Link to this page: go.osu.edu/dpa-digital-content-policy

Introduction

This project is an outgrowth of initial findings from the Workflow Analysis project and Digital Projects Planning, Priorities and Transparency discussions. The findings include the need for a digital content policy, priority management, process controls, consolidated project documentation and designated repository for it, and mechanisms for the transfer of knowledge resulting from staff turnover (or simply the passage of time). The initial work of this tactical sub-group will deal with the first element, digital content policy.

As this group works towards establishing a policy framework for the University Libraries' digital content, it should be address concerns related to:

• Clarify the selection criteria for long-term preservation and stewardship versus transactional work that need to be discarded
• Is it in alignment with existing collection strategies?
• Is it in alignment with organizational goals/strategies?
• Investigate peer institution decision-making criteria?
• What is it we can do vs. what we cannot?

The secondary considerations, that may or may not need a dedicated workgroup, but are inevitably intertwined in the aforementioned considerations include:

• What drives the priority decisions?
• Who decides on the priority? (A committee once had the authority)
• What is an appropriate governance model?
• What is it we can do vs. what we cannot?

Members

• Morag Boyd
• Miriam Centeno
• Tamar Chute
• Nena Couch
• Dan Noonan, Convener
• Jenny Robb
• Gene Springs

Timeframe

Kickoff in November 2020 with a draft by the end of January 2021, with final recommendations no later than end of March 2021.

Planning for Sustainable Change: University Libraries Digital Content Policy & Governance

Problem Statement

The Ohio State University Libraries currently lacks a holistic approach to the governance and management of the activities to process born digital content and to digitize existing collection content that would facilitate our commitment to sustainable access, long-term stewardship and preservation of this content for the benefit of our current and future users.

Current State >>> Future State

Defining the Change

Benefits

Process

Measuring Progress

Meetings

May 18, 2021

Attendance: Sue Beck, Morag Boyd, Miriam Centeno, Tamar Chute, Nena Couch, Dan Noonan, Jenny Robb, & Gene Springs

Agenda

• Categorizing Prioritization Factors
  • Ratable rubric?
• Returning to Change Management Process Matrix

April 22, 2021

Attendance: Sue Beck, Morag Boyd, Miriam Centeno, Tamar Chute, Nena Couch, Dan Noonan, Jenny Robb, & Gene Springs

Agenda

• Definition of Project
• Prioritization Factors

April 1, 2021

Attendance: Sue Beck, Morag Boyd, Miriam Centeno, Tamar Chute, Nena Couch, Dan Noonan, Jenny Robb, & Gene Springs

Agenda

• Action Items Review:
  • Dan to send email asking for project list, types of projects, prioritization factors
  • Sub-group members to respond to email
• Discussion of Unit Priorities and how they factor organizationally
• Discussion of what a project is and why define it.

March 25, 2021

Attendance: Sue Beck, Morag Boyd, Miriam Centeno, Tamar Chute, Nena Couch, Dan Noonan, Jenny Robb, & Gene Springs

Agenda

• Demo/discuss the new "Additional Considerations" section
• Does it make a difference about how we've made decision in the past, instead of how we should be doing it??? 
  • Personal Prioritization Factors
  • Unit Prioritization Factors
• Lists of Projects:
  • What defines a project?
  • Are we just talking digital?
  • Another way to discuss it is as a workstream.
  • Can we pilot/experiment with something with a smaller group (key stakeholder) and a small group of projects?
  • Do we need a decision-making body, or is it a matter of communication?
  • When does something transition from a project to ongoing work, or does it?
  • How does Copyright fit within this process?
• Action Items:
  • Dan to send email asking for project list, types of projects, prioritization factors
  • Sub-group members to respond to email

March 12, 2021

Attendance: Sue Beck, Morag Boyd, Miriam Centeno, Tamar Chute, Nena Couch, Dan Noonan, Jenny Robb, & Gene Springs

Agenda

• Continuing review of "Process" section
  • Some prioritization considerations:
    • Patron Needs
      
