Collaboration model

Successful collaborations

The Le@rning Federation has successfully worked with national and state institutions, both large and small, including museums, art museums, libraries, archives and scientific organisations.

Our goal is to improve access to quality digital resources for Australian and New Zealand schools. The means by which we do that is dependent on the nature of the project.

We have funded:

• digitisation of items from collections, including film and still images;
  
• research and writing to enhance the educational value of the selected items;
• copyright clearance to ensure the items can be used by teachers and students for non-commercial educational purposes;
• the application of metadata to the items so that they can be discovered by teachers and students through a nominated education portal.

In return, participating organisations provide services such as:

• access to their collection;
• curatorial expertise;
• project management;
• permissions from third-party owners of the items;
• writing and research.

Our projects have been very successful, and the success has been the result of TLF and our partner institutions' willingness to negotiate outcomes and modes of operation that meet the requirements of each party.

Collaboration process

Collaborations generally follow the process described below.

1.   TLF and partner agree on shared objectives and outcomes for the project.
2.   TLF and partner establish responsibilities for the roles within the project. Across all TLF projects, partner institutions have taken on roles that reflect their available staff resources. Typically, project roles include:

• project management;
• curatorial review;
• digitisation;
• research and writing;
• educational soundness review;
• editorial.

3.    TLF and partner negotiate a budget, contractual arrangements and schedule.
4.    TLF provides training and support to partner for selecting items for curriculum purposes, clearing the rights for non-commercial educational use, describing items in educational terms, digitising items to meet the requirements of the school sector, and applying educational metadata to items;
5.    TLF and partner undertake the project, using TLF's workflow software to manage the production process.
6.    TLF makes available all resultant intellectual property to partner for non-commercial educational use.
7.    TLF distributes completed digital resources to all Australian and New Zealand schools through education portals.