This article is from the December 2003 issue of Update. 

Ability to plan digital projects is an essential competence for LIS managers, says Simon Tanner. It includes the ability to identify risk and take appropriate measures to prevent project failure.

This article focuses on the management attributes increasingly required by librarians to deliver ever more demanding digitally-based projects. Librarians in all sectors show excellent resource management abilities, as shown by the continuing development of libraries in the face of restricted or diminishing resources. Where librarians may struggle to adapt is in developing clear visions for digital projects with matching risk management strategies to deal with the inherent complexities. There is, however, a simple toolbox that every manager can use to reduce risk, increase project clarity and deliver a valued digital resource.

The economic and funding context
Libraries have always had an important economic facet to their existence, development and value to society. The 13th--century Spanish Arab historian Ibn Hayyan stated: ‘ Whatever book I want to have I can get on loan from any library, while if I wanted to borrow money to buy these books I should find no-one who would lend it to me.’1 When the library stored unique items that only the very few could afford, then its value was clear and the economic sense of a central repository of knowledge was obvious. In the modern era, the competition to communicate information and knowledge to the world has created new market economies. This means every drop of value must be squeezed from the available resources to maintain funding now and in the future. Senior library managers are confronting difficult decisions on resource allocation and have to contend with the significant issue of opportunity costs in developing digitally based services.

There are several different costs to consider in relation to digital information:

• immediate start-up costs of either creating or purchasing digital content;
• further implementation costs for establishing a digitised resource;
• costs for managing and maintaining a digital resource in the longer term.

Next to consider are the benefits derived from the resource itself, how these are offset against costs and whether it is possible to measure the cost-effectiveness or tangible benefits of going digital. Whether they intend to recover costs or make a profit in the future is a key strategic question that every library manager has to address in developing digital information resources.

Recent digitisation funding
Looking at the digital library arena you see the following levels of funding:

• £50m for digitisation from the UK New Opportunities Fund;
• $75m CDN on content digitisation programmes in libraries, museums and archives via the Canadian Federal Government’s Digital Cultural Content Initiative;
• >£1m on national digitisation projects in Denmark in 2002;
• >£1m start-up costs at the University of Central England for digital library development (Uceel);
• >$12m expenditure over five years on the Library Digital Initiative at Harvard University, US.

This looks like significant national and institutional investment, but it should be set against some fundamental realities of market trends. The numbers of professional librarians and points of service are dropping and journal prices, for instance, have increased by 55 per cent in the period 1994-99.2

From the librarian’s perspective, there are fewer professionals, less funding in real terms, a huge acceleration in resource and information availability (at a price), plus a higher demand for digital information from users.

From the users’ point of view, they are no longer solely reliant upon physical storehouses of information to satisfy their desire for information. Nor are they as dependent upon the intermediary skills of a librarian to answer reference enquiries and search for information — or so they might believe. The advent of electronic resources and easy access from home and office may seem, from the user perspective, to mitigate the need for library professionals.

Real competition
Nowadays, managers have to develop skills in the more flexible, competitive regions of project management, systems implementation and fundraising. Whatever the size of library, there will be technology to implement, and the ability to manage the process has become a key requirement for librarians. The growth in competition for funding means that meeting obligations on time and to budget is critical, not just for the task in hand but for future funding prospects as well. Recent UK research has shown that in the period 1997-2000 ‘only 32 per cent of archives, 3 per cent of libraries and 30 per cent of museums had not submitted bids for projects worth over £10,000’.3 The competition is real and fundraising is a skill which all librarians will have to learn.

Management is often characterised as ‘getting results through people’. As more information technology is added to the library, and money comes in the form of short-term funded projects, the librarian has to implement management strategies which are simultaneously more flexible and more stringent. The goals and objectives have to be more clearly articulated and delineated to achieve successful and visible completion of the project, but the way that resources are assigned has to be more flexible than before. Project management is a relatively new practice, even though projects have obviously been with us for many centuries. It grew out of the resource strictures of the two World Wars and in part was due to the need to achieve goals with far fewer people available. Project management is defined as achieving project goals with the resources available — time, space, money, materials, technology, information and people.