      • 1st come - 1st serve
      • Authority of the request (OtP, Legal, Donor, etc)
      • Deadlines
    • Ownership/Copyright
    • Physical condition
    • Staffing levels (both understaffed and over resourced)
      • changes in workflow and expectations
      • skills and availability of student staff
    • Where materials are located
    • Technical limitations
    • Collection assessments
    • Strategic initiatives aligned with the greater organization
    • Need agreement on "what's most important"
      • transparency on the decision(s)
      • what happens when one priority trumps another and affects deadlines?
      • Need to be flexible in re-assigning priorities
      • How do we react to unanticipated needs/issues
      • Incomplete projects
    • Management of lifecycle
    • Active stakeholder participation/engagement when necessary
    • Opportunities for one div/dept/unit impacts other div/dept/unit (both positively & negatively)
    • Project management (& skills) utilized consistently throughout Libraries
    • Framework to allow us to say "No" and/or manage expectations more effectively; or to understand when we have no option but to say "Yes" how do we deal with the impact.
  • Types of priorities/resource allocation:
    • Strategic
    • day-to-day:
      • can get too caught up in higher strategic priorities
      • Sometimes left out of "strategic plan" because "we just do them" and could be potentially be de-prioritized
      • Without a clear picture of d-2-d we can be significantly under-resourced
    • Lack of transparency in other div/dept/unit's priorities
    • Balancing external requests vs. What we'd like to do
    • Organizational impact vs. divisional/departmental/unit impact
    • Possibly look at DPLA's "Radical Prioritization" process?
• Begin to create a synthesized prioritization/decision-making strategy

February 25, 2021

Attendance: Sue Beck, Morag Boyd, Miriam Centeno, Tamar Chute, Nena Couch, Dan Noonan, Jenny Robb, & Gene Springs

Agenda

• Continuing review of "Process" section
  
  • Analysis of individual area prioritization/decision-making strategy. Discussion prompts:
    
    • What are the steps you take?
      • Project pre-review is important in potentially preempting factors that negatively impact the organization after the accessioning of born digital materials or a digitization project
    • What are routine tasks vs. specialized vs unique?
      • Much of the work is routine
      • Routine work can/does include constant re-prioritization
      • "Routine" might not be the appropriate word; routine might not be daily, but is routine; possibly "regular"
      • Some units regular activity does not impact other units; conversely time sensitive/urgent requests may disrupt multiple cross-unit workflows
      • An overarching goals is to try to make all of our work routine/regular with the ability to pivot back-and-forth to handle time-sensitive requests
      • Various units will have factors that are unique to them; how do we accommodate those factors in an equitable manner?
    • What are the factors you consider?
      • Time sensitive
        • requests for materials for classes, loans, exhibits, patrons and/or donor expectations
        • Need to be transparent with our constituents as to our abilities to handle time sensitive requests
      • Impact
    • How do embarking upon projects impact day-to-day workflows?
    • How do you prioritize and re-allocate work when necessary?
      • Need for open/transparent communications channels, including when a priority drops.
      • How do we de-prioritize work vs. the need for completed projects?
      • Potential future solution: a regular (e.g. monthly) meeting similar to the compliment of this sub-group that discusses/decides priorities
    • Other concerns:
      • Discussion devolves to digitization at the expense of handling born digital
      • Need for systems-thinking vs. silos thinking, not only across units, but within units
  • Did not get to this Agenda Item:  Begin to create a synthesized prioritization/decision-making strategy

January 26, 2021

Attendance: Sue Beck, Morag Boyd, Miriam Centeno, Tamar Chute, Nena Couch, Dan Noonan, Jenny Robb, & Gene Springs

Agenda

• Review of "Benefits" section
  
  • tweaked some of the language to include not only research, but instruction and its associated stakeholders
• Discussion of "Process" section
  
  • Most of the discussion focused on the question, "How will we go about doing this?"
  • General sentiment is that we are beginning to get to the heart of the problem.
  • Homework due February 11:

    • articulate how individual units prioritize and make decisions about their own collections and workflows:

      • What are the steps you take?
      • What are routine tasks vs. specialized vs unique?
      • What are the factors you consider?
      • How do embarking upon projects impact day-to-day workflows?
      • How do you prioritize and re-allocate work when necessary?

