There are so many strands to this exchange that I want to jabber about so I'm going back to the start - Bridget's post. Bridget, if I get your drift, yes, I agree: there is a balance to be struck between the effort put into basic "digitisation" (though I think there are various ideas circulating about what that term implies) and interpreting our digitised collections, and I'm not sure we're being helped to strike the right balance at present. Raves and gripes about past projects aside, it's how we spend the scant funds now available that bothers me. Going from a time of relative plenty to a time where most budgets are Spartan rather than Olympian, how do we plan clearly how we spend them?

This reply got totally out of hand and I'm not sure I added anything to what had already been said so I've just put it on the blog, if you've the stomach. But here's my specific (yet vague) response to Bridget's request for "Any advances on my suggestions about what such lead bodies should be doing to invest in 21st century digital":

1.	Basically, I'd say, they should put their funds in three areas and realise that they need to be seen as separate endeavours:
	invest properly in strategic, sector-wide initiatives like the Information Architecture, that one would hope will do the plumbing job we need, and feed into EDL (and beyond?). Fingers crossed for this one.
2.	support simple digitisation to create the straight-ahead content to go into EDL and/or IA. It's still got to be done. If it's not support with funds then MLA must ensure that digitisation is recognised by those providing the core funding as a core activity, and is adequately provided for on an ongoing basis. Not too optimistic. 
3.	yes, still fund us to build some imaginative and innovative, born-to-die experimental exciting digital stuff aimed directly at the public. Who knows? Maybe.
4.	finally, the funds need to have the right strings attached. Maybe this is sometimes related to "impact"; it should also be about identifying in the planning stages the expected "sources of value" in a resource, budgeting realistically for supporting them for a specific period, and planning for the end of its life.

Thanks for getting the thread going, Bridget, another good one!

http://doofercall.blogspot.com/2008/05/mcg-thread-21st-century-digital.html if you're feeling masochistic or Bank Holiday bored.

Cheers, Jeremy


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