Financial/Business Models Meeting Notes: October 20, 2011

Mission Statement

Explore and develop mechanisms to generate ongoing support for the DPLA.

Questions to Research

1. What is the scope of materials to digitize? What are some potential financing mechanisms?
2. Access to content via the DPLA would be free at the point of use by the end user. If that is not true, we need to know now!
3. Free rider problem? How to define relationship to libraries? Question of membership?
4. What is the state of aging infrastructure (state libraries, consortia, federally funded stuff)?
5. Implicating local & national philanthropy -- a "public goods" argument
6. Will the DPLA actually hold and distribute content? If not, will it play a role in standards or certification of that content?
7. State libraries spend money on a mission. Can we be their mission? Can public libraries be the front door to DPLA?
8. What industries will benefit from the DPLA? How can we tap into them?
9. Who are our competitors? Overdrive, Amazon, Google, Ancestry.com?
10. In thinking about audience and funding, if DPLA is to be supported by municipalities, governments, and include public libraries a big question is: “What’s in it for the kids?”

Challenges

1. Will the DPLA take direct responsibility for preservation? If not, what will the relationship be between preservers and DPLA?
2. Lack of definition of the “it.”
3. Lack of/relationship to: federal funding and legislation?
4. Distinction between desired and practical?
5. Coherent articulation of demand!

Possible Workshop Topics

1. Benefits and responsibilities for public libraries as part of DPLA (local government) (incentives?)
2. Defining tiers of access.
3. Possible not-for-profit but commercial services.

Possible Models

1. Membership (Institutions)
2. Government
3. Philanthropy (Institutional and Individual)
4. Repurposing existing infrastructure
5. In-kind contributions of services or infrastructure
6. Mixed
   • Distinguish between capital costs (initial digitization) and ongoing recurring costs!

Possible Work Products

1. Scope & budget report on digitization of federal government records.
2. There is existing infrastructure funded by a variety of agencies. Conduct inventory of federally, state, local and not-for-profit funded aging infrastructure that could be repurposed.
3. Advocacy for public good. A paper that synthesizes existing research about ways that making information freely and widely available can support economic growth (multipliers on income, wealth, job creation).
4. Conduct research into whether there would there be value to establishing a national brand that would offer confidence to local agencies/philanthropy to support a distributed digitization effort. In other words, would knowing that a local project was affiliated with a national effort help to justify fundraising.
5. Lists of customers (American Motion Picture Association, etc.).

Possible Services for DPLA

1. Curate Content from the DPLA collections
2. Provide services to library “members” (digitization, preservation, etc.)
3. Provide services to end users (organizing or preserving information)
4. Digitize Federal government records or coordinate the digitization of same.

Related ideas

• Definition of customer (user, funder, govt?)
• Use vs. availability
• Museum store? Will we sell things?
• Question of how to handle copyrighted items?

Input from these workstreams is essential

• Primary: Content/Scope Workstream and Audience Workstream
• Secondary: Technical Workstream and Governance Workstream
• Also: Is there a missing workstream? “Marketing and Advocacy”?

Workstream Members

Paul Courant, Harold T. Shapiro Professor of Public Policy and Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan

Peter Brantley, Internet Archive

Martin Gomez, Los Angeles Public Library

Kevin Guthrie, ITHAKA

Mark Kurtz, BioOne

Brian Moura, Assistant City Manager, San Carlos, CA

Tom Sanville, Lyrasis

Attendance at Workstream Meeting

Tom Sanville

Mike Handy

Kevin Guthrie

Martin Gomez

Peter Brantley

Carl Malamud

Mark Kurtz

Brian Moura

Paul Courant