DIGITISING THE UNISA MUSIC COLLECTION: THE CHALLENGES OF A UNIVERSITY PRESS

ABSTRACT Unisa Press as an academic publishing house needs to make its Music Collection content available digitally, on a commercially viable basis. Situated within the University of South Africa and with specific institutional stakeholder requirements, it needs to adjust its paper-based operations to provide a digitized publishing service to local and international clients and music students. In addition, archiving and online sales and availability in dual mode need to be shaped along international standards, yet accommodate the preference of the end-user, which has been primarily paperbased. KEYWORDS Music digitization, niche market publishing, e-society, user preference, digitization standards

1. INTRODUCTION
Unisa (University of South Africa) Press is a university publisher of books and journals, within Unisa, a distance education institution which has grown to be the largest in the southern hemisphere. For this university, the subject field of music plays a strategically important role in maintaining its high media profile, where Unisa acts as an annual host of a series of prominent international music competitions apart from its music teaching role with its internationally recognised graded music qualifications. Besides its core academic publishing duties, Unisa Press handles the sales and stock-keeping of a growing collection of (at this stage paper-based only) music items, where the range of items and the business demand of regular single orders by individuals as well as batch orders from bookstores currently incur labourintensive mail order processing at the expense of other key income-generating business processes and client services. Of the 250 music collection items, 202 consist of music examination papers, which are sold at minimal prices and mailed out in paper copy format as single stapled A4-sheets (each consisting of between 4 to maximum of around 20 pages). Although the main buyers are South African music teachers and specialist music bookshops, the music collection is linked to specific music courses offered by Unisa. Most items in the music collection lend themselves to digitization, and are either already available in digital format or can be digitized by scanning, while physical copies can be phased out until stocks are depleted. The exceptions are 5 Theory of Music workbooks, each spanning 120-270 pages, where hard copies are preferred by users(music teachers or practitioners reading from the scores).

2. WORKING WITHIN THE UNISA E-SOCIETY

Since this music collection contains items which are made commercially available to the general public, it may not be placed online via the existing MyUnisa IT access control system. This Unisa online channel is reserved by the institution for Unisa course material and for use by enrolled students only. In order to streamline its business procedures, Unisa Press requires the digitization of the whole music collection, which will need to be combined with an electronic client access system. The digitization process

and system needs at least partial integration with existing on-campus systems, and in compliance with Unisa central financial procurement policies. Unisa Press publishes and distributes the materials on behalf of the content owner, the Unisa Department of Music, which envisages a growing collection of online music publishing projects as well as including sound clips on the system.

2.1

Unisa Press: The current operational environment

Unisa Press is the only academic press in Africa with a large journals publishing component, of around 44 academic journals while it annually publishes an additional 30 new books. While the Sales and Marketing Section is experiencing a strong decline in print-based subscriptions for journals, more customers are opting for online subscription. This entails that the Press has to expand on its customer service functions. With the securing of increased external distribution of books locally and internationally, data processing needs within the Marketing and Sales Unit have grown. Should Unisa Press digitize its music collection, the staff capacity freed up by online processing can be channeled into book export order processing and vital data capturing. The strategy is to expand on book exports, by securing distributors for other parts of the world leading to a more profit-driven administrative load which the same staff component can effectively attend to. The proposed project will have long-term benefits for Unisa and Unisa Press, provided that central systems integration needs can be met to an extent as is required by the parent institution. The digitization requires the services of a company specializing in the hosting and selling of digital content and digital rights management, and provisional quotes are currently being invited. Unisa Press had to comply with institutional directives to firstly consider other available general-purpose systems and on-campus resources, but this was found not to be feasible.

2.2

Wider optimization of the same system for the publisher

Securing a customized music items payment system will have increasing commercial benefit for Unisa Press, with the potential to expand the online collection, to also include other high-demand, low-quality type print items. Unisa Press can utilise the online hosting channels for making available other on-demand style publications such as publications under license, readers, on-demand print editions for smaller student groups, out of stock (top-up) solutions etc.

2.3

Growing an e-community of Unisa students and other online customers

A digital payment system entails improved customer service pertaining to easier access to product information, and faster access to the music collection, once payments have been made. In line with the growing trend to combine offerings of free materials on the sales platform to add value and to enhance the customer experience, some materials will need to be made available for free. A stratified approach may be followed by offering differentiated pricing and access structures to developing countries, from the same website. The added appeal of the online world to a younger audience should ensure that an online sales presence can add market appeal to the Departments courses, apart from the sales items on offer. This underscores the potential for this project to grow into long-term sustainability as well as into modest but sustained profitability.

2.4

Access for Africa? mail and a paper preference

Especially within Africa, where mailing systems are subject to slow processing times and risk of loss due to theft, digitizing the music collection will eradicate major accessibility pitfalls. Despite this, the concern has been raised that in some remote parts of the African continent, music students, music teachers and other clients may have reduced access to technology, while specifically most music practitioners themselves will at all time persist to return to the paper-based version given the nature of their profession and practices. Unisa regularly collects information from enrolling students pertaining to their access to technology, and the indication is that the gap is narrowing, with more students having access to computers and printers. The expansive set of Unisa study centres sprinkled on the African continent (as well as several examination centres around the world) is to increasingly offer technology access to students.

2.5

Copyright aspects and the future: more music online

While the Music Department envisages expanding their product offering to include music clips, the most important legal consideration for the current music collection is to ensure that copyright permissions have at all times been obtained. This aspect will need to be included in the work flow process. Should music clips be added, copyright needs will expand while systems needs will be intensified by larger data volumes as well as secure data access.

3 DIGITISING WITHIN AN INTERNATIONAL ARENA

Given that Unisa has in 2011 adopted an open access policy for all its study materials, there is an option to extend this policy to include music examinations papers. This entails that the full music collection items (esp examination papers) are made available to the public free of charge. The impact of full open access policy can only be implemented once a funding basis as been established, to contribute towards publishing and distribution costs. Given that the parent institution has tasked Unisa Press to develop its own more commercially viable publishing model, a careful balancing act of a hybrid open access approach is suggested. Such a model will entail the making available of select materials for free, while leading users to buy other topic-related items within the same browsing or online buying experience. An added benefit of a digitization initiative is that the music collection becomes fully archived for future generations, provided that additional metadata tagging is built into the coding to ensure that Dublin Core Metadata Standards for archiving are met. While items constantly may become outdated of out of use, for purposes of historic documentation, the Unisa music collection needs to be archived. This creates a never out of stock digital channel. The Institutional Repository within the Unisa Library offers a staff expertise base to which this project will have access to, to ensure individual file formatting follows exact and uniform archival standards as have been set also for Unisa archival documents.

3.1

Benchmarking

ABRSM and Trinity/Guildhall have been identified as benchmark counterparts, selling music items online, while an additional simple benchmark website is run by SheetmusicDirect.com (focused on the selling of musical scores only). This site is powered by free software, SibeliusScorch, which users download in order to buy and download audio, video and sheetmusic files. The ABSRM website ( http://shop.abrsm.org/ ) is the ideal benchmark website to look at concerning longterm feasibility for this project. This charity organization astutely manages itself as a business venture. Its strategy of generously offering free information to encourage the study of music, the entering of examinations, and of providing course content ensures that this is a popular site within the music fraternity. Podcasts, audio clips, and hard copies of sheet music books are on sale, via an efficient shopping basket system. Mailing out of orders worldwide are offered, once a credit card payment has been made.

CONCLUSION

This research project embodies the niche-market subject-specific digitization needs that a university press typically has to grapple with. Given the nature of its positioning in a larger university environment, digitization cannot be achieved without some form of integration into the various content digitization systems currently in development. On the other hand, the global context need to be considered, with lessons to learn from other music-specific sites. Whether the e-society context is subject-specific, institutionally based, fully commercial or focused on open access, the varied music customers preferences will have the last word on which dissemination channel is suitable for which users. It is likely that parallel offerings will best serve a diversified customer base.

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