The aim of The European Library (TEL)[1] project was to carry our preparatory investigations and consultations which would pave the way for the later development of a system and entity that would provide integrated digital access to the collections and services of European national libraries. It was part funded as an accompanying measure under Key Action 3 of the EU's Information Society Technologies (IST) research programme. The partners were the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL), the national libraries of Finland (HUL) Germany (DDB), Italy (Florence) (BNCF), The Netherlands (KB), Portugal (BN), Slovenia (NUK), Switzerland (SNL) and the United Kingdom (BL), together with ICCU, the national cataloguing agency in Italy. Northumbria University acted as consultant to the project for the business planning element, under contract to the British Library. The project started in January 2001 and completed in January 2004. The overall outcome of the project is that it will be taken forward as an operational service under the auspices of CENL and hosted by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, The Netherlands.

The project was originally conceived as a technologically focused development of a co-operative digital library but was re-focused after peer evaluation of the bid to concentrate on the business, publishing and metadata aspects of a collaborative approach to the digital libraries of national libraries. An element of technical work was nevertheless retained in order to work on testbeds for new methods of search and retrieve. See Woldering (2004) for a general account of the project including technical and metadata aspects. See Van Veen and Oldroyd (2004) for an account of the novel approach to search and retrieve in TEL.

Business planning for digital libraries is here defined as the process by which the business aims, products and services of the eventual system are specified, together with how the digital library service will contribute to the overall business and mission of the host organizations. These provide the context and rationale, which is then combined with normal business plan elements such as technical solution, investment, income, expenditure, projected benefits or returns, marketing, risk analysis, management and governance. In the case of TEL there is the added dimension of planning a successful collaboration between eight national libraries and in due time between all the national libraries of Europe.

In contrast to the technical and copyright aspects of digital libraries, the published literature on business planning is rather sparse. This was observed as a result of the early ground clearing work for TEL project and although more material has since emerged, remains essentially true at the time of writing this paper (May 2004). It was decided at the outset that there should be a clear framework of business aims and objectives within which any new service could be justified. Defining such a framework presented a significant challenge in view of the lack of published experience, differing cultures and missions of the participating libraries, differing stages of digital library development among the participants, and great differences in the resources available to them. Development of a collaborative business plan, therefore, formed one of the major workpackages of the project. (The others were: publisher relations, metadata development and testbed development.) The overall methodology of developing the business plan is described elsewhere (Collier, 2004). This paper focuses on how the business aims and objectives of the partners were identified, both for their own digital library planning and in the collaborative context of TEL, and how they were harmonized into a coherent unified mission for the new service. As an international study it is believed to be the first of its kind and it is hoped that this paper will be a novel contribution to the developing literature on business planning for digital libraries.

It should be noted that during the life of the project ideas about the technical approach changed considerably. At the beginning an integrated digital library was contemplated, with collaborative or centralised e-business solutions. The eventual technical solution chosen is a portal providing integrated searching of distributed digital libraries, which strictly speaking is only a part of the total digital library services offered through TEL. E-business and other services will be managed at the partner sites. It was clear, however, that it was necessary to develop a complete business rationale for TEL which covered all digital library planning aspects, both on an individual and collaborative basis, and that the existing literature on business planning for digital libraries should be thoroughly reviewed.

A preliminary search carried out at the time of applying to the EU for funds indicated that in 2000 there was little material available on business planning for digital libraries, either in formally published papers or on the internet. This was supported by the comprehensive review of digital library research by Chowdhury and Chowdhury (1999) and by a literature search performed at Northumbria University in early 2001 as one of the first activities of the project. No descriptions of the business planning process were found, nor actual business plans. This is not to say that no business plans existed, as it is reasonable to suppose that plans might be kept confidential, as was the case, for instance, of the academic image exchange which was reported on later that year by Greenstein(1)[2]. However, some relevant background material was identified. An early example of strategy and mission from 1996-1997 was to be found at a web site for the proposed California Digital Library. This is apparently no longer available but the current web site www.cdlib.org/index.html for the operational digital library continues as a rich source of information. The Digital Library Federation also was and remains an important source: see, for instance a survey on policies[3]. A 1997 rationale for the setting up of a digital library at Harvard can still be found on the Harvard web site[4]. Bawden and Rowlands (1999) and Oppenheim and Smithson (1999) produced theoretical models for digital libraries. The monograph by Lesk (1997) contained a chapter on the economics of digital libraries. Greenstein(2) commented on the role of digital libraries in business-to-business services (Greenstein, 2000). There was a joint working group of the EU and the National Science Foundation on economic issues[5]. Weber et al. (1998) described the Medoc cost model. Arnold proposed categories of internet revenue models[2]. Halliday and Oppenheim (1999) provided modelling work primarily focusing on electronic journals. Whilst not actually about business planning Zhou's (2000) paper gave an interesting account of an approach to international collaboration, which was relevant to TEL. The literature review also collected examples of organisational structures, profit and not-for-profit, which could be useful for deciding on the eventual form of governance for TEL. In the event these were not needed as it was decided to merge TEL with the Gabriel service of CENL, thus requiring little in the way of legal or constitutional change.

