When the Data hits the Fan!

In this blog posting I wish to discuss cultural value a little bit and how it can fit into an impact assessment. It is is a follow up posting to this:  A New Approach to Measuring Impact for Digitised Resources: do they change people’s lives? Copyright: Jonas Raeber, Switzerland This is a work in progress - more my notes and queries. I wanted most to get this out there and to get your views, your inputs and your insights. Please comment, your thoughts are valued!

When a sock puppet comes calling, academic excellence is put at risk. My piece published in the Guardian Higher Education Network on the 7th June 2012 . It was interesting to see all the sock puppets who came out to play in the comments section of the piece. Seems like the Golb case is a  cause célèbre  for many out there. I would have responded with some factual corrections but I was suffering from chicken pox at the time this was published and thus hadn't the energy to get my thoughts online at that time.

Recent news coverage of the UK Government's ill thought through cap on tax relief for private charitable donations made me consider the motivations for giving and the impact of this measure on the GLAM sector.

This is a work in progress - more my notes and queries than a proper paper, stuff will change, references will be added. I wanted most to get this out there and to get your views, your inputs and your insights. Please comment, your thoughts are valued! My recent research with Marilyn Deegan into the value and impact of digitised collections has shown that there is a serious lack of adequate means to assess impact in this sector and thus a lack of significant evidence beyond the anecdotal, number crunching from webometrics or evaluations of outputs rather than outcomes ( http://www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/inspiring.html ). In short, we need better evidence of impact. How has the digital resource delivered a positive change in a defined group of people’s lives or life opportunities?

I was struck by this interesting video from Glasgow Museum about their resource storage facility and how it is one of the most open and publicly accessible museum storage spaces in the world and the biggest in Europe. See here for more about it . They have over 1.2 million items in their collection and as I noted in my research report into impact it is valued at over £1.4 billion, making it the single biggest fiscal asset held by Glasgow. The Scottish people own this museum, but only 2-3% of it is ever on display at any given time. That's why it is great that they are digitising portions of it so we can gain access to otherwise unseen content. But the physical access to this storage space to see the artefacts is equally important. The materiality of museums and collections cannot and will not be replaced by digital access. Recently I took my kids to the V&A museum and we had a fabulous time in the Sackler Centre and then we roamed the galleries and hal...

Why I am a Librarian: a tale of toads, magic and little old ladies Swindon Public Library Today is National Libraries Day (#NLD12) ,  so I thought it a good day to reflect on why I am a Librarian even though I am employed as an academic in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London. As I stated in the introduction to my book Digital Futures I am a "lapsed librarian" - I have no library or collection to curate and look after. But you can take the boy out of the library, but you can't take the love of libraries out of the boy.

Digital Content Monetisation Conference, London Implementing monetisation models to create rapid and sustainable digital growth Last week I attended the DCM conference as moderator for an afternoon session on “Monetising through effective DAM and DRM”. It was a great conference and I’d like to thank the organisers for having me and allowing two of our MA DAM students to attend as conference helpers. The tickets were ~£1,400 each so allowing us to attend at no fee was very generous! This blog provides a summary of thoughts provoked by this event.