Spotlight on the digital – final recommendations and outputs

Here are the final outputs of the Spotlight on the Digital project:

1) Online guide Make your digital resources easier to discover: a web-based resource for creators and managers of digitsed and digital resources packed with practical tips on how to improve the discoverability of their collections, arranged under broader categories such as “Make Google searches work for you“, “Use social media” and “Learn to use content aggregators“.

2) Final report with recommendations for above-campus interventions to support discovery of digitised collections.

3) Technical specifications for tools to support collection managers with tasks that would make discovery of content easier.

– Tool specification created by the National Library of Wales to enable institutions to better assess and manage the discoverability of their online resources Spotlight Tool NLW_FINAL

– Tool specification created by the University of Sheffield to develop a discovery-friendly version of a resource’s textual content at the record level Spotlight_Tool_Sheffield_FINAL

4) Web-based assessment of the discoverability of a sample of 177 digitised resources over the last 15 years from major publicly funded programmes such as the New Opportunities Fund, the AHRC resource Enhancement programme and a variety of Jisc digitisation and content programmes.

– Web assessment report Web Assessment Summary Report – Final v3_Clean_public

– Web assessment data spreadsheet All SOTD Manual Tests – 177 LIVE_Final

5) Literature review on online user behaviours in resource discovery, compiled from studies and reports published in the last 5 years.

6) Online survey with UK Higher Education libraries (the survey has been anonymised, which accounts for the non-sequential page numbering after p13) 131220 Spotlight Survey Summary_anonymised

A big thank you to all those who have participated in the project, a list of people and institutions is at the back of the Final report.

Jisc received funding for Phase 2 of the project which is about to start. Updates will continue on this blog.

Spotlight on the Digital was a collaboration between Jisc, RLUK and SCONUL. A blog post by David Prosser, Executive director of Research Libraries UK (RLUK), summarising the project is on the Jisc web site