Digital Heritage Preservation -­‐ Economic Realities and Options Ronald Walker Executive Director, Canadiana.org Abstract The demand for digital heritage preservation is increasing, particularly in response to the demand for
online access by professional and amateur researchers, family historians, Universities, K-12 educators.
The traditional government grant, as a source of funding for cultural heritage projects in general and
digitization projects in particular, however, is increasingly rare in the current economic climate. These
economic realities inspire new funding models for heritage collection digitization, perpetual preservation
and online access. The focus of this paper is to discuss various strategies that may be available to not-forprofit institutions to achieve a sustainable financial basis for their operations. The paper explores the
following strategies: Budgeting strategies; Grants and sponsors; Subscription models; Value added
strategies; Content re-purposing; Curated portals; Advertising; Centre of Excellence services;
Sustainability Foundation.
Author As Executive Director, Canadiana.org, Ron Walker has the mandate to create a Canada-wide
collaboration of memory institutions to deliver digitization, preservation and access to Canada's
documentary heritage. Before joining Canadiana, as a senior manager in government, founder and CEO
of private information technology products and services corporations, business consultant, project
manager and technology architect he has delivered several successful pan-Canadian and international
projects.
1. Introduction The traditional grant-based funds for cultural heritage projects are becoming increasingly rare in the
current economic climate. At the same time, the demand for access to digital heritage is increasing,
particularly by the general public, professional and amateur researchers, family historians, universities,
and educators in primary and secondary schools. Modern users have come to believe that if the
information they want is not online, it does not exist.
These economic realities are inspiring new funding models for heritage collection digitization,
perpetual preservation and online access. This paper discusses various strategies that may be available to
not-for-profit institutions to achieve a sustainable financial basis for their operations. The paper briefly
explores the economic realities, value proposition and economic options, including:
• Commercial approach;
• Sustainability foundations;
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Budgeting strategies;
Grants and sponsors;
Subscription models;
Value added strategies;
Content repurposing;
Curated portals;
Advertising; and
Centre of Excellence services.
2. Economic Realities Documentary heritage is often physically fragile and practically inaccessible to most citizens. The most
cost effective and increasingly the only way to provide wide access to collections is on the internet.
With the widespread growth in using the internet to access information we have come to expect
information to be online. If we cannot easily access information online then they may assume, for all
practical purposes, it does not exist or is not accessible. The old model of going to the library to do
research has been replaced by the web. At the same time, the modern web user expects content to be free,
so the demand for “open” (free) access to digital heritage is increasing. Someone, however, has to pay for
it.
Memory Institutions holding documentary heritage collections often provide their own, or
collaborate with others, to build and maintain digital heritage repositories for digitized and born-digital
content. These institutions are typically publicly funded, and have relied on grants and/or re-directed
internal budgets to achieve this.
In times of economic recessions, governments reduce and eliminate grants for cultural policy areas,
including heritage digitization projects. There is a growing urgency to preserve unique library collections
for future generations as government cuts close libraries and collections are moved into long-term
warehouses, or are scattered and lost.
Digitization costs that require personnel are increasing, but technology costs for preservation and
access are decreasing.
Commercial and non-profit organizations have entered the field providing free or low-price digitization
services with new business models to pay for and exploit the value of online documentary heritage:
• Subsidization from other business income generators;
• Large scale public funding initiatives; and
• For-profit business models.
Summary - Traditional funding sources for digitization are becoming more uncertain, while demand for
open and online access is increasing. The expenditure and funding models for Not-for-Profit digitizers
and access providers need to be realigned according to the shifting financial landscape.
3. The Sustainable Digital Heritage Preservation Challenge A digital heritage preservation institution must be able to maintain a perpetual, self-sustained operation.
For digital heritage to be perpetually preserved, its content must be perpetually accessible.
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A digital repository and discovery infrastructure will be in a constant state of change, adapting to
new technologies and media standards. It requires:
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Infrastructure, policies, procedures and practices compliant with a high level of standard,
including third party review, i.e., Trusted Digital Repository;
Mutual multiple redundant backup across a network of institutions supporting Trusted Digital
Repositories;
Ongoing conversion of file formats to adapt to changing standards;
Ongoing hardware and software infrastructure refreshing as technologies evolve;
Ongoing storage media refreshing; and
Ongoing evolution of discovery and access tools.
Summary - Digital heritage preservation requires an ongoing viable institution that meets the standards of
a trusted Digital Repository, and is not susceptible to the vagaries of the economy, reliant on grants,
sponsorship or the kindness of strangers.
4. Value Proposition Primarily documentary heritage is a priceless treasure that must be preserved and made accessible
forever. Documentary heritage has real, ongoing, useful value to current and future generations.