December 10, 2020

Attendance: Sue Beck, Morag Boyd, Miriam Centeno, Tamar Chute, Nena Couch, Dan Noonan, Jenny Robb, & Gene Springs

Agenda

• Recap of discussion "Current >>> Future States"
• Robust discussion around "Defining the Change" (see above)
• Action Items:
  • Review "Benefits"
  • Review, deep contemplation and suggestions for "Process"

November 24, 2020

Attendance: Sue Beck, Morag Boyd, Miriam Centeno, Tamar Chute, Nena Couch, Dan Noonan, Jenny Robb, & Gene Springs

Agenda

• Kickoff meeting
• Discussion of the framing document to approach this activity as an exercise in change management. The framing document is adapted from DeEtta Jones and Associates' "Planning for Sustainable Change"

What is a Project?

Why do we need to define "project"? This term continually comes up in the discussion of how we prioritize the work we do within the University Libraries, both within our units and collaboratively across the organization.

Definitions and key concepts provided by team members:

• A project to be any activity for which we need to define parameters or create/significantly adjust workflows to accomplish the work.
• Projects are holistic work that cover a section/series/type of material.
• Quantity of materials/activity drives what is a project.
• Anything that involves multiple units and long-term commitment of time & labor.
• Projects can be internal to a unit or collaboratively across more than one unit.
• Project should have a defined beginning and end; identified outcomes or deliverables.
• Even routine daily activities if examined closely enough might be considered micro-projects
• Even within the routine workflows, we run into unusual situation that become projects because we have to use novel processes to manage them.
• We have other workflows that should be routine, but are currently not due to lack of standardized inputs and processes.
• A planned endeavor, usually with a specific goal and accomplished in several steps or stages. (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/project Retrieved 2021.04.01)

Definition (approved April 22, 2021):

A project is an activity, or set of activities, for which we need to determine the parameters for completion, including a beginning and end; requirements, resources (fiscal/human/technical) and dependencies; and the outcomes and deliverables.

It is understood that work that is conducted collaboratively, across multiple units within the Libraries, may or often rise to the level of a "project." However, a project may just be internally focused.

In order for the Libraries to be able to appropriately prioritize collaborative project work, that work needs to be conspicuously visible; further, internal project work needs to be made visible to the entire organization.

How do we prioritize within the University Libraries?

Based upon input from team members, the following are key factors in determining workload priorities (listed alphabetically):

• Alignment with priorities of objectives for the University Libraries, and its divisions, departments, program areas and units
• Capacity/Availability of fiscal, human and technological resources
• Commitment to donors and community
• Deadlines that are justified 
• Disaster mitigation
• Does this work lead to future efficiencies?
• Expression of exigent circumstances
  
• Fragility and obsolescence of materials.
• Knowing what work/projects is/are in the "queues" and existing priorities (this is aspirational)
• Matching of available capacity to the needs of the tasks
• Patron needs
• Project size/scope
• Readiness (is the project well thought out and planned; checklist ticked off)
  
• Identifying dependencies, obstacles and feasibility
  

• Unexpected opportunity

• Who is requesting the work:
  • Donor
  • External collaborative projects
  • Guest curators
  • Legal/Compliance related
  • Libraries' curators/librarians with primary responsibility for materials
  • Libraries' Leadership
  • Libraries' staff/faculty
  • Patrons (standard and rush requests)
  • University leadership 

NEXT STEP(S): We need to determine if this is our list of priorities. Once we've settled on the list we need to establish how to operationalize it as a rubric, and how we will govern the process in an equitable manner.

• Maybe re-state Reconciling dependencies and obstacles - Dependencies/obstacles can be reconciled through digitization project. 

• Prioritizing list: I don’t think so. It’s so different depending on the unit. And who is requesting the work can either put it at the very top or can make it lower

  • Can't have wild west
  • Can't have draconian process
  • Discussed w/Search Committee analogy

• Rubric/Tool:

  • We do need a tool to guide these decisions, and a weighted rubric seems like a possibility. The responsibility for assigning scores should rest where the work would – for example, I have seen several digitization proposals where the proposer declares the metadata is good but the units responsible for that work would not have made the same assessment.

