Page 24 - Building Digital Libraries

Getting Started

What you learn from users affects your plan as well as initial
and ongoing expenses. Except where relatively simple materials
are concerned, it’s not realistic to expect even the most sophis-
ticated hardware and software to be able to organize all of the
data the way people need them. Providing even basic access
to simple images and text files requires the time-consuming
creation and maintenance of metadata. The addition of these
access points becomes much more difficult and time-consum-
ing with video and more complex objects such as datasets, and
to be useful, these resources often require extensive specialized
metadata.
Certain design and functionality choices imply a long-term
commitment to specific technologies that may or may not meet
future needs and which may not themselves be viable in the
long term. Repository designers should focus their activities
on materials that can reasonably be expected to be maintained
through future technology cycles. For each type of resource,
planners need to know how they will obtain, process, and pro-
vide long-term protection for that type of resource using avail-
able methods and tools. As of this writing, there are no reliable
methods for archiving certain types of materials, such as inter-
active resources, because these are often dependent on specific
software products. Chapter 3 discusses approaches that can be
used when there is a need to archive materials that are espe-
cially problematic, as well as how to identify appropriate tech-
nologies for a digital repository project.

How will ongoing operations be funded?
The funding model plays an important role in securing sup-
port and is closely tied to the purpose of the repository. People
accustomed to free Internet services funded by advertising and
personal information often believe that repository services are
cheap and easy to provide. The reality is that repositories are
expensive. Maintaining growing and increasingly complex col-
lections takes significant time and money, as does incorporat-
ing new materials. To be sustainable, funding for a repository
must grow as its collections and scope do. If the library sim-
ply adds high-resolution video without considering what this
means for long-term storage and delivery costs, it may well find
the resources allocated to the repository overwhelmed after a
short time.
Building and maintaining a repository require the library to
permanently commit significant staff and financial resources—
it’s not reasonable to expect ongoing technology, service, and
staffing costs to be absorbed by existing operations. This means
that the library must secure a source of recurring funding,
redirect staff and money from existing library services, operate
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