Depending on the user’s point of view, the value may be cultural, economic, academic, educational, legal,
entertainment, etc.
The market can be defined with three primary customer groups, arbitrarily named heritage, history
community and collection holders.
The heritage group includes institutions such as research libraries, universities and other heritage
conscious organizations/governments/granting authorities. In Canada, well over 100 universities use
online collections. Federal and provincial government departments also use online collections to research
and provide services to their own employees.
The history community includes individuals generally interested in history, genealogy, family
history, community history associations, and those who are interested in the way things were done in the
past (for example, cookbooks, periodicals, etc.). In Canada, roughly based on the number of visits to our
online collections and the number of subscribers to the Canadian History magazine, we estimate there are
450,000 (fondly named) history buffs cutting across all ages and genders. Of genealogical societies and
individuals interested in family history there are more than 1.7 million Canadians who visit genealogy
websites monthly and spend around $250 a year for access to online genealogy related records.
Collection holders are those who hold collections and need digitization, preservation and access
services.
We are witnessing a growing demand from the public for access to digital heritage. For example,
Canadiana.org’s Early Canadiana Online collection was developed for academics. In the last two years,
after making it more accessible by the public, fully two-thirds of the page views have been from the
public and one-third by academic researchers and university students. The following table shows the
public’s high interest subject areas.
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Table 1: High Interest Subjects
Top 100 of Early Canadiana Online Collection
Percentage of views
Native Studies
31%
Government Publications
28%
Women’s History
20%
French Canadian History
11%
English Canadian History
8%
Hudson Bay Company
2%
Another example is the 1911 Canadian Census. When Library and Archives Canada (LAC) put the 1911
Canadian Census online, it averaged 17 downloads per second for the first year. The family history TV
program, “Who do you think you are” was so popular, the LAC hosted website saw 90,000 - 100,000
visits each time the program aired. When Canadiana.org launched the Canadiana Discovery Portal, the
public showed their interest with over 10,000 hits a day to the website. Clearly, along with academic
research, Canadians want access to their heritage and expect to find it online.
Summary - While free and open access is the ideal model, the reality is that digital preservation is
not free. If documentary heritage is valuable to a wide market, then documentary heritage can be made to
pay for its own preservation.
5. Strategic Options These economic realities inspire new funding models for heritage collection digitization, perpetual
preservation and online access. Various planning strategies are available to not-for-profit institutions to
achieve a sustainable financial basis for their operations.
5.1 Profit / Not-­‐for-­‐profit -­‐ Thinking like an entrepreneur A financially sustainable not-for-profit organization needs to think and operate like a highly competitive
for-profit corporation. One key difference is a non-profit corporation does not pay out as dividends to
shareholders. When this strategy works, a competitive, successful not-for-profit needs to have a plan in
place for when revenues exceed expenses within the taxation year. One long-term option is a
“sustainability foundation”.
5.2 Sustainability Foundations -­‐ Thinking really long-­‐term A financial foundation is a common model used by not-for-profits with charitable status. A foundation
provides a long-term, or even permanent financial vehicle to maintain and grow capital, and provide
dividends for operations. This is perhaps the only model that can meet the criteria of perpetual
sustainability. It is a long-term approach and will no doubt take a long time to fill the coffers of the
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foundation sufficiently to meet all the operating needs of a heritage preservation institution.
Theoretically, the sustainability foundation could eventually fund all the operations costs, but it is
healthier to assume a growing business strategy.
6 Revenue Strategies 6.1 Budgeting Strategies Since grants typically do not provide for ongoing operations, the grant recipient institution is left with a
new operations and maintenance budget item when the digitization project ends. This ongoing operations
and maintenance obligation is susceptible to budget cuts in the future (and therefore program cuts), so
perpetual preservation is not assured.
It is important that non-profit organizations ensure that on-going operational funds not be tied to
granting sources of declining reliability. If grant money is used for projects, then make sure the operations
and maintenance budget can absorb the new content resulting from that project.
6.2 Grants and Sponsors Despite the warnings about relying only on grants and sponsors, both are still a very good source of funds
for digital heritage preservation. Over the long-term, when grants are available, use them to subsidize
content collection projects, reserving your operating budgets for ongoing operations. While grants are
usually tied to a project, public and private sponsors will be more open to long-term preservation. A
corporate sponsor may wish to gain marketing value with their logo on your website. Private sponsors
may enjoy having their name associated with preservation of specific content, whether it is a book, a subcollection or a complete library.
6.3 Subscription models The cost to build and preserve a digital heritage collection is substantial and ongoing. If the collection, by
being online, provides a cost savings to institutions that need access to the collections, then an
institutional subscription model is a supportable revenue source.
Depending on the content, private individuals, particularly those with special interests such as
genealogy, historical research, cultural exploration, etc., will pay a subscription if the content is of
interest, is not available or easily accessible elsewhere online, and it is more cost effective than traveling
to research the original source materials.