  • I don’t think so. It’s so different depending on the unit. And who is requesting the work can either put it at the very top or can make it lower
• Visibility: I believe we do need a formalized process, which is not to automatically equate formalized with complex or onerous. However, most projects will require input from multiple units and make some resources unavailable to other uses, so the decision has to be collective.
• Formalized process: Probably if we want it to be equitable, but we can’t make this crazy complicated. Honestly, what will happen is everyone will avoid doing it if it’s too complicated.

Additional Considerations/Resources

Below are several additional resources we have looked at for inspiration for the work this group is doing. While not ultimately used, it does help inform the process we have gone through.

Eisenhower Prioritization Matrix

While this is a prioritization matrix that may play out more effectively at the personal/individual level, conceptually it is worth considering.

Adapted from:

• How to Prioritize Tasks and Do Only The Work That Matters by Benjamin Brandall @ https://www.process.st/how-to-prioritize-tasks/ Retrieved 2021.03.17
• The Eisenhower Matrix: Avoid the "Urgency Trap" with Dwight D. Eisenhower's famous prioritization framework by Laura Scroggs @ https://todoist.com/productivity-methods/eisenhower-matrix Retrieved 2021.03.23

Ivy Lee Method

While this century old method works more at the personal level, there may ways to potentially adapt this at the unit and inter-unit organization level, although not necessarily on a daily basis.

Ways to maintain productivity: Journaling through uni vlogs? Productivity techniques? by Study with Li Yi @ https://studywithliyi.home.blog/2019/04/11/ways-to-maintain-productivity-journaling-through-uni-vlogs-productivity-techniques/  Retrieved 2021.03.24

• The Ivy Lee Method: The Daily Routine Experts Recommend for Peak Productivity by James Clear @ https://jamesclear.com/ivy-lee Retrieved 2021.03.24. Below are several interesting quotes form the article with emphasis added:
  

  • "It's simple enough to actually work. The primary critique of methods like this one is that they are too basic. They don't account for all of the complexities and nuances of life. What happens if an emergency pops up? What about using the latest technology to our fullest advantage? In my experience, complexity is often a weakness because it makes it harder to get back on track. Yes, emergencies and unexpected distractions will arise. Ignore them as much as possible, deal with them when you must, and get back to your prioritized to-do list as soon as possible. Use simple rules to guide complex behavior."

  • "It forces you to make tough decisions. I don't believe there is anything magical about Lee's number of six important tasks per day. It could just as easily be five tasks per day. However, I do think there is something magical about imposing limits upon yourself. I find that the single best thing to do when you have too many ideas (or when you're overwhelmed by everything you need to get done) is to prune your ideas and trim away everything that isn't absolutely necessary. Constraints can make you better. Lee's method is similar to Warren Buffett’s 25-5 Rule, which requires you to focus on just 5 critical tasks and ignore everything else. Basically, if you commit to nothing, you'll be distracted by everything."

  • "It removes the friction of starting. The biggest hurdle to finishing most tasks is starting them. (Getting off the couch can be tough, but once you actually start running it is much easier to finish your workout.) Lee's method forces you to decide on your first task the night before you go to work. This strategy has been incredibly useful for me: as a writer, I can waste three or four hours debating what I should write about on a given day. If I decide the night before, however, I can wake up and start writing immediately. It's simple, but it works. In the beginning, getting started is just as important as succeeding at all."

  • "It requires you to single-task. Modern society loves multi-tasking. The myth of multi-tasking is that being busy is synonymous with being better. The exact opposite is true. Having fewer priorities leads to better work. Study world-class experts in nearly any field—athletes, artists, scientists, teachers, CEOs—and you'll discover one characteristic runs through all of them: focus. The reason is simple. You can't be great at one task if you're constantly dividing your time ten different ways. Mastery requires focus and consistency."