The search was repeated in 2002 and produced additional related material. Montgomery (2000) gave an account of the effect of electronic journal provision on overall library costs. Lynch (2001, 2002) made important contributions on the future of the book and the digitisation of heritage collections. Snowhill (2001) analysed the prospects for e-books in academic libraries. Tanner and Deegan (2002) produced a report on charging models for digital cultural heritage. However, it appeared that the sort of process that was necessary for business planning in TEL was still not widely reported in the published literature. At the time of writing this paper (November 2004) a directly relevant paper has appeared by Barton and Walker (2003), who describe the business plan for DSpace. Furthermore, Bishoff and Allen (2004) have provided a framework and resource guide for digital asset management for cultural heritage organisations. An important collection edited by Andrews and Law (2004) has just been published covering inter alia financing, content and services, institutional archives, and preservation.

As stated above this section focuses on how the business aims and objectives of the participating libraries were elicited and harmonized, both in respect of their own digital library planning and also of their wishes and expectations from participating in the eventual TEL service. It was realized at the very beginning of the project that developing a business plan for TEL would present certain challenges. Not only is it difficult to get a large number of different national libraries to agree on important policy matters, but also national libraries can have widely differing business aims, raising the question of how those aims could be reconciled. The original concept envisaged document delivery and e-commerce as part of the digital library activity. This raised the question of how the partner libraries would co-operate, as well as compete. It needed to be decided who the intended clients of the service would be, how the potential market would be assessed and reached, and what services and products would be on offer. Account needed to be taken of the special role of national libraries in their respective countries, and in a context unique to this project, their co-operative role in European science, culture and heritage.

First it was decided get a clear picture of the present situation in the participating libraries by mapping their digital products, services and clients, using a series of categorised charts that they were asked to fill in. This was done in two phases: individually as part of the ground clearing (October 2001) and then comparatively and in greater depth in Spring 2002.

This was followed by a structured interview (or due to pressure of time in some cases an electronic survey posing the same questions) asking the partner libraries what their business aims behind their present digital services were, and what their business aims and requirements would be from TEL. The results of these studies were then tabulated, and conflicts and congruences were identified. From these analyses it was possible to propose a harmonized approach to the business issues and a draft mission statement for the eventual TEL service. This was all brought together in a deliverable entitled “Harmonization plan and service scenarios” in mid-2002.

The structured interview methodology was chosen because during the early phases of the TEL project there was considerable difficulty in identifying what the core aims and business of the future TEL service would be. This was due to a combination of factors. For some partners, strategic thinking about digital libraries was in its early stages. There were significant divergences between partners, some totally focused on the public services mission, some with a degree of interest in cost recovery and others with a clear income generation remit. Some members of the workpackage group also felt that these important issues should be discussed at a higher level within their library. It became clear that these issues would have to be clarified at the top executive level in each national library, then the emerging results reconciled to form a joint view. This was done by administering the structured interview to each executive group, and where that was not possible, obtaining responses via e-mail. The interview was piloted in one library and some changes made. It was then sent in advance to all executive groups that they could prepare. After the results were collected, the consultant prepared an analysis for discussion by the workpackage group. A copy of the interview is provided in the Appendix. An interim report on this exercise was given at the TEL milestone conference in Frankfurt in April 2002 (Collier, 2002).

