Содержание :

The Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network (SCRAN) was founded by a partnership of the National Museums of Scotland, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and the Scottish Museums Council. The business was incorporated on 1 July 1996, it is a company limited by guarantee and is a registered Scottish Charity.

SCRAN was established with a grant of Ј7.5 million from the Millennium Commission (MC), one of the distributors of funds from the UK National Lottery

SCRAN''s Mission Statement is: ''To build Scotland''s Digital Heart: a networked multimedia resource base for the study and celebration of human history and material culture in Scotland, and to sustain it into the new Millennium.''

Digitised assets contributed to SCRAN are governed by a licence agreement protecting the contributors'' rights. Unrestricted access to copyright cleared material is then made available to subscribing bodies (who pay an annual licence fee) allowing access free at the point of use for educational purposes.

At the end of August 2001, SCRAN''s contract with the Millennium Commission was completed and it is intended that SCRAN continues as a self-financing organisation, using its licence income and other income streams to fund ongoing costs.

SCRAN IT Limited is the wholly owned trading subsidiary of SCRAN which enters into licence agreements with subscribing bodies. SCRAN IT Limited employs all the staff and is liable for all overheads. SCRAN IT Limited derives further income from third party sales of CD ROMS and other services.

During the first three years of operation, SCRAN focused on building up its web based resource of digitised assets by attracting contributors and managing data capture projects. Due to the increasing government focus on internet delivery of the National Curriculum, SCRAN has diverted funds from some planned CD ROMs to create more online resource packs and narrative trails.

Assets available on SCRAN

1.1 million Basic Records
160,000 Multimedia Resources
520 Pathfinders
700 Virtual Resource packs


SCRAN has been successful to date in delivering the MC project and in attracting educational users. The key issue for the organisation now is the nature and sustainability of SCRAN in the future. SCRAN now needs to balance the successful completion of its MC project against the development of a robust future for the organisation and requires a business plan which reflects the changing online database market and builds on the successful data capture projects already completed.

SCRAN has been successful in attracting and servicing licence holders from its core educational market in Scotland.


Bit about Scottish Executive

A recent independent survey of users provided very positive feedback with 90% satisfied with ease of use, 80% confirming their satisfaction with products and services and 78% agreeing that the service provided a very valuable resource. However its licence income from these customers would be sufficient only to fund the maintenance of the service as it is, rather than any work to expand the resource base or to exploit it further and develop new markets.

SCRAN is now pursuing other sources of grant funding and commercial income to enable the business to operate beyond this minimal level. Grant funding over and above continuing licence fee income would allow the development of the resource base to continue and the attraction of soft venture capital would provide the opportunity to address the market for SCRAN''s services amongst the general public.

RLS
A recent application for funding to digitise heritage and community identity material (''Resources for Learning in Scotland''), in conjunction with the National Library of Scotland (NLS) and the National Archives of Scotland (NAS), which the New Opportunities Fund (NOF) are funding with Ј4 million and an assurance in ''Scotland''s National Cultural Strategy'' that the Scottish Executive (SE) will ''secure the future of SCRAN'' have given sufficient optimism for the base case for the business plan to include grant funding to continue development beyond 2001. The base case can be flexed to incorporate the result of successful attraction of soft venture capital.



2. Project Description

SCRAN is building a massive searchable resource base of material culture and human history which currently contains over 1 million records and is still growing rapidly. The resource base is available on the world wide web and is put to work for users in Pathfinders, CD-ROMs, Learning Packs and Tools.

Basic text and thumbnail images are available to all and licensed users are provided with enhanced text, tools, and extra facilities such as full size images, audio and video. The material may be downloaded for educational, personal and commercial use.

Although the resource base is for all, SCRAN''s major aim is education. Licensed educational users gain enhanced access and all materials can be downloaded copyright cleared meaning that students and teachers can create reports, worksheets or even multimedia using any assets from the resource base. Specific education sections include:

* educational news,
* worksheets,
* teaching packs,
* Tool discs,
* resource packs and
* SCRAN''s curriculum navigator which is a tree structure allowing access to resource packs specifically designed to help teachers to deliver the curriculum.

