Final report to JISC on the usage and impact study of JISC-funded phase 1 digitisation projects and the toolkit for the impact of digitised scholarly resources (TIDSR)

The primary aims of the project were to measure the impact of five JISC funded digitisation projects, and to assemble a Toolkit for the Impact of Digital Scholarly Resources, which provides open access to a set of approaches and tools available to measure and potentially improve the usage and impact of current and future digitisation projects. The project assessed the usage and impact of five specific JISC funded digitisation projects, using a variety of research methods in order to reach a more comprehensive understanding of the uses and impacts of these resources. Quantitative measures included webometrics, log file analysis, scientometric (or bibliometric) analysis, and content analysis. These were complemented by an array of qualitative measures (stakeholder interviews, resource surveys, user feedback, focus groups, and questionnaires) that captured information about the whole cycle of usage and impact. The qualitative measures allowed us to examine the impact of the projects from the point of view of various stakeholders, starting with the host institutions (including libraries and archives), the personnel at the host institutions responsible for implementation (including the developers and engineers of the systems and curators and archivists of the collections), and stretching all the way to the various types of end users and the uses they represent.