Key to this project approach to implementing either large-scale technical solutions or running small content creation projects is a clear vision, good organisation and risk management. To develop the vision for the project and its planning, you have to see how all the elements fit together.

Library managers may fear that, because they do not understand the in-depth technical details of digital libraries, digitisation or metadata schemas, or are not a subject specialist, their capacity to plan effectively will be limited. It is not essential to be a technical expert in all the areas involved in the development, but it is important to appreciate the interactions between project elements and their potential impact upon the wider organisation and goals.4 An overview of the whole life cycle of the technical development will be important to ensure that the objectives, aims, available resources and deliverables are complementary and achievable.

In my experience about one-third of the digital projects which fail do so because of inadequate project management and control. A further third fail due to a combination of poor communication in the project and badly defined goals and objectives. The rest fail due to a lack of familiarity with the scope and complexity of the project, leading to costly mistakes, such as using the incorrect technology for the purpose or underestimating the project size and resources needed. These issues can be resolved through good planning, a clear project vision and active risk management.

An Example from a decision matrix:

Next generation managers’ toolkit
The following items are the essential items in all next generation managers’ toolkits:

• clear vision = clear goals = clear success criteria;
• stakeholder studies;
• feasibility studies;
• infrastructure survey;
• matrix of requirements;
• risk assessment.

Clear vision
Being able to describe the core vision of the project clearly is an essential element of project planning and implementation. It helps to ensure that everyone involved (including funders, management and users) knows the project’s objectives and goals. A clear vision helps to avoid project drift, a particular problem for digital projects as someone is always coming up with a ‘better’ technology. The goals and objectives should be achievable and not just wishful thinking (i.e. think implementation and process, not research or testing). The vision should also make it extremely clear what the success criteria are, so that the project can be celebrated for its success against these realistic measures — rather than being criticised for not having delivered a manned library mission to Mars!

Stakeholder studies
Before beginning any sizeable project it is worth doing a stakeholder study to define the value of the activity and asset base according to users, policy makers and others. This needs to be as inclusive as possible to gain support from the various key people who will help ensure your project is a success. One often ignored group is IT support, even though they can absolutely guarantee project failure if they are not consulted or do not feel part ownership of the project. Ironically this group is frequently the hardest for librarians to gain commitment from and communicate effectively with. However, any effort made to draw them into the process at an early stage will pay dividends as the project progresses.

The goal of the study is thus twofold. First, it needs to find out what the stakeholders want and believe will make a successful project. Second, it aims to get the stakeholders to commit to the project’s vision.

Feasibility studies
The purpose of a feasibility study is to extend the evidence base for planning the large-scale project. It is an essential risk management tool as it allows the project manager to experiment with various ideas or processes and to investigate cost issues in a constrained environment before choosing a specific course of action for the greater project. The feasibility study is the equivalent of dipping one’s toe in the water to test the temperature. It is extremely important to measure everything possible at the feasibility stage, such as the time taken for any activity or the cost of individual elements. This will form the evidence base for project planning and enable managers to identify potential problems or resource shortfalls early in the planning, mitigating the risk with contingency plans.

Infrastructure survey
It is important to assess before beginning any project what infrastructure exists and whether it will support the project. The most obvious question to ask, but one that is often overlooked, is whether the project goals can be achieved with the technology available. For example, in a county council context, a modest digitisation project of 1,000 images may well take up more server space than the rest of the county’s website presence, leading to potential difficulties when the project requests support and more space. An infrastructure survey is necessary for proper risk management and enables you to plan improvements if they are deemed essential to success. Without such planning, a project may meet with embarrassment. One project delivering oral history video content was so successful that it compromised the rest of the library systems for the whole organisation.