Next, the results of this exercise were combined with normal business plan elements such as finance, governance and management, technical framework and implementation schedule to form a draft business plan in mid-2003 and a final version in January 2004.

The normal method of working was for the consultant to write a discussion paper for debate and decision in the workpackage team, which met regularly in each of the partner locations. Decisions in the workpackage group then led to further activity (e.g. a consultation exercise or survey) outside the meeting. Major questions of policy were referred via the project management group to the project steering committee, composed of the directors of all the participating libraries.

The first phase looked at what digital products were available from the partner libraries in October 2001, analysed according to type of content, type of customer for whom it was intended, current state of development, whether it was a paid-for service and if so what method of payment was accepted. As might be expected, the amount of primary digital content (e.g. full-text, images, video, sound) was generally still quite small, with relatively large amounts of metadata available (catalogues, indexes, etc.). There was a preponderance of services, which were free of charge over paid-for services. Except for one product in one library, where credit card payment was in place, payment was by offline billing or subscription. (This situation changed somewhat over the next 18 months when pay per view was more widely introduced.)

From the tables produced by the second, more in-depth exercise in spring 2002 it was confirmed that the current situation was largely a carry-forward from the pre-digital era into the digital. The libraries were still in the very early stages of a transitional period. As one would expect, the current emphasis of collections and services was on the national language, literature and culture, used overwhelmingly by higher level students, academics and to a lesser extent, personal researchers and authors. Several partners mentioned significant use by other professions and business, although it appeared that some partners did not target those groups.

There was of course significant business for metadata products for the library, book-trade and publishing sectors for most, if not all, partners. As might be expected all or most partners provided a range of metadata products or services but it was clear that there was as yet little commonality or coherence between partners in the range of digital resources offered or planned.

Whilst all partners were presumably open to the general public there was little indication of any strategic approach to serving the general public. An interesting aspect of this was the lack of any approach to the concept of the “informed citizen” or the national library's role in the support of democracy through access to information, which has been a rather prominent theme in EC thinking and policy.

There were signs in the digital products of a trend towards “themed” collections of multi-media materials, particularly by KB. BL also had an initiative with its “In Place” project on regional cultures. There seemed to be potential for such packaged collections for lifelong learning purposes.

The question for the TEL partners was: what would be the value-add of participating in TEL? Of course TEL could provide a greater search capability across a multitude of databases, but if TEL were merely a central portal to otherwise disparate and mutually incoherent resources, would that be sufficient justification? Possibly TEL should provide added value by encouraging partners to develop resources that in combination are greater than they would be on their own. For instance all partners could agree to develop resources that would provide inter-linked resources to a certain theme. Taking the few sets of digital resources already available or planned by partners one could foresee for instance that KB's History of the Book could be replicated by all other partners, each with its own flavour, but with a unifying framework at TEL level.

The results of the interviews were tabulated so that the congruences and divergences of opinion across the participating libraries could be identified. This enabled analysis and synthesis of the results and some broad conclusions about the mutual business aims of the TEL partners, drawing out the areas where there was general agreement and where there were minority interests. Analysis of the results on a question-by-question basis follows.

The interviews indicated general agreement that the main aims of partners in developing their digital libraries were as follows:

• preservation of the national digital published output;
• provision of a digital legal deposit system (i.e. development of systems and procedures for managing it);
• wider access to non-digital resources through digitisation; and
• promoting awareness of national treasures (can mean important historical archives as well as antiquities).

There was general agreement that the main mission should be an integrated discovery tool for European content.

Minority views were fairly evenly divided that strong subsidiary elements of the mission should also include:

• a shop window for European national libraries;
• a show-place for European culture;
• a changing exhibition of European culture/treasures; and
• a mechanism for library-to-library technical services or co-operation.

It followed from the above that the major unique feature of TEL would be that it should provide a single point of access to European distributed content. This became one of the key elements in the eventual mission statement.

As it was emerging that the main mission should be an integrated discovery tool, then it followed that TEL should be a distributed resource. In building the business plan it was, therefore, essential to identify the types of content that would be available. There was general agreement on the following:

• digital voluntary/legal deposit; and
• digitized resources/treasures.

• licensed published material (pertaining to their own countries/languages);
• sound collections;
• still images;
• themed collections; and
• virtual exhibitions.

All partners had rather limited amounts of resources available in digital form at the time but all expected to have useful amounts available by when TEL could reasonably expect to be implemented, say one year after the end of the project. The proposed launch date is now late 2004. Content was expected to grow steadily thereafter.

Partners were generally clear that the emphasis should first be:

• on access to the voluntary and legal deposit materials; and
• on digitized treasures or resources.

• licensed published material; and
• themed collections (implies co-operative collection building).

By and large, TEL partners expected that the client groups for the TEL service would be much the same as those they currently served. Priorities appeared to fall into two groups:

1. Top priority:

• “the informed citizen”;
• academics/researchers; and
• higher education students.

1. Lower priority but nonetheless supported:

• libraries and museums; and
• authors and private researchers.

Not surprisingly, all partners wished to widen geographical access. This was discussed much more later but these indications implied that partners would allocate their desired growth targets as follows:

• National – most would like to widen access first within their own country up about 60 percent of total usage (one went up to 75 percent).
• Europe – then most would like to widen access within Europe up about 30 percent of total usage.
• World-wide – then most would like to develop usage world-wide up to about 10 percent of total usage (one went up to 25 percent).

In summary, partners aimed through TEL to widen access to their electronic resources primarily at national and European level then also worldwide.

It could reasonably be assumed that widening of geographic access would be a desirable aim for the partners in a digital library. The aim of this question was to find out where the priorities for the partners lay. Asking them to express their aims as percentages was a way of allocating priority. The result could influence future policy and effort and investment in marketing.

Generally partners agreed that they should target certain geographic groups. Views were spread between the following:

• European nationals in order to access/learn about other European countries;
• European nationals in order to develop a sense of European identity/culture; and
• Non-Europeans to access/learn about Europe.

Heritage language groups (for example German speaking communities/interests world-wide).

The comment above about future marketing strategy also applies here.

Generally partners did not expect their subject focus to change between their traditional library and their digital library. Bearing in mind that all libraries emphasised the importance of their voluntary/legal deposit collections, which implies that they will preserve material of any subject, nevertheless there was a clear preference for focusing on the following:

• humanities;
• law;
• social sciences;
• economics;
• business; and
• natural sciences.

Partners were generally enthusiastic about the advantages they foresaw in participating in TEL, particularly the following:

• national libraries playing their part in European integration;
• improving access across Europe; and
• creating a European image (for national libraries).

• technical co-operation; and
• saving on development/infrastructure (one partner).

Partners emphasised the following as advantages for the user:

• a single portal for access to national libraries; and
• more powerful/integrated searching/discovery.

By this stage the portal (as opposed to a highly centralised system) was already emerging as the favoured solution, for technical as well as business reasons.

This was a rather controversial question with a range of nuanced answers. Most partners thought that TEL should have a strong brand, but on the other hand partners were generally firm that any TEL brand should not eclipse the national library's own brand or identity. From a business planning point of view it was hard to see how TEL could work without a clear identity, otherwise nobody would visit the site. In summary, the compromise was that TEL should have sufficient effective identity and branding to attract people to its site, but not so as to diminish or undermine the partners' brands or identities. (In the final business plan this issued was resolved by the decision to merge the TEL service with the CENL Gabriel web site.)

The view of partners on this question was ambiguous. Partners appeared to be against but some thought that TEL should be active in promoting new aggregation or collection building. Some thought that there was value in having a virtual gallery at the TEL site (the changing exhibition mentioned above) that would enhance its attractiveness. Content display in this case would not in itself be an objective of TEL, but a marketing tool.

Possibly the ambiguity was caused by the phrase “not appear elsewhere”. Obviously any material that appears in TEL will from the collection of one partner or another. The intention of the question was to draw out whether compilations of materials from several partners should be assembled as a result of TEL co-operation. They could then be branded as TEL products as distinct from individual partner products.

Partners' preferences for financing their own digital library were clearly for obtaining increased subsidy from their respective governments or similar sources. To a lesser extent they expected to finance it by re-allocation of their existing budgets, by support from EU or foundations, by cost recovery from users, by commercial partnerships and by sponsorship. Not all partners would choose all these options.

