The third session of the second day was held under the heading European Digital Library. The four speakers presented the initiatives that they work on, the gaps that are called to fill, what has been succeeded by now and what are their future plans.

Paul Doorenbosch, the first speaker, presented the project of the National Library of The Netherlands, the Dutch approach of the digitisation project in the European Context, the creation of a Digital Library.It is based on the i2010, the EU policy framework for the information society and media for a European Information Society for all citizens, based on a series of flagships; the key proposals of i2010. Digital Library focuses on both cultural heritage and scientific information. Paul Doorenbosch talked about the national plan for developing infrastructure, professionality and copyright issues. He mentioned the Dutch governmental actions in digitisation, the nationally - such as Images for the Future (Beelden voor de Toekomst) and Dutch Heritage:Digital!- and internationally based projects such as MICHAEL and EDN. EUROPEANA, a project which was analysed by the second speaker, is the reference point for the digitisation activities of The Netherlands.

Jill Cousins, the director of European Digital Library, took the floor to talk more thoroughly about EUROPEANA,a European digital library net that aims to connect museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections under the supervision of European Digital Library Foundation (EDL). She started by mentioning the gaps between vision and reality that EUROPEANA tries to fill, such as the relationships of users and content providers, content and copyright, Europe and nation, nation and Institution, funding and attitude.

Jill Cousins continued by presenting the work plan of EUROPEANA, what has been succeeded by now, which is the current situation and what are the next steps. A fully working prototype will be launched in November 2008. What EUROPEANA aims for the future is to increase the number of partners, to determine the discussion model, conceive the roadmap and, last but not least, find the funding for next year.
The third initiative was VideoActive, presented by Sonja de Leeuw, professor of Film and Television at the University of Utrecht. VideoActive is a two-year project (2006-2008) for bringing European television archives together. It has 14 members in 10 countries. It is about 10.000 items of television archival content from earliest TV recordings on film, to data such clipping of TV guides and still photos. The portal will be launched in May 2008. What adds value to this project is the procedure of comparison. It studies the differences and similarities of European television in different topics, like the content, the language. It is about a comparative survey of TV holding of archive partners.

The last speaker was Georg Erkes, who talked about the European Film Getaway (EGF) project which will give online access to film archival content. EFG will start in September 2008. Its aim is based on the new user expectations and the necessity of internet accessibility. Its objectives are to create a single access point, a common European filmography and a gateway to content from film archives. At this moment, EFG has 22 partners and 16 content partners. Georg Erkes mentioned that the technical part of the project will be supported by DRIVER (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research). The content will be based on catalogues and film content, so it will be both media and document types. Of course, Georg Erkes pointed out the IPR issues that EFG has to deal with facts such as that the half material, especially the moving images, is not owned by the archives partners or the public domain and that there is not experience in rights-clearance. Netherlands Filmmuseum will lead on IPR work package. What it is attempted is the evaluation of copyright laws and regulations in each member country.

All speakers mentioned the difficulties of their projects but they also stressed their intention to continue the European vision for the digital unification of European archives.

… a nice photostream from Sebastiaan ter Burg at Flickr you can find here.

With the introduction of internet the traditional business model for spreading information has been challenged. Whereas before the largest part of the efforts and the investments where spent on the distribution side (printing, storing, selling and fulfillment) the internet (aka The Large Copying Machine) has facilitated easy and cheap distribution. Scientific publishers, who traditionally operated in a closed environment where they sold packages of journals and books through an annual license to libraries, are now (often forced by the community) turning their business model upside down. In this model authors are paying for the publication service in exchange for posting in so-called ‘open access‘ journals, where access is free at the point of use (also read Jan Velterop’s blog The Parachute). In this particular case it looks like a suitable business model has been found, as this model takes advantage of the power of the internet and leads to a greater return on investment for authors (visibility) while securing revenues for the service providers (publishers).

The music and film industry are facing similar issues but have yet to find a grip on the situation; the content is more often than not available for free through peer to peer networks therefore a large part of the incentive to go to a shop and buy a cd or film has vanished. As we are digitizing vast amounts of audio-visual cultural heritage we are facing the same questions: what models can be developed that fulfill the need for broad accessibility for the public while securing a solid return on investment for owners of the material (authors, producers, directors, etc).

Some, like Chris Anderson in his soon to be released new book’ Free’ build an entire economic theory based on the notion that free’ will be the leading model for media due to the vanishing marginal costs of distribution via the internet. The new model that rises from the ashes will be a model where the content or service is free, at least for the user. Google of course is a great example of a company that has turned ‘free’ to it’s advantage; the service is free to users while advertisers are the paying customers. At the core a beautiful system as the more you use the service the more revenue it generates for the service provider. Keeping the attention of the viewer is key in the ‘economy of abundance’, so you better make sure the service you develop is so appealing that users get hooked on it. In fact, if this becomes the case, there may be an opportunity to upsell them from freeloaders to paying customers by adding a an additional layer of services or privileges. This freemium model (term coined by venture capitalist Fred Wilson) has quickly become the leading model for web 2.0 companies like Flicrk and Linkedin. Interesting fact is that the rule of thumb is that the 1% of paying users supports the rest.

The crux of developing business models in this economy of abundance, where content is free, seems to be to tap into values that people are willing to pay for. And those values may not be the same as in the old days where content was king. Kevin Kelly calls them ‘generatives’:

‘’A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing can not be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time. In the digital arena, generative qualities add value to free copies, and therefore are something that can be sold.” Think ‘trust’ or ‘personalisation’. In his blog ‘Better than free’ Kevin distiguishes eight of them.

So how does this translate to our audiovisual digitization adventure? Will the specific characteristics of cultural heritage lend itself to open content models like advertisements (google just released a beta service of video advertisements: Adsense for Video ), Freemium services or even community supported businessmodels?

We are hosting a workshop on this topic during the Economies of the Commons conference on saturday April 12 2008 in Amsterdam to investigate the options.