stephen rhind-tutt, president, successful models for digital content march 23, 2009

Stephen Rhind-Tutt, President,

Successful models for digital content

March 23, 2009

Overview

• The challenge• Towards a better business model

• Partnerships, licensing, ‘openness’• Community, discipline focus• Indexing and Organization• Workflow

Alexander Street Press, LLC

• Founded in 2000• 70 people• Based in Alexandria, VA• Specialize in publishing large scale electronic collections – books, music, video, magazines• Over 1,500 business partners

Disciplines

Performing Arts, Drama, and Film

Diversity Literature

Women’s History

Religion

CounselingMusic

Social and Cultural History

Sociology

Black Studies

American Civil War

The Challenge

The Challenge

By 2012 the web will contain

• 90% of published works prior to 1923

• Majority of works published to 2012

• > 20 Billion pages of e-mail, phone logs, databases, blogs and websites (currently 12 Billion)

• > 10 Billion photographs

• > 40 Million pages of facsimiles of manuscripts

• > 50 Million audio files

• > 500 Million video files

Nature of the network

• Atomic• Interconnected • Interdependent• Value of the Connection = Value of the object• Free lives alongside for fee

• Pliable• Constantly evolving• Practically unlimited in size

Free Page

Free Page

Free Page

Free Page

For fee Page

Free Page

Free Page

Free Page

Free Page

With literally billions of pages…

What tools will we need ?

• Beyond paper

• Higher editorial value

• High functionality

• Semantically Organized

• More comprehensive

• Individually customizable

• Discipline, community centric

• Web/network centric

Licensing/Partnerships/Being Open

Summary

•No one site will contain all information

•Effective publication is a function of delivering the right content, in the right way to the right people.

•To do this we will need high quality access to content across different publishers, libraries and websites.

•Success is a function of being ‘of the community’ rather than owning the community

Integration is unavoidable

Loosely Held Tightly Held

Free Websites

Loosely integrated

Tightlyintegrated

Refuse to License

License widely

License widelyand be a Licensor

Building the network…

Unhelpful

•Legal warnings not to link

•Changing links constantly

•Disabling links

•No permanent URLs

•No crawling

•Randomly changing URLs

•Insisting on one interface and one access point

•Unattached pages

Helpful

•Visibility

•Permanent URLs

•RSS feeds

•OpenURL

•Design for multiple interfaces

•Open to crawling

•Published APIs

•Welcome linking

•Ask others to do the same

Individual unit vs. database

1990

2005

2015

Books, DVDs, CDs, Newspapers

Databases

Blogs, Articles

2020

Community & Discipline focus

Disciplines

• 250,000 tracks of music• 200,000 pages of scores• 100,000 pages of reference works• 300 opera DVDs• Fully indexed and organized• Growing all the time• Sold as a subscription to academic libraries

Newsletters

Journals

Monographs

Textbooks

Academic Tools

External Publishers Free Websites

Lay Tools

One search

Search returns 81 related items:• Metadata on the composition• Symphonic performances (audio)• Operatic performances (video)• Original score• Related reference materials• [journal articles?]

Search for title = “magic flute”

• A tool to create, cite and share online content

• 4 basic steps– Choose (any) piece of content

– Annotate it

– Set permissions (personal, institutional, public)

– Share via email or via electronic reserve with a single permanent URL

• Over 150,000 individual playlists created by 45,000 academics and scholars

• Currently works for video and music

Playlists

Video

Video

Video

Web

Grove

Reference

Score

Playlists

Student at Texas Tech University

Course instructor at Wellesley College

Indexing & Organization

‘Semantic’ Indexing

Collection

Series

Book or Volume

Chapter

Page

Word

Where ?

When ?

What ?

Who ?Traditio

nal indexing >

‘Semantic’ indexing >

The ‘right’ information

CAB – (Husbandry)

Agricola (Agriculture)

OSH-ROM(Occupational Health and Safety)

Biosis (Species)

Long term factors influencing combustion and burn rates in North American forests. David Jones, Journal of Forest Husbandry, Sept 1999.

Semantic Indexing…

Client Therapist Symptom TherapyDrug nameGeneric nameDosageDSM Code…

DocumentAuthorPub. DateJournal TitleDoc. Type…

GenderMarital StatusOccupationAge RangeSexual Orient.…

GenderExperienceEducation Lvl.School of Therapy…

PhysicalMentalDSM Code…

Semantic Indexing…

Client Therapist Symptom TherapyDrug nameGeneric nameDosageDSM Code…

DocumentTextAuthorPub. DateJournal TitleDoc. Type…

GenderMarital StatusOccupationAge RangeSexual Orient.…

GenderExperienceEducation Lvl.School of Therapy…

PhysicalMentalDSM Code…

All male therapists mentioning the word ‘drink’ to female clients

Semantic Indexing – Search Power

• More than a way to answer questions• A framework by which users can be guided to

understand, explore, discover and learn.• A route-map to guide users through data - saving time

and effort.• Delivers answers that cannot be asked elsewhere

• The strategic high ground in any discipline• Provides unique, high value added for users• Competitive advantage in licensing content

Semantic Indexing…

Customer Workflow

Utility of information

Civil War Research Database

Civil War Research Database

Whom did he serve with?

Where did they fight?

What happened to him?

Extract from ‘A fortnight with the Sanitary’ Atlantic Monthly, Feb 1865

The American Civil War Online

Letters & Diaries

Websites

Photographs

Music

Newspapers

Utility of information

Utility of information

• Interactive Tables• Graph Digitizer• Equation Plotter• Diagram Viewer

• Integrated Periodic Table• Unit Converter• Slide Show Viewer• Browsable Tables of Contents

Evolution of publisher tasks

Fading Growing

Typesetting Printing

Print Monograph Print Directory

Public Domain ReprintsSimple, One database Search

Rare and unpublished material

Linking

Licensing

Free materials

Semantic indexing

Process integration

Unified Search software

Workflow tools

Warehousing

Community BuildingAsset Management

Commissioning

Editorial

QualitySelection

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