Centres of Competence and Virtual Centres of Excellence

1. Centres of Competence and Virtual Centres of Excellence • APARSEN webinar • Hildelies Balk – Pennington de Jongh, 16 october 2012

2. Centres of Competence and Excellence Overview of this presentation • Background and overview of Centres in the digital library domain • Common characteristics and first observations • What APARSEN can learn from IMPACT Centre of Competence

3. Centres of Competence and Excellence 1. Centres of Competence/excellence • I2010 Vision →Digital Agenda → Horizon 2020 • Important role for Centres of Competence and virtual Centres of Excellence in European research infrastructure • Digital Library field: APARSEN one of 6 Centres • Collaboration between these advocated by EC • Benefits in sharing of resources, offering services in a uniform and transparant way • New funding opportunities if Centres manage to collaborate • Report being compiled by KB on current best practice of setting up, organizing and maintaining a Centre of Competence (CoC) or Virtual Centre of Excellence (VCoE)

4. Centres of Competence and Excellence Why share information? • to support each other in the building of a sustainable organisation for sharing expertise, tools and resources. • to indicate areas of potential collaboration. • What do we share: • basic information on the Centre: Background, Vision, Mission, Legal entity, Office, Governance and Management • how will the Centre stay alive: Business Model, Customers, Revenues, Facts&Figures on how it’s really doing, Succesfactors in Building and Maintaining the Centre and Challenges it faces. • Where do we share: • http://centresofcompetence.wordpress.com/

5. Centres of Competence and Excellence Centres in the digital library domain: Overview • The Open Planets Foundation aims to ensure the take-up of digital preservation practices and tools, mainly coming from the Planets project, fostering that digital preservation challenges meet a solution that is widely adopted. • PrestoCentre, a foundation for the audiovisual digitisation and digital preservation which brings together experts, researchers and businesses, collecting their best practices, tools and relevant information and promoting the cooperation among them. • IMPACT Centre of Competence in Digitisation aims to make digitisation of historical printed text in Europe better, faster and cheaper by sharing expertise and providing access to tools for all parts of the digitisation workflow.IMPACT provides tools, services and facilities for further advancement of the State of the Art in this field • 3D-COFORM Virtual Competence Centre, a Virtual Centre of Competence in three dimensional digitisation aiming to provide (and give advice on) digitisation tools to design and capture 3D objects, to design and test practical business models for their deployment and to facilitate the search of expertise by content-holders. • V-MusT.net (the Virtual Museum Transnational Network) a virtual centre of competence for the integration of digital collections and virtual environments in virtual and physical museums. • APARSEN VCoE is a Network of Excellence in digital preservation bringing together 31 organisations covering a wide spectrum of roles and expertise in the field.

6. Centres of Competence and Excellence 2. Common characteristics of Centres in the digital library domain • Not for profit (CIC, INPA, Stichting etc) • Income: mix of membership, paid services and funding for projects • Organisation: small core facility of 1-3 fte , consisting of director/business developer, technical coordinator, admin/web • Website main hub • Strong buy–in from original consortium

7. Centres of Competence and Excellence Report: first observations • Opportunities for revenue dependent on field: digitisation offers more opportunities than digital preservation • VMustNet most enterprising, already very active as a Centre during project → successfully initiating new projects and gaining revenues • IMPACT most active in engaging commercial partners in Centre • OPF (first Centre, dates from FP6) has strong community in the digital preservation field • VCC-3D strong emphasis on practical deployment of 3D documentation and training → encouraging membership

8. Centres of Competence and Excellence 3. What APARSEN can learn from IMPACT Centre of Competence : basic information • Background: the IMPACT Centre of Competence is building on the research and development of partners from the IMPACT (Improving Access to Text) project, (FP 7, 2008 to 2012). The IMPACT Project brought together libraries, imaging scientists, industry partners and digitisation professionals. • Legal entity: part of non profit foundation of hosting organisation (decision on form for independent entity pending) • Office: Madrid • Governance: Board of Premium members • Management: Manager and developer; distributed effort of members in web site maintenance, software maintenance, business development

9. Centres of Competence and Excellence What APARSEN can learn from IMPACT Centre of Competence : staying alive • Business Model: combination of membership and pay as you go • Customers: • Content holders (libraries, archives, museums) • Research institutes in the fields document imaging, OCR, language technology and the processing of ‘noisy’ text • Service providers (software and integrated services) • Revenues: membership fees, varying from 500 to 10.000 euros; fees for services, project funding • Facts&figures: IMPACT Centre of Competence currently has 9 premium members and is in the process of registering appr 40 standard members

10. Building the IMPACT Centre of Competence Centres of Competence and Excellence Business Model Generation (http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com) date footertext 10

11. Centres of Competence and Excellence Building the Business Model: sessions

12. Centres of Competence and Excellence With all 26 partners….

13. Centres of Competence and Excellence Building the Business Model: Gathering ideas…. And finding commitment

14. Centres of Competence and Excellence

15. Centres of Competence and Excellence Succesfactors in Building the IMPACT Centre of Competence: • strong ‘home base’ in the commitment of original IMPACT consortium, created by continuous engagement with all stakeholders (series of workshops and f to f meetings over three years) • partners most involved in building the Centre successfully tapped their network to extend the Centre beyond the IMPACT consortium • distributed organization and shared costs • sound business model with 3 customer segments that each benefit of the presence of the others • Support of the EC (extension IMPACT project, advice, encouragement)

16. Centres of Competence and Excellence Succesfactors sustaining the IMPACT Centre of Competence: • Users keen to test and use tools and resources provided • Interoperability platform developed by IMPACT allows showcasing ad testing of tools. • considerable interest of private sector companies in the Centre • obtaining project funding for activities that support the aims of the Centre • keeping the costs low • ongoing enthusiasm and commitment of partners

17. Centres of Competence and Excellence IMPACT Centre of Competence: Challenges • Responding to the expectations from potential and current members • Integrating tools and services in the website • Supporting implementation of tools • keeping innovation alive in the long-term • continue to identify and attract target customers and stakeholders

18. Centres of Competence and Excellence More information: www.digitisation.eu

19. Centres of Competence and Excellence Some ideas for APARSEN VcOE • Define role in the field • Define sustainable business model • But most of all: Build trust and mutual sympathy in consortium!