Keynote presentation given to the Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities DCDC2015 Conference, October 2015, Manchester. #dcdc15 DCDC (Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities) is a collaborative conference hosted by The National Archives and RLUK that explores inter-disciplinary, cross-sector approaches and opportunities to developing and widening access to the wealth of our collections through partnership and collaborative working, across the heritage, cultural and academic sectors.

1. @SimonTanner
Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre
How understanding context,
indicators and strategic direction
can make an impact not a car
crash.
Simon Tanner
Digital Humanities,
King’s College London
Twitter: @SimonTanner
13/10/2015 23:14 ENC Public Talk 19 February 2013 1
© JAlbum & Mark's Chameleon

2. Mirror: understanding context
Signal: choosing your indicators
Manoeuvre: deciding strategic direction
& values
Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre
@SimonTanner

3. www.kcl.ac.uk/ddh/
@kingsdh

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp4y-_VoXdA
Digital Humanities methods for historical analysis of
Irish Immigrants in 19th Century London, England

5. Reason 1: digital humanities digital
research resources are
recognised
Reason 2: digital humanities
enhances the research
environment
Reason 3: digital humanities has impact
3 Reasons to say YES to DH
http://simon-tanner.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/3-reasons-ref2014-was-good-for-digital.html
@SimonTanner

6. Digital Ecosystem
There is a defined resource that is made up of a describable, cohesive set of primary and
secondary materials, services, products and activities.
The resource is accessed primarily through a digital platform (web, mobile, or other means).
The content within the resource is digital in nature
There is a definable group of users
that the resource is intended to reach
by digital means.
The resource does not have to stand alone,
it could be part of a wider set of activities,
products, or services
Mirror: Understanding Context
@SimonTanner

7. www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/impact.html
@SimonTanner

8. What are your Assumptions?
Assumptions are a problem when you do not openly signal them.
Some examples of problematic assumptions:
“digitisation = democratisation”
“my digital environment = my communities environment”
“Digital is everything today:
if we build it, they will come!”
“Planning is so 20th Century, let’s be Agile!”
“Money is the primary trade worth having
with our community”
Signal: Indicators
@SimonTanner

9. Signalling your Direction, Testing your Assumptions,
Measuring what you can Know
An indicator is merely a piece of information that indicates something useful to
you. Indicators are clues to answering questions not absolute answers.
Make them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timebound
Focus the indicators on measuring change and choose as few indicators as possible
Don’t overclaim – indicators can easily create a false impression or provide an
incentive to do disruptive or counter-productive actions.
Signal: Indicators
@SimonTanner
"Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?“
T.S.Elliot

10. @SimonTanner
academicbookfuture.org/2015/09/20/investigating-the-ref2014-as-another-means-of-understanding-academic-books/

11. REF 2014: Comparing Modern Languages, English & History
Modern Languages
& Linguistics
English Language
& Literature
History
Initial draft data – subject to change © Simon Tanner, 2015

12. REF 2014: Looking at Unit of Assessment 29:
English Language and Literature
 2220 Books in the following output types
 Authored Books (1684),
 Edited Books (397) and
 Scholarly Editions (139)
 385 unique Publishers found
Initial draft data – subject to change © Simon Tanner, 2015
29: English Language & literature:
A: Authored Books Publishers
The shape of the data is a Long Tail

13. REF 2014: Looking at Unit of Assessment 29:
English Language and Literature
A: Authored Books = 313 Publishers
 There are 23 Publishers with
more than 10 books submitted
 Top 10 most used Publishers
= 835 books or ~49%
 267 Publishers had 5 or fewer
books submitted
 178 Publishers had one book
submitted
 59 Publishers are a University Press.
Initial draft data – subject to change © Simon Tanner, 2015
158 Palgrave Macmillan
130 Oxford University Press
124 Cambridge University Press
81 Edinburgh University Press
76 Routledge
64 Ashgate
60 Bloomsbury Publishing
56 Continuum
47 Manchester University Press
39 Faber & Faber
26 Liverpool University Press
25 Jonathan Cape
25 Picador
24 Salt Publishing
23 Carcanet Press
21 Penguin Books
18 Peter Lang
18 Seren
18 University of Wales Press
16 Wiley Blackwell
13 Shearsman Books
12 Bloodaxe Books
11 Pickering & Chatto

14. Manoeuvre: Planning for Impact
@SimonTanner

15. @SimonTanner@SimonTanner
The Balanced Value Impact Model
Available at: www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/impact.html

