On 17 August 2011 04:04, Fae <[email protected]> wrote: > In the light of the British Library's recent agreement with Google > Books to partner with them to scan and release a vast number of "old" > books on Google's well known system, I remain uncertain about whether > digitization for larger projects is the best use of WM-UK funds. These > are all good projects that push forward our mission of opening up > knowledge for maximum possible public access, however it can also be > argued that such projects may be far more effectively managed by a > specialist partner (such as Google or established academic > institutions and charities with specialist skills and equipment).
Yes, this is certainly true. However, I'd argue that in most cases, we'd want to go to the specialist partner for the digitisation work itself anyway. We don't have the specialist equipment, we don't have the specialist skills, we don't have the expertise in handling digitisation projects, etc etc. If we try to do it ourselves, with volunteers, it's likely that we'd get lower quality work, and a higher risk of the actual digitisation stalling half-way for some reason, alongisde the significant costs of leasing the hardware to do it with and trying to manage the data workflow. (Plus, as Christophe says below, outsourcing it saves a lot of conservation headaches...) This isn't to say we shouldn't do it; one main reason for us to support the actual digitisation process would be to ensure that the content is suitable for WM projects - that there aren't problematic copyright assertions, and that we can get hold of it in a convenient fashion (suitable file types, metadata, etc). Once it's been digitised by the specialists, then we can work with it in the manner we do best - process it, host it on WS or Commons, incorporate it into articles, etc. Images (photographs or artwork) are probably better for showing the value-added effects of Wikimedia involvement rather than papers or collections of documents - documents we merely catalogue and host, and any secondary work done on them may take a long time to materialise, whereas images can quickly be incorporated into other projects, and so we get a more visible result. Are the proposed digitisation projects asking us for additional funding, or to underwrite the entire process? > I welcome any feedback on how well these projects fulfil our mission > and how often our funds ought to be invested in these projects > compared to other projects which may have greater impact for new user > outreach or wider "e-volunteer" engagement. They're very different things, certainly. We shouldn't prioritise this *over* editor outreach, etc, but it's certainly a legitimate complement to it. -- - Andrew Gray [email protected] _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list [email protected] http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