• "3. Rank your daily tasks by their true priority with the Ivy Lee Method" in The “Everything is Important” paradox: 9 practical methods for how to prioritize your work (and time) by Jory MacKay @ https://rescuetime.wpengine.com/how-to-prioritize/#ivy-lee-method Retrieved 2021.03.24

Master List

Another technique, that is more effective at the personal level, but may allow us to organizationally visualize the work we do is the Master List method. In essence, it is a brain dump of all the tasks in front of us that are prioritized into what can be accomplished in the next month, week and day.

"1. Capture everything on a Master List and then break it down by monthly, weekly, and daily goals" in The “Everything is Important” paradox: 9 practical methods for how to prioritize your work (and time) by Jory MacKay @ https://rescuetime.wpengine.com/how-to-prioritize/#master-list Retrieved 2021.03.24

Sunk Cost Fallacy

The Sunk Cost Effect or Fallacy is our tendency to continue to do and/or prioritize a project or activity something because of the effort and resources we have put into it, regardless of the actual outcome.

• "The Sunk Cost Effect" by Raul Guerrero @ https://www.raul-guerrero.com/blog-archive/the-sunk-cost-effect Retrieved 2021.03.24
• "7. Be aware of the sunk cost fallacy (i.e. be flexible enough to change your mind and drop priorities)" in The “Everything is Important” paradox: 9 practical methods for how to prioritize your work (and time) by Jory MacKay @ https://rescuetime.wpengine.com/how-to-prioritize/#master-list Retrieved 2021.03.24
• Sunk Cost>Fallacy Effect by Wikipedia @ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Fallacy_effect Retrieved 2021.03.24

Other Readings

8 Best Practices for Prioritizing Project Work for Your Team by Will Kelly/Liquid Planner @ https://www.liquidplanner.com/blog/prioritizing-project-work-team/ Retrieved 2021.03.24

This is an interesting and brief article that leans into some of the other concepts discussed in this section. Especially salient points have been emphasized and commented on:

1. Make the Project Schedule Visible to Everyone
   1. This is a distinctive gap we have within the University Libraries
   2. This is complicated by the Libraries not having a good gauge of the time it really takes to complete different types of activities, nor do we understand how much total capacity we have for the work we do.

2. Create a Project Backlog

3. Manage Your Team for the Long and Short Game

4. Know Your Business

5. Give Project Tasks a Finish Date

6. Add Buffers: Account for Uncertainty in Your Schedule

7. Learn How to Predict Incoming Priority Shifts

8. Draw the Line between Urgent and Important Tasks

Collection Development Policy Statement for the Conservation Collection in the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute 2019-10-01 @ https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/guides_bibliographies/conservation_collection/cc_policy.pdf Retrieved 2021.03.25

• Addresses the use of conspectus

"Digitization Selection Criteria as Anti-Racist Action" by S.L. Ziegler in code{4}lib Journal Issue 45 2019-08-09 @ https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/14667 Retrieved 2021.03.25

"Role of conspectus in collection management and resource sharing" by M.S. Sridhar in  Library Science with a slant to Documentation and Information Studies, 34 (2) June 1997, 91-97. @ http://eprints.rclis.org/9582/1/J39_role_of_conspectus.pdf Retrieved 2021.03.25

• Provides some historical perspective. "Conspectus is an instrument, an assessment methodology and a consortial database which enable providing optimum patron specific access model for resource sharing among libraries."

"The Mere Urgency Effect" by Meng Zhu, Yang Yang & Christopher K. Hsee in Journal of Consumer Research, v45 (2018) https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/45/3/673/4847790 Retrieved 2021.03.25

"Phased Conservation" by Peter Waters in The Book and Paper Group Annual @ https://cool.culturalheritage.org/coolaic/sg/bpg/annual/v17/bp17-17.html Retrieved 2021.03.25

• "...introduced the Point System, a system whereby we carefully determine the actual amount of hours available to work on Custodial Divisions Book, Paper and Phased conservation projects and apportion this time as divisional budgets of time (one point equals one hour), equitably amongst the divisions and the exhibits program on an annual basis. This system forces the Custodial Divisions to make their selections with great care, and within their allotted annual points budget, knowing that there is limited resource in the Conservation Office, and it exposes the Conservation Office to meet its annual budget of time spent on treatments. This system has proven itself and established good working relationships between the Divisions and the Conservation Office. "