16. “the measurable outcomes arising from the existence of a digital
resource that demonstrate a change in the life or life opportunities
of the community”
www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/impact.html
@SimonTanner

17. The Attention Economy
We will compete:
– for attention,
– for eyeballs on our collections and resources,
– for time and energy from our communities.
@SimonTanner

18. How many photos have ever been taken?
http://blog.1000memories.com/94-number-of-photos-ever-taken-digital-and-analog-in-shoebox
Totality of Analog photography is
roughly 3 Trillion Photos
Approx. 250 billion photos have been
uploaded to Facebook, and roughly
350 million photos are uploaded every day
World’s largest photographic repositories
@SimonTanner

19. The Economics of Digitisation
European museums house >485 million photographs
Library collections > 34 million
Archives > 8.3 million
Approximately 90% of the photographic record
is recorded as orphaned
“Based on 8.64m photographs (30% of the total estimated
un-digitised holdings)... can estimate the total cost
range between €14m and €19.44m to digitise 8.64m
photographs across European libraries. “
“of all of our estimates, this one is perhaps prone to the greatest margin of error “
The Cost of Digitising Europe’s Cultural Heritage A Report for the Comité
des Sages of the European Commission
Prepared by Nick Poole, the Collections Trust November 2010
http://nickpoole.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/digiti_report.pdf
@SimonTanner

20. Impact: Cause and Effect
@SimonTanner

21. www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/impact.html
@SimonTanner

22. We are more effective and efficient in delivering change and
tangible benefits (Internal Impact);
Our organisation is gaining strategic advantage through the
innovation inherent in this digital activity (Innovation Impact);
We are delivering a strong economic benefit to our community
that demonstrate the worth and value of our
endeavours in clear monetary terms
(Economic Impact); and
the community has been changed by
the resource in beneficial ways that
can be clearly identified (Social Impact)
What does success look like?
@SimonTanner

23. Avoiding the car crash:
some thoughts
@SimonTanner
© JAlbum & Mark's Chameleon

24. STANDARDS!
You happy Polly?
@SimonTanner

25. “Michelle Pickover, curator of manuscripts at the
University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa,
argues that ‘Cyberspace is not an uncontested domain.
The digital medium contains an ideological base – it is a site of struggle.’
The real challenges in collection digitisation in national memory institutions,
she argues, are not technological or technical
but social and political.
Librarians and archivists are ‘agents of social change’ who,
through their appraisal, selection, arrangement and retention of material,
are able to become active participants in the production of social memory,
and who, by the nature of their work, cannot help but
‘privilege certain narratives and silence or marginalise others’
Kahn, R and Tanner, S (2014) Building Futures: The Role of Digital Collections in
Shaping National Identity in Africa (chapter in African Studies in the Digital Age)
Democratisation & Contested Spaces
@SimonTanner

26. How do we genuinely offer democratisation in a
digital domain when people are struggling to:
Be
Belong
Build identity
Be Recognised
Believed
Understood
Understand
Heard
Democratisation & Contested Spaces
@SimonTanner

27. Telecrofting: Volunteer benefits high
Shetland Isles Museum and Archives
http://photos.shetland-museum.org.uk/
Volunteers trained to very high
explicit skill levels
Extremely high community
engagement
Task achieved but its success was
defined by the community not
just the museum
@SimonTanner

28. Crowdsourcing Value Chain
= Task / Utility Oriented
Benefits = entertainment,
passing the time,
low level skills built
Task completion &
thus crowdsourcing host
is key beneficiary
Marginal benefits but
high volumes reached
@SimonTanner

29. Challenge – find your telecrofters
If crowdsourcing is so great why are there so few projects?
Volunteers have a much higher engagement,
develop a much higher skills base and thus see more
chance their lives can be changed in beneficial ways
Personalise the crowd,
reach out to individuals,
build genuine relationships and listen
The task is not everything – look beyond
mere utility
Crowdsourcing is Dead: Long Live Citizen Humanities!
http://simon-tanner.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/crowdsourcing-is-dead-long-live-citizen.html
@SimonTanner

30. Is the value in
the wine, the glass or the drinking?
@SimonTanner

31. Vote on Twitter with the hashtag:
Wine/Content = #dcdc15wine
Glass/Infrastructure = #dcdc15glass
Drinking/Access = #dcdc15drink
Results after lunch today, cheers!
Your Vote: Is the value in
the wine, the glass or the drinking?
@SimonTanner