Freedom of Information request from Dan Zambonini

1) How much it cost to put your collections online? (Not including digitisation costs)

We regret that we do not have a single cost figure for putting the collections online, and we are unable to answer this part of your request. However, you may find it helpful to know that we have been putting our collections on line since 2003. This is part of the work of a number of departments in the V&A. Curators write the records and sometimes this is done over a period of time as new research is done. The information goes into our Collections Information System (CIS) which was first designed in 1996. The records are standardised and administered by our Collections Services department and the technology maintained by our Information Systems. Up to now collections information of a certain standard from CIS has been sent to our online application Search the Collections which currently contains 30,000 objects. We have also provided complete sets of records from Search the Collections for other projects such as SCRAN and Artstore. From September 2009 we hope to launch our Collections Information System on line. This will start with 100,000 records but ultimately will hold in excess of a million records. Current work with a contractor to develop the interface is costing £25,000.

2) How many page views, on average, the online collections receive per month?

Based on figures to date in this current financial year, April 2008 to January 2009, the V&A's 'Search the Collections' site receives an average of 39,640 visits and 301,175 page views per month. This information is based on reports from Webtrends, the statistical package used by the V&A. Search the Collections is a dynamic site that only produces web pages when a query is sent. Until November 2008 there were no persistent URLs within Search the Collections so people were unable to link to specific objects within the application. We have now introduced a unique identifier for every object within the system and mapped the site for Google to index but we find this process is taking longer than we imagined. It will be interesting to see what impact this change has on the number of user sessions and page views in the longer term.

3) If you have participated in any cross-institutional collections projects (e.g. Europeana, People's Network, NMOLP), how much it cost to make your collections available to the project (or how much is it expected to cost, for current projects)?

The contract with a supplier for building the federated search for the National Museums Online Learning Project was £12,240 and the V&A has bought an additional server at the cost of £9978.57 and associated initial licencing and back-up costs of £3104. There is likely to be a recurring support maintainance cost of £1496.79. We do not have a breakdown of relevant staff costs. This is more an educational project than a collections project and the outcome, aside from the federated search which enables them, is two web applications, Webquests and Creative Spaces. As mentioned above, we have also provided complete sets of records from Search the Collections for other projects such as SCRAN and Artstore. None of these activities has been costed separately. The V&A has not so far contributed to Europeana but may do in the future.

We hope that you will find the information provided is helpful to you. In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, the V&A does have a complaints procedure and if you are dissatisfied with our response to your request you may make a complaint, in the first instance to myself, or to the Museum's FOI Officer, Christopher Marsden. If your complaint is not handled to your satisfaction you also have the right to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner.

Gail Durbin

Head of V&A Online

10 March 2009