digitized?
• ENUMERATE 2013:
• (via DEN)

5. Sectors merge online

6. The Netherlands
• Dissemination of collections archives

7. The Netherlands
• Dissemination of collections

8. The user
• What do we know of the user?

9. The Amsterdam City Archive
• Online visitors: 400% increase in 10+ years

10. The Amsterdam City Archive
• Buyers: 65% man | 35% woman | 9% Amsterdam

11. The Amsterdam City Archive
• Income from weekly scan sales

12. The Amsterdam City Archive
• Workflow: digitization of 15,000 objects per week
(1.5 million per year)
• Low-resolution and limited metadata
• Annual budget of ca. €200,000 (of which ca.
€130,000 is paid for by consumers)
• Selection is made with an information policy and by
digitization on demand.
• Collection information (11m scans online) is fully
available (on-site for free).

13. The Amsterdam City Archive
• Onsite visitors have not decreased
• In 2013:
• 22,455 orders (963 users)
• 11,430 paid orders (329 users)
• 823,020 scans viewed (50% extern IP address)
• 900,000 website visits (300,000 image bank)

14. Other models
• “Many users might not be able to express
information needs for a cultural heritage artifact in a
query” Stiller, 2012.
• Institutions have explored alternative distribution
channels (social media | portals | wikipedia)
• What is the impact?

15. The Wikipedia archive
• LABS wikimedia foundation tools

16. The Wikipedia archive
• LABS wikimedia foundation tools

17. Opening up the archives
• Heritage content contains jewels that need to
be ‘found’ | repositioned
• Content developed by the crowd reinforces
the long tail effect (few images used often)
• Wikipedian in residence may serve to increase
content pool |access new materials
• New business models are required to reflect
the digital society

18. Future research
• New methods to measure access | use
• Data set collection | availability | analysis
• Value proposition based on social impact
• Long-term efforts on a global net | geographic
and financial implications

19. Thank you !
• trilce.navarrete@gmail.com
• @trilcenavarrete