SPEC Kit 341: Digital Collections Assessment and Outreach (August 2014) by Ochoa, Marilyn N.; Taylor, Laurie N.; Sullivan, Mark V. @ https://publications.arl.org/Digital-Collections-Assessment-Outreach-SPEC-Kit-341/ Retrieved 2021.03.25

Insights from Scrum

Below are a few insights from Jeff Sutherland's Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time (© 2014) that may be helpful in understanding teamwork, communications and project management:

• "But just because cross-functionality can achieve great results, you shouldn't play Noah and throw two of everything into a team. The team dynamic only works well in small teams. The classic formulation is seven people, plus or minus two, though I've seen teams as small as three function at a high level. What's fascinating is that the data shows that if you have more than nine people on a team, their velocity actually slows down." (page 58)
• "If you want to calculate the impact of group size, you take the number of people on a team, multiply "that number minus 1," and divide by two. Communication channels = n(n-1)/2. So for example, if you have five people, you have ten channels. Six people, fifteen channels. Seven, twenty-one. Eight, twenty-eight. Nine, thirty-six. Ten, forty-five. Our brains can't keep up with that many people at once." (page 60)
• "...but first let me introduce you to the graph with one of the best names ever, the "Cone of Uncertainty." The graph shows that the beginning estimates of work can range from 400 percent beyond the time actually taken to 25 percent of the time taken. The low and high estimates differ by a factor of sixteen. As the project progresses and more and more gets settled, the estimates fall more and more into line with reality until there are no more estimates, only reality." (pages 118 - 119)

Insights from The Phoenix Project

In Gene Kim, Kevin Behr & George Spafford's novel, The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win (© 2013 https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/the-phoenix-project/9781457191350/46-resourceFour.xhtml Retrieved 2021.04.06) among other things they describe "The Four Types of Work." While it is posed in terms of IT Dev/Ops, it can also be interpreted more broadly amongst all the work we do.

• Business projects: These are business initiatives, of which most Development projects encompass. These typically reside in the Project Management Office, which tracks all the official projects in an organization.
• Internal IT projects: These include the infrastructure or IT Operations projects that business projects may create, as well as internally generated improvement projects (e.g., create new environment, automate deployment). Often these are not centrally tracked anywhere, instead residing with the budget owners (e.g., database manager, storage manager, distributed systems manager). This creates a problem when IT Operations is a bottleneck, because there is no easy way to find out how much of capacity is already committed to internal projects.
• Changes: These are often generated from the previous two types of work and are typically tracked in a ticketing system (e.g., Remedy for IT Operations, JIRA, or an Agile planning tool for Development). The fact that two systems exist to track work for two different parts of the value stream can create problems, especially when handoffs are required. Incidentally, in some dedicated teams that own both the feature development and service delivery responsibilities, all work lives in the same system. This has some advantages, because operational incidents will show up in the backlog and “in work,” alongside feature defects and new feature functionality.
• Unplanned work or recovery work: These include operational incidents and problems, often caused by the previous types of work and always come at the expense of other planned work commitments.

• We will be identifying all existing processes related to providing access to and preservation of our born digital and digitized content.
• We are utilizing the SIPOC, RACI and Brainwriting tools to complete the list of process steps, capturing roles, individuals and handoffs…
• …leading to the development of a process map.
• The draft process map will be shared and validated with the stakeholders, and presented to our Digital Preservation and Access work group for final considerations before sharing with the Sponsors and greater University Libraries’ community.

Guidelines for Living in a World of Systems

Appendix from Donella Meadows & Diana Wright's Thinking in Systems © 2008

1.  Get the beat of the system.

2. Expose your mental models to the light of day.

3. Honor, respect, and distribute information.

4. Use language with care and enrich it with systems concepts.

5. Pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable.

6. Make feedback policies for feedback systems.

7. Go for the good of the whole.

8. Listen to the wisdom of the system.

9. Locate responsibility within the system.

10. Stay humble—stay a learner.

11. Celebrate complexity.

12. Expand time horizons.

13. Defy the disciplines.

14. Expand the boundary of caring.

15. Don't erode the goal of goodness.