All SCRAN CD-ROMs are available to licensed educational users at discounted prices.

The SCRAN licence model has allowed SCRAN to provide licences to a wide range of institutions throughout the UK including primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, libraries and museums, corporate bodies and design houses and Government Departments.

With an extensive collection of striking cultural images - including landscapes, buildings. artefacts, people and places - the SCRAN photo library more than fulfils the needs of publishers, agencies and designers seeking quality, high resolution images. These images are all searchable and selectable online for licensed users. Screen quality images can be downloaded immediately and 18Mb files are ready prepared for dispatch when required.

The quality of the organisations contributing to and working with SCRAN gives an insight into the quality of the resource base being developed. These include:

* The National Museums of Scotland,
* The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland,
* The National Galleries of Scotland,
* Historic Scotland,
* Glasgow Museums and Galleries,
* Aberdeen Museums and Galleries,
* Scottish Television and
* The Scotsman and The Herald newspapers.


In terms of the National Grid for Learning (NGfL), SCRAN is a member of the Scottish Steering Group and features in the Virtual Teaching Centres for Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. SCRAN also chairs the UK Metadata for Education Group which is harmonising standards for educational content between NGfL, the University for Industry and the New Library Network.

The Scottish Executive published ''Creating our Future: Minding our Past'', Scotland''s first National Cultural Strategy, in August 2000. SCRAN features prominently in this document including appearing in two key priorities under the Strategic Objectives, ''Celebrating Scotland''s cultural heritage in it''s full diversity'' and ''Realising culture''s potential contribution to education, promoting inclusion and enhancing people''s quality of life''.


3. Market Assessment

Analysis of present and future market segments including penetration:

Education in general - this is an ongoing activity, and, as the implications of electronic systems in Lifelong Learning bite, and the NGfL rolls out to Authority level, there are increasing opportunities in Education. These include packaged materials derived from the resource base and services.

In England, there has been substantial awareness raising and SCRAN continues to develop this with a view to transferring to business. Marketing has to carefully downplay the "Scottishness" of the material and there is no doubt that an influx of "English" data would increase marketability. SCRAN is already in direct discussion with a number of authorities including a 10 authority consortium. Should SCRAN achieve entry into the market, there is very substantial growth possible in the English, Welsh and Northern Ireland Market - with Southern Ireland being another possible ''home education" market.

Most Local Authorities are rolling out their own content models and there is a growing realisation that maintaining resources electronically is "harder than imagined". SCRAN have received approaches for running the educational resource provision of a number of authorities and are likely to get at least one authority which will open up potentially a very large new market. The fact that SCRAN can interoperate with a resource base or bundle this could make for a very compelling facilities offering.

Further and Higher Education - the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee, UK wide funding body for IT services and content for Further and Higher education) provides SCRAN with a five year contract with a growing year on year income stream Essentially however, the deal provides saturation in this sector in the UK, further income in this sector can be generated by SCRAN providing access to further content libraries.

SCRAN intends to use this as leverage in planned marketing to the same sector in Southern Ireland, North America and Australasia.

At Home / Retail - given that this market is not being targeted at the moment, there are smallish entries into this segment which show considerable promise. SCRAN continues to sell a steady trickle of At Home User Licences and the few test offers made in Heritage magazines have generated CD-ROM sales. A few large book retailers have agreed to take CD-ROM titles to test out the retail market.

There is potential for retail placement in associated organisations such as Museums, Galleries, Historic Scotland, National Trust and Tourist outlets. Discussions have started with a selection of these bodies and a marketing stand has been rolled out in preparation for this.


SCRAN will also continue to make placements in associated magazines.

An appropriate entry into the At Home market will require substantial spend and that requires identification of a funding source.

The e-commerce facilities (www.scran.ac.uk) allows immediate end-user purchase of on-line licences and CD-ROM titles.If potential appears, selective and appropriate additions will be made to the on-line shop, .

Tourism market

At present SCRAN is investigating possible tie ins with the main tourist organisations in Scotland.

Picture Library - SCRAN has been selling sporadically to a number of magazines and companies. There is a small potential for growth here. However, a little caution is required since most clients require picture searches to be done for them and the cost of sale can easily outweigh any margin from these deals. In the near future SCRAN may enter into partnership with an established picture library which has already moved into the online picture library market.

SCRAN has placed a few small adverts in specialist magazines which contain Picture Library sections and test out the potential of selling a download licence for composing purposes which then translates into royalty on use.

Current approach to Marketing and Pricing:

In the main SCRAN uses a direct marketing approach which is targeted. For example, to achieve new business from schools, awareness is targeted at schools with the direct offer made at authority level. There are early adopter rates and trial offers.

Advertising is used sparingly and in publications which the market segment use. There is now a substantial tie-up with the Times Educational Supplement and Canon which provides free advertising for a hugely successful annual National Photo Competition which is essentially a brand awareness building exercise.

In addition, SCRAN has been successful in placing editorial in a range of magazines and publications. These are often allied with discount offerings or product review.

The web site maintains the standard pricing and licensing model and is used to collect interest in forms and directed e-mails. The web site has undergone a transition into a direct sales operation during the year.

A direct marketing customer database is maintained which holds around 25,000 institutions, authorities and individuals and records of contacts with these.

A catalogue is directly marketed from the above list and orders return through SCRAN and are noted. Scottish Book Source is used for distribution and stock is located at their warehouse. The adding of associated resources to the catalogue from organisations such as NMS, Historic Scotland and NTS has begun. Early indications are that this is successful and generating orders. It also helps to build the catalogue as a cultural source.

Throughout the year, there is a range of launches, presentations to client groupings and training sessions which also include marketing materials.

A differentiated pricing model is operated on a number of standard products with some flexing for the customer grouping.

Web Service:

For education, there are prices for school level, pyramid level, authority level and consortium level; JISC operates a discount scheme to colleges and universities with some recovery but pays SCRAN an agreed amount every year in advance.

There are prices for At Home personal use and Teaching Use. The Web Site is being structured to allow a layered access and this is partly effected with the educational provision.

The third pricing strand applies to agency, magazine use with a mixture of straight one-off royalty payments and composing annual licence.



Packaged Materials including CD-ROMs:

The catalogue offers a dual pricing model where the upper price is set on a perceived value basis. Effectively the upper price is the standard retail price and the lower price is a discount available only to licensed schools - as defined at the moment. Only items which provide us with a clear margin are offered at a discount. Some items offer no discount. The discount is used to reinforce the "value" of the licence.

Multi-user licences are only conferred through the annual licence, therefore reinforcing its value further.

SCRAN has now started to include paper materials as a trial and these include resources from other providers.

Support for Existing Licensees:

A fairly extensive marketing operation is maintained including letters, briefings, catalogues, posters, dispensers and identity triangles.

Competition:

Competition comes from other web based consolidators in the Education Market. These include Research Machines, Expresso, Anglia Multimedia and the like.

The view is that they tend to offer educational resources per se rather than cultural objects. It is not absolutely clear though how the average teacher perceives such a difference if at all.

The charges by these competitors to users is much higher however. All their materials are licensed and they must recover these costs.

If the English education market proves hard to crack, competitors could become allies. SCRAN could probably sell the service through them. The income would be considerably lower and SCRAN would be tied to the sales reach of the licensor.

In the cultural sector, other providers such as National Museums in England and Wales could well grow to be competitors although there is no real indication of this to date.

The BBC is set to produce a substantial educational service on the web designed to support the whole curriculum. Evidence to date is that it will find itself stretched for resources and it has not solved copyright issues. However, its plans have already alarmed educational publishers and there is the possibility of legal action.

In the At Home market, the only major competition would appear to be other cultural institutions and Corbis. That is both a strength and a weakness. With no real perception of the added value something like SCRAN provides to a user, there are two messages to convey - what something like SCRAN is and why SCRAN is the product to choose.

Research into the Home Market:

There are possibly far too many approaches to quantify in reaching the home market and SCRAN cannot hope to appeal uniformly to such a heterogeneous segment. SCRAN really needs to identify some secure approaches and this calls for some market research by an established market research company. There are segments within the Home Market that we should probably address.

The obvious route is by riding on carriers such as niche magazines and the like but without some general maintenance of background awareness, this can be a bit hit and miss. It is therefore likely that SCRAN will require some sort of targeted advertising.

It is also clear that the current SCRAN presentation may need some tweaking to enter this market. Key areas would be name, web site appearance and packaging of resource bites to attract potential segments.


4. Funding Opportunities

In order to continue developing the resource base and the business beyond the end of the MC project, SCRAN has recognised that further grant funding will be required.

NOF - A grant of Ј4M but an opportunity has been awarded to the RLS consortium, this was the largest award made., SCRAN is also seeking partners for a bid under the ''Community Grid for Learning'' banner.

The Scottish Executive - SCRAN features prominently in ''Creating our Future: Minding our Past'', Scotland''s first National Cultural Strategy published by The Scottish Executive in August 2000. It is not yet clear what funding may be earmarked for SCRAN as the result of The Comprehensive Spending Review has still to be announced.

EC 5th Framework - SCRAN has taken a leading role in promoting the agenda of collaboration across cultural domains in the Information Society Technology strand of the 5th Funding Framework. Although unsuccessful with a recent bid, SCRAN still expects to participate in one or more further bids for funding.

Heritage Lottery Fund - discussions have taken place with the Scottish Team to make an award of HLF grant aid for preservation and digitisation, conditional on deposit of selected assets into the SCRAN resource base for educational access. This would allow SCRAN to fund some of the applications turned down at the Millennium Call.

Commercial income - the most immediate source of income should come from home users within Scotland. At present SCRAN is not geared up to market to this group and an investment in market research, further packaging of records for non-educational users and a significant marketing campaign will be required. A ''Venture Advocacy Document'' setting out the case for funding has been prepared and this will be used to secure funding to allow SCRAN to address this market.


5. Risk Assessment

Excellent progress has been made to date, particularly during the year ended 31 August 2001.

A lack of substantial funding beyond the end of the MC project remains a serious risk to SCRAN. Without further grant funding SCRAN would be unable to continue to develop the resource base and would need to reduce activity to maintenance only, ie continuing to distribute the resource base only. This would mean reducing the staff complement to around seven and financing the business from licence fee income and income from associated merchandise. The award from NOF and the very positive indications from the Scottish Executive have given sufficient optimism that grant funding will be forthcoming to allow SCRAN to continue to develop the resource base and related products and services.

SCRAN''s corporate and organisational structures have been in place since the start of the MC project and may now present a risk to the business moving forward. SCRAN must be in a position to take advantage of opportunities without affecting established activity or threatening the financial security of the business. Consideration has already been given to forming separate companies and a review of existing structures will be commissioned.

Thus far, SCRAN has not had any competitors in the UK and limited competition worldwide. This constitutes both an opportunity and a threat. SCRAN must continue to monitor the level of competition and be aware of initiatives attempting to follow the SCRAN model in order that market share continues to increase and projected income levels can be achieved.

The use of ICT industry standards and a constantly evolving migration strategy ensures that SCRAN is not faced with the prospect of obsolescence. This policy will continue thus minimising this risk. However, SCRAN must continue to be vigilant in this way and this is helped by SCRAN being at the forefront of developments in a number of fields.

6. Projections

At present sustainability of SCRAN is based on projections of income from the following areas

* Completion of the MC project,
* Scottish Executive support
* Income from membership renewals,
* Income from SCRAN''s core educational market in Scotland,
* Income from UK Higher Education and Further Education through the JISC,
* Income from English schools consortia,
* Income from sales of images and CD ROMs and
* ''Resources for Learning in Scotland'' grant funding from the NOF.
* Buy out of Scottish Public Libraries
* Consultancy


7. Credits

This paper was prepared by the SCRAN Senior Management Team :

Prof Bruce Royan Chief Executive
Mr Sandy Buchanan Resources Manager
Mr Graham Turnbull Publishing Manager
Mr Ian Ramage Finance Manager

It was presented at the 2001 EVA Moscow Conference with support from the British Council in Moscow.