repurposing digital objects: case studies across the publishing industry

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Repurposing Digital Objects: Case Studies Across the Publishing Industry G. Benoit and Lisa Hussey Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115.E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]; [email protected] Large, data-rich organizations have tremendously large collections of digital objects to be “repurposed,” to respond quickly and economically to publishing, market- ing, and information needs. Some management typically assume that a content management system, or some other technique such as OWL and RDF, will automatically address the workflow and technical issues associated with this reuse. Four case studies show that the sources of some roadblocks to agile repurposing are as much managerial and organizational as they are technical in nature. The review concludes with suggestions on how digital object repurposing can be integrated given these organizations’ structures. Introduction Between 2008 and 2009, four international publishing houses retained one of the authors as a metadata and sys- tems expert as part of their enterprise-wide “digital object repurposing” campaigns. Each of these groups’ executives believed that the current investment in computerized content management systems was sufficient to achieve this repurpos- ing. When this did not happened, each group held a series of meetings with the author, third-party content management system (CMS) consultants, executives, managers, and staff. This report outlines the technical efforts made to date and how ultimately the difficulties more likely lay in organizational communication and competing “information environments” and behaviors. We review the original technical-oriented approach with numerous quotes from these meetings. Because there is no theory or construct immediately applicable to framing a research question in this situation, we wish first to learn more about the publishing industry’s concerns before delv- ing more deeply (Yin, 1984; Eisenhardt, 1989). Although the technical issue remains, we consider, too, the knowl- edge of and expectations for technology in “digital object Received May 11, 2010; revised October 12, 2010; accepted October 13, 2010 © 2010 ASIS&T Published online 6 December 2010 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/asi.21465 repurposing.” Casting these meetings as cases we extract streams of information behavior and weight them against organizational communication theories to help us to iden- tify technical, managerial, and staff-based problems and candidate solutions. “Digital object repurposing” means recombining quickly the collection of digital files, representing texts, images, test questions, shoulder notes, and the like, that are the work prod- ucts of the publishing staff, editors, graphic designers, into new products, such as building a textbook on-the-fly from existing resources. The goal is to publish books, in print or born-digital formats, quickly and more affordably. Literature Review There is no research literature focused solely upon the publishing industry’s efforts at digital object repurposing, although there is a body of vendor-created expressions of need (in the form of white papