Funding for Sustainability: How Funders' Practices Influence the Future of Digital Resources

Supported by the Strategic Content Alliance led by JISC, this research is based on interviews with more than 25 representatives from funding agencies and private foundations in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, focusing on "the ways that both public and private funding bodies in academic and cultural heritage sectors are defining sustainability and encouraging the digital resources they help to create to endure and continue to provide value well beyond the term of the grant."

While focused across the broad spectrum of "digital resources", this study offers interesting insights for the AV community because of the creation of born-digital AV material, and because of the increase in audiovisual digitisation projects, both of which are in many instances funded through similar bodies. This type of work creates digital resources that are in need of sustainability in terms of both the preservation of their materiality and access to their content, and in terms of the resources required to do such work.

This report offers and detailed description and analysis of the research conducted, as well as a comprehensive summary of critical findings, and a list of potential roles and actions for funders.