Matrix of requirements (see below)
In any digital project there will be a range of equipment or systems to be purchased. The more complex the project, the greater the risk involved in selecting a product that doesn’t meet all the requirements. It is very tempting to select systems and equipment on the basis of an impressive demonstration or promises of superb performance. The matrix (pictured) of requirements is a simple tool to avoid decisions being made on the basis of emotive indicators. It relies instead on quantitative and qualitative factors which can be measured. By listing the various desirable elements of the product, service or system and then assigning a score with a ranking, a clearer, easier comparison between products can be achieved. This is a very simple tool but one which requires a disciplined approach.

Risk management
One of the hardest project management skills is the ability to be honest about the real risks of failure in a project before the risk can occur. It can seem needlessly negative to admit the possibility that something may go wrong and once admitted it can become the focus of worry rather than action. The purpose of risk management is to identify the core activities that must be undertaken to achieve success, and then to assess the resources that are essential to their achievement. The risk to these resources can then be assessed and quantified. Contingency plans should be made at this point to provide cover in the event of one or more of the severe risks identified becoming a reality.

One of the best ways to mitigate technical risks is by employing and then empowering the right people in the project. First, employ as good a project manager as possible. It is quite tempting, having put in a lot of effort to get a project off the ground, to make oneself the project manager. Make an honest assessment of whether you are a good project manager or have the time to dedicate to the activity — you do not want to be the reason the project fails. This is often a question of ownership and many managers assume that only the project manager can have ownership of the project. In a well run project, all the project participants should feel this ownership — the only thing the project manager exclusively owns are all the problems. Further risk mitigation can be achieved by empowering the project staff to fulfil their roles and by ensuring good communication between all participants. The most obvious risk to any project is the loss of key staff at a critical stage — so look after your staff and give them plenty of development opportunities.

Training
It will be essential to develop a large number of transferable skills in the project team and management that are not limited to specific job roles or tasks in hand. As research has suggested, there is a need for more money to be spent on training and for the focus to shift from function to goal orientation.5

Training is definitely a viable solution for lack of suitable skills, as this will reap immediate benefits in terms of increased productivity and raised confidence. Paul Conway, in his final report on Yale University’s Project Open Book, is reported as documenting the significant impact of training and practice on digitisation costs: ‘Extensive analysis showed that the "practice effect" improved productivity 44 per cent for scanning and 50 per cent for indexing.’6

A well trained project team is a key factor in achieving successful digital projects and the benefits that come from actively developing the team’s skills should never be underestimated.

Conclusions
The following are my suggestions to keep in mind whenever planning and implanting digital projects:

• focus on project goals not just technology;
• shape achievable goals;
• gain institutional support and long-term policy commitment;
• turn projects into programmes and/or services where possible;
• gather a dynamic and flexible workforce;
• establish best practice for your project — document it and apply it;
• manage risks and be aware of opportunity costs;
• remember project implementation is not the same as research — don’t do it without a reasonable evidence base for success.

References
1 F. Lerner. The Story of Libraries from the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age. Continuum, 1998.
2 S. Maynard. Library and information statistics tables for the UK 2000. Library & Information Statistics Unit (www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/dils/lisu/list00/list00.html).
3 S. Parker et al. The Bidding Culture and Local Government: effects on the development of public libraries, archives and museums. School of Information Studies, University of Northumbria, 2001 (http://is.unn.ac.uk/imri/).
4 M. Deegan and S. Tanner. Digital Futures: strategies for the information age. Facet Publishing, 2002.
5 J. Carpenter. What Makes a Digital Librarian? A critical analysis of the management culture needed for effective digital library development. British Library Research and Innovation Centre, 1999, Report 174.
6 A. R. Kenney and O.Y. Rieger (eds). Moving Theory into Practice: digital imaging for libraries and archives. Research Libraries Group, 2000.

Simon Tanner is Director for KDCS — KCL Digital Consultancy Services and a Facet author (simon.tanner@kcl.ac.uk).