Splashes and Ripples: Synthesizing the Evidence on the Impacts of Digital Resources

Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Report, May 2010

62 Pages Posted: 20 May 2011

See all articles by Eric T. Meyer

Eric T. Meyer

University of Oxford - Oxford Internet Institute ; UT Austin iSchool

Date Written: May 20, 2011

Abstract

Digitised materials representing the world’s cultural heritage are part of a growing trend towards a world in which knowledge is digitally stored, available on demand, and constantly growing. As the world becomes digital and the globally connected “digital brain” holds the shared knowledge of the world, the materials of the past need to be included in order to ensure that our collective memory online encompasses not just the present and the future, but also the past.

This report is an effort to begin to synthesize the evidence available under the JISC digitisation and eContent programmes to better understand the patterns of usage of digitised collections in research and teaching, in the UK and beyond. JISC has invested heavily in eContent and digitisation, funding dozens of projects of varying size since 2004. However, until recently, the value of these efforts has been mostly either taken as given, or asserted via anecdote. By drawing on evidence of the various impacts of twelve digitised resources, we can begin to build a base of evidence that moves beyond anecdotal evidence to a more empirically-based understanding on a variety of impacts that have been measured by qualitative and quantitative methods.

Keywords: digital humanities, digitisation, digitization, impact, collections, libraries, museums, archives

Suggested Citation

Meyer, Eric T. and Meyer, Eric T., Splashes and Ripples: Synthesizing the Evidence on the Impacts of Digital Resources (May 20, 2011). Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Report, May 2010, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1846535

Eric T. Meyer (Contact Author)

UT Austin iSchool ( email )

Austin, TX
United States

University of Oxford - Oxford Internet Institute ( email )

1 St Giles
Oxford, OX1 3JS
United Kingdom
01865 287210 (Phone)
01865 287211 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=120

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