Partners envisaged that TEL should be financed by a subscription from the partners.

Of those partners who felt able to express a view at this stage, all stated that they expected the subscription to finance a modest dedicated team of say five or six people. These need not be in one place and could operate as a virtual team in order to keep direct costs and overheads down. IT infrastructure costs could probably be kept under control by outsourcing or using the facilities of a partner. Taking current European average staffing costs and a potential initial membership of eight, these assumptions could indicate a subscription of 40-50 KEuro per year. It was later decided that the subscription should also reflect the relative budgets of the partner libraries.

Views between partners on possible risks were mixed. Some saw risks in all the following categories whilst some did not. There needed to be more analysis and discussion on this subject in order for the nuances to be drawn out. For instance, partners identified financial risks whilst at the same time indicating that a subscription as mentioned above would be manageable within existing annual budgets. In business terms that would not really be considered a serious risk. Perception of financial risk can of course be influenced by the budget of the partner library as a whole. A small financial risk for one partner could be rather larger for another. Possible risks identified were as follows:

• financial;
• political (within own country);
• political (between partners/countries);
• technical; and
• identifying users/markets.

The above information was then distilled in discussion in the workpackage group into the following statements which define what the partners wanted to achieve with the proposed TEL service:

• an integrated discovery tool;
• a single point of access to European distributed content;
• emphasis on access to the voluntary and legal deposit materials;
• emphasis on digitised treasures or resources;
• secondary preference on licensed published material and themed collections (implying co-operative collection building);
• primary target users are “the informed citizen”, academics/researchers, and higher education students;
• partners aim through TEL to widen access to their resources primarily at a national and European level then also world-wide;
• the subject focus of all partners within TEL is on national languages and culture, with particular reference to humanities, law, social sciences, economics and business;
• through TEL, partner libraries aim to play their part in European integration and the promotion of European culture;
• through TEL, partners aim to achieve improved discovery of their collection via a powerful integrated portal; and
• TEL should have effective identity and branding to attract people to its site, but not so as to diminish or undermine the partners' brands or identities.

The harmonization process enabled a concise statement to be made of the business aims for the eventual TEL service and the parameters within which it would operate (for instance: how to avoid conflict of business interest). The statement would provide the guiding principles for the detailed development of the business plan. The statement that was eventually approved, together with the proposed service scenario, was as follows:

1. TEL should aim to offer to end-users:

• an integrated discovery service and access to European national library collections and resources (digital and non-digital);
• direct linking to services offered by the partner libraries; and
• presentation of products and services in a European context and framework.

1. TEL should aim to offer to its partner libraries:

• an additional route to market and showcase for their collections, products and services;
• continuous development and innovation in metadata, interoperability and other technical areas through operational co-operation;
• a platform for collaboration at European level; and
• opportunities to contribute to development of the European community.

1. TEL should aim to perform essentially as a public service, which means that:

• it will be funded principally by subscriptions from the participating partners; and
• this does not preclude TEL from receiving other income such as sponsorship and commercial partnerships.

1. TEL should aim to operate for the benefit of all its partners, which means that:

• TEL will not develop a commercial interest in activities contrary to the interests of individual partners (e.g. document delivery, catalogue record supply);
• TEL will try to provide additional routes to market or marketing advantages that could not be achieved individually; and
• partners will co-operate on development.

1. TEL should aim to be managed and organised so that:

• management overheads and subscriptions are low;
• maximum advantage can be taken of existing infrastructures (e.g. secondment of existing staff, usage of Gabriel and existing portals); and
• TEL branding and marketing will be sufficient to make it an effective operator in the market, in support of strong national branding. TEL branding will be complementary and add value to national library brands.

The TEL service will consist of:

• a branded portal giving access to collections and resources of participating national libraries via a combination of centralised and distributed indexes of partner metadata;
• metadata including collection level metadata as made available by partners; and
• sufficient management organisation and technical infrastructure to ensure efficient operations, and effective policies, decisions and governance.

