British library digitisation strategy

The British Library has just published its Digitisation Strategy for the period 2008-2011. This underlines the commitment to "produce a critical mass of digitised content, reflecting the breadth and depth of [the BL’s] collection" and to "provide a compelling user experience that facilitates innovative methods of research and meets 21st century requirements for interacting with content".

The document emphasises the importance of the BL’s collection of newpapers in the digitisation drive over the next few years. It points to what has already been digitised in the recent past (atlhough it fails to mention the significant level of funding provided to BL by JISC, as part of its own Digitisation Programme, covering such areas as nineteenth century newpapers, e-theses and archival sound recordings).

The importance of working in partnership with other agencies and commercial organisations in developing digitisation projects is also mentioned, as are (briefly) the issues to be considered in reaching decisions about given projects. Finally, the document lists a number of success measures. These include the number of items digitised and the demand for such items. Curiously, in view of the above stated undertaking regarding the importance of the user experience, there is no explicit success measure relating to such factors as usability, user-friendliness and interoperability.