Europeana started talking about impact in 2012. In the years since then, we have published and revised four phases of the Europeana Impact Playbook and made this available as an online resource. We have been working to embed impact in our work, the activities in which we are a partner, and across the Europeana Impact Community and Europeana ecosystem. As our practices evolve with trends and the changing context and world in which we work, it’s important that we, and our impact practices, remain grounded in the theory that underpins the Impact Playbook.
In June 2024, the Europeana Impact Community held a webinar with Simon Tanner, Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage in the Faculty of Arts & Humanities at King’s College, London. Simon is the creator of the Balanced Value Impact Model (BVI Model), a methodology first published in 2012, specially created for the impact assessment of digitised resources and collections. The BVI Model informed and shaped the Europeana Impact Playbook and particularly the approach taken in Phase One. We then heard from Europeana Impact Community Steering Group members, Dr. Jenny Kidd (Cardiff University) and Matilda Justinić, digital librarian and PhD researcher at the National and University Library in Zagreb. Below, we share the main points of their presentations and encourage you to watch the webinar in full!
Professor Simon Tanner: the Balanced Value Impact (BVI) Model (from 2:12)
From its origins in 2012, Europeana’s Impact Playbook has both influenced and been influenced by the BVI Model, helping to shape, for example, the language it uses to make it easier to navigate and be more understandable to wider (international) audiences.
Language and context are particularly important to consider in applying the BVI Model. Simon notes, for example, that research by Dr. Shalen Fu (Kings’ College, London) on museum impact in China showed that concepts of “community” are more complex within that linguistic context.
The BVI Model was developed with reference to environmental impact assessment (DPSIR) and the Balanced Scorecard, a planning and management system already in use by museums and libraries. The Strategic Perspectives and Value Lenses of the Impact Playbook all derive from the BVI Model. They can be expanded or replaced if needed, but Simon stated that many other components actually fit into the existing categories.
The first of the five BVI Model stages was developed entirely from scratch with each stage progressing iteratively and responding to the others. The model was designed to respond to the needs and wants around digital resource questions, a topic much discussed in 2012 (and since), though, like the Impact Playbook, it can be applied to a much wider set of contexts. One thing Simon stressed, however, is that the BVI Model is designed to be applied by an institution for the purpose of shaping how it engages with its communities. It supports and guides institutions through thinking and decision-making, creating a structure to lead to an action plan - something practical - at the other end.
It doesn’t provide how-to guidance on each stage in full, and this is where the Impact Playbook meets the gap between the academically-informed approach and its application in practice. The Impact Playbook was initially conceptualised as a ‘cookbook’, helping you to find a recipe that worked for your organisation and your context. Together with the Impact Community, the Impact Playbook and the BVI Model have helped to shift perspectives from ‘did we do that well’ or ‘did we spend that money well’ to conversations about ‘did we change people’s lives’.
Check out https://www.bvimodel.org/ for more information and insights into where and in what context the BVI Model has been used.
You can find the slides here.
Matilda Justinić (from 31:15 onwards)
Matilda’s work and PhD research revolves around the evaluation of digital cultural heritage collections in libraries, and has been informed by both the BVI Model and the Europeana Impact Playbook. Her focus on the digital collections stemmed from two goals: firstly to evaluate if the digital collections met user needs and secondly, to assess if the collections aligned with the library’s mission and task. It also centred on sustainability and the justifying of investment in the long-term preservation and publication of the collections.
The most pressing challenge that she faces is how to evaluate the digital collections. Evaluation for a library means using all available tools, including ISO standards. A lack of standardised data sets and indicators has been a challenge to systematic evaluation. The Numeric project started to address this from 2006, evolving into the Enumerate project, guiding statistics about digital collections in Europe. The ISO standards are still evolving to the digital environment, such as ISO 2789:2022.
A second challenge is choosing the methodology to evaluate the digital collections in a way that adapts to an ever-changing environment. The BVI Model is strong in this context because it puts stakeholders in focus and promotes the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data. The first stage is particularly strong in supporting the development of problem statements and by extension, standardisation, gathering those that want to investigate the same type of values and measuring changes in context (see Tefko Saracevic).
Dr. Jenny Kidd (from 38:10 onwards)
Jenny brought her vast experience in digital heritage and digital culture and presented some reflections on how the Impact Playbook has been applied in practice. She drew out insights and learnings from how the Impact Playbook has been used. Her first example drew from Dafydd Tudur and the National Library of Wales’ assessment of a crowdsourcing campaign and how the empathy map helped them to understand how people are experiencing (pain points, etc) their digital workshops and tools. It led to good team building, a more tailored offer for their audience and their expectations; a useful discussion about outputs (the numbers that describe an activity) and outcomes (the changes experienced by stakeholders) and the differences between these; better understanding about what they were doing, why and what they wanted to achieve; and the centring of the audience in discussions about how libraries can ‘give people power’ .
Then she described a place-based case study ‘SmartSquare’, led by Professor Jens Bley, where digital was used to revitalise an urban square in Hamburg. Embedding discussions about impact from the beginning helped in this context to (co)create more tangible ways to measure impact. The Impact Playbook helped them to structure an otherwise complex collaborative process in a way that led to increased stakeholder buy-in, moving beyond ‘lofty perspectives’ to something very tangible.
She finally described the case presented by Maja Drabczyk, then at the National Film Archive - Audiovisual Institute Poland, about impact workshops that she led in Poland. The Impact Playbook increased confidence to move beyond outputs to more qualitative and holistic approaches to evidencing change. In the case study, Maja reflected on the importance of translating the Impact Playbook into Polish and Jenny referenced again the point raised by Simon about the importance of testing concepts like ‘impact’ and ‘community’ in different languages and contexts - in Poland there is no direct translation of the English concept of impact but a discussion around this, and the translation of the Impact Playbook meant that this could nonetheless be applied locally. Dafydd (in the first case study) also translated the Impact Playbook into Welsh.
There are many case studies on Europeana Pro but there is a need to collect more perspectives on impact, particularly as people learn new ways to use impact to articulate richness in their work, to be more strategic, to be more relevant, more place- or community-based, and more sustainable in the ways that they work. She outlined five observations around what we’ve learned and how we are moving forward within the Impact Community:
Firstly, we are seeing a shift to more formative, embedded and collaborative work around impact. This includes more participatory approaches in the GLAM sector which are affecting how we think about impact, e.g. around co-design and the articulation of values.
Secondly, more creative methodologies are also emerging, something that now features more strongly in the Impact Playbook (e.g. see Jenny’s own case study on creative mapping).
Thirdly, we see more approaches that strive to understand emotional engagement in digital engagement, especially around emergent technologies like VR, using methods like emotion mapping.
Fourthly, there is more emphasis on responsible innovation and on ethical practice, a continuing conversation around digital work and data stewardship, our reliance on tech companies, data harms, rights, AI, regulation and the environmental impact of our digital work.
Finally, a widening awareness that inclusive and accessible digital design works better for all users, with an impact on the reach and impact of our work.
Jenny asked all attendees to let the Impact Community know how they want the Impact Playbook to develop over the next few years (email us on impact@europeana.eu).
Interested in getting more involved in impact, or finding out more? Explore the Europeana Impact Playbook and join the Europeana Impact Community!