TEL will be merged with the operations and constitution of CENL, a not-for-profit consortium of European national libraries. The original partners will form the first full membership of the TEL service, which will be open to all European national libraries in due course. The costs of the portal and associated management and governance costs will be shared between the members on a subscription basis. Subscriptions will be banded to reflect the variation in partner library budgets. TEL may raise additional income if so decided. Searching and discovery on the TEL portal will be free. Partners may charge end-users for access to resources if they wish. End-users may search the TEL portal for digital and non-digital resources made available by TEL partners. When they find something that they want to access they are passed to the partner site, which manages all subsequent interaction, including e-commerce transactions.

The process described above produced a draft mission statement for TEL, which was discussed and modified slightly at workpackage and steering group level. The current version prior to going into full-scale launch of the service is as follows:

The TEL Service offers integrated discovery of and access to the collections, products and services of European National Libraries. It is aimed at users worldwide who want a powerful and easy way of finding European cultural resources. The TEL Service displays the richness and diversity of European culture through co-operation in innovation.

As mentioned above, the main challenge of this work-package was to formulate a coherent set of mutually supported business objectives on which to base the business plan. For a number of reasons already explained this proved to be impossible using only the originally intended approach of discussing subjects in the workgroup, then making recommendations to the steering group. Indeed at one stage the work of the work-package almost stalled because of this problem. The methodology of the structured interview was therefore devised in order to overcome the problem. It is acknowledged that the structure of the interview can be criticised on the grounds that it was too prescriptive, leading the participants to choose the options laid out rather than thinking of their own original responses. On the other hand, it was necessary to provide some prompting in order to get the discussion going when hitherto responses were almost non-existent, and there was always an “other” option, providing the opportunity to make original contributions. The interviews were discursive in nature. It should also be remembered that most respondents did not have English as their mother tongue, therefore it was helpful to provide fuller prompts than might otherwise have been the case. It is also acknowledged that from the purist point of view the administration of the structured interview also as a questionnaire could be a problem. The questionnaire approach could lead to differences in interpretation compared to the structured interview. However, this was an investigation within a closed group of respondents, not an open survey. The harmonization and subsequent statement of business aims were all validated by the partners as a whole, so this was not a problem in the end.

The processes and analyses reported in this paper can be seen as successful as they prepared the way effectively for the development of the TEL business plan. For a presentation on the eventual TEL business plan see the TEL web site (Clayphan and Smith, 2004). The results show the diversity of the partners' business objectives for TEL and their opinions on what should be the major activities and target markets and users. It is noteworthy, given the many different starting points of the partners and their different backgrounds and cultures, that a coherent and unanimously agreed business case for TEL emerged. Several partners commented that they found the process a useful way of confronting some important issues within their own organisations.

Not unexpectedly, current digital products and services among the partners were in an early stage and often reflected an approach from the non-digital stage. On the whole the proposed approach to products and services is rather conservative, reflecting a continuation of aims from the pre-digital era. Focus on more radical products such as e-learning seems some way off, at least for most partners. This is perhaps to be expected given the dominant role of preservation of scientific and cultural heritage. Looking at the partners' wishes and intentions for the future, the outcome of the harmonization showed an encouraging level of consensus between partners on the major mission points and the core business. There was variation in what partners wanted to include as secondary objectives. The eventual business plan, therefore, had to be flexible in order to cater for these variations. The prospects for harmonization of the aspirations and objectives of the partners after this exercise and synthesising them into the business plan were good. Although there were of course differences of opinion the overall motivation for co-operation was very strong.

The process of harmonization may have resulted in a mission that differed somewhat from the vision of the original movers behind TEL. However, it became clear that the original vision meant different things to different people in any case. It was always recognised that the achievement of a viable business plan would be a process of compromise and much emphasis was put on the process of harmonization in the work plan.

The wider contribution of this work is that for the first time, as far as we are aware, the process of developing a business plan for a collaborative digital library service between international partners has been successfully concluded and also recorded in the literature. It may also be the first multi-partner business plan to be concluded between national libraries. Together with the few published works which already exist in relation to business planning for digital libraries, this work can help stimulate the developing literature in the field. The research described in this paper (together with the outcomes of the other work-packages) has led to the decision to go ahead with an operational service, which could lead to a pan-European digital library service in due course.

The process of developing the business plan was not easy, as has been described. The fact that a positive result was achieved is a tribute to the efforts and co-operativeness of all the partner representatives involved, of whom the author wishes to record his appreciation.