6.4 Value added strategies Open access, however, is still a desirable objective. If some or all content in the digital library is freely
accessible, there is still an opportunity to offer premium services, for which some people will be happy to
pay a fee. In other words, the content is free but enhanced access can be offered for a fee. Users have the
option to buy the enhanced services to save time searching for relevant content.
Digital libraries can also add value to their collections by providing special curated views of their
material, organized by specific historical themes, such as prominent historical events, geographic areas,
cultural topics, occupational categories, etc. These thematic, curated collections can be offered as
subscriber services.
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6.5 Content re-­‐purposing Digital assets can be re-purposed and sold to raise funds for ongoing support. The micro-purchase model
with eCommerce infrastructure can be built by the digital library or out-sourced to a distribution channel.
Examples of re-purposed content include:
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Download searchable PDF;
Download eBook reader compatible versions;
Print and bind books and periodicals;
Print and mount images as poster, frame, etc.; and
Download audio and video files.
Re-purposed content might also increase the organization’s chances of obtaining funding from private
sponsors, particularly if the content is of special interest to a sponsor.
6.6 Advertising Ads on your digital library website can generate substantial revenue if your site receives a very high
volume of visits. On the negative side, ads can also destroy the image of your web site. There is a middle
ground that can generate constant revenue with “tasteful” ads. Pages can be designed with areas for
advertiser logos for which they pay a fixed amount regardless of the traffic. Typically this will be ads for
products and services that your main users would relate to. This is overlapping with sponsor recognition
and can be sold that way, giving the advertiser and web page a more stylish look. Extra features, e.g.
expanding information boxes, links to further information, demo's, etc., can also be added for higher rates.
6.7 Centre of Excellence Services Memory institutions that have been in the business digitizing, preserving and making accessible
documentary heritage have usually developed significant expertise in these areas. This expertise can be
used to provide digital documentation services to third parties in private industry or government
organizations, again for an appropriate cost recovery based fee.
Examples of the marketable services include:
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Digitization / scanning;
Ingesting already scanned and born digital;
Metadata enhancement for pagination, article linking, etc.;
OCR generation to metadata for keyword searching;
Searchable PDF generation;
Other derivative formats generation, e.g. eBooks;
Cataloguing;
Loading and indexing into a secure repository;
Hosting;
Web discovery portal development;
Web portal hosting;
Collection hosting;
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• TDR Preservation Services;
• Backup services for other repositories; and
• Consulting services on all aspects of workflow and technology planning and support for digitization,
preservation and access.
7. Conclusion Preservation of digital heritage requires evolving technologies, and high standards of operations with the
requisite policies and procedures; but critical to delivering the preservation service is perpetual financial
sustainability.
Digital heritage has significant financial, cultural and scientific value, and its preservation is
important to the current and future generations of academics, researchers, and the general public of all
levels of education.
Government grants for digitization projects are an excellent funding strategy, but do not help the
perpetual financial stability of a preservation repository.
Not-for-profit organizations can both operate efficiently and receive compensation for services
provided, including harvesting heritage assets, preserving, making accessible, repurposing for copy-ondemand and curated collections, subscription services to closed collections and providing optional
premium services for open collections.
Preservation institutions can, by efficient operations and exploiting revenue generating strategies,
invest excess revenue in foundations as a long-term financial strategy towards perpetual sustainability.
8. About Canadiana.org Canadiana.org is a membership alliance governed by an active volunteer Board of Directors made up of
distinguished scholars and representatives of major memory institutions from across Canada. The
organization is pan-Canadian in outlook and governance and aims to represent the interests of many
stakeholder constituencies, including content creators, content holders, and users of cultural heritage and
research resources.
The mission of Canadiana.org is to support enduring access to Canada’s digital documentary
heritage for Canadians and the world. Canada's libraries, universities, museums, archives, and
government agencies possess numerous rich digital collections containing our nation’s documentary
heritage. These collections are continually expanding and include many different types of content,
including books, journals, newspapers, government documents, photographs, maps, postcards, sheet
music, audio and video broadcasts.
Canadiana.org works together with partners to strengthen our collective ability to present Canada's
documentary heritage content online. The organization acts as a coordinator, facilitator and advocate for
digitization initiatives, along with providing digitization, preservation, and access services and
infrastructures.
The prime objective of Canadiana.org is to provide online access to Canadian documentary
heritage for researchers, historians, students, new Canadians, and for the public. Currently, less than 13%
of Canada’s printed knowledge materials is available online. Canadiana.org aims to make the published
record of Canadian experience and creativity available to all, and to establish the collaborative network
essential to doing this systematically, and to maintain this for the long-term.
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