On 1 August 2012 13:49, Fae <faenwp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 1 August 2012 13:29, Fae <faenwp(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Scanning and promoting the use of the images and
text for the public
benefit. Then selling the book at either little loss or a likely
profit for the charity once we have a lot of public attention on it.
Slight amendment after thinking over a cup of tea - I would prefer to
see it donated to the British Library (or some another worthy public
archive) for the permanent public benefit, rather than resell. This
fits better with the Wikimedia UK mission and the receiving
institution might even help with archive quality digitization.
Much as I would like to say "we here at the BL would love you to pay
for a new and exciting manuscript", I'm not sure this is the best
approach for spending Chapter funds in terms of value returned. Grants
for a third party to acquire material is a long way from the sort of
thing we've supported before, and while I think you could just about
argue it's inside our objectives, I personally have my doubts.
(Look at it another way: If an archive had come to us and said "we'd
like you to fund digitisation of this book", we'd probably say yes at
£250, maybe at £500, and start laughing if they said it would cost
£5,000.)
The best model for cases like this would be to develop a method where
we have an agreed partner who'll digitise culturally significant
material at a reasonable cost (or a group who can do it in-house, but
for material like this that's tricky) and a standing offer to fund it
for certain classes of limited-availability material like this. We
then approach the auctioneers or booksellers, talk them in to letting
us have it for a day to scan it, and let them do as they will after
that.
One risk here is that the digitisation would lower the marketable
value of the final item, but I don't know how we'd quantify this one
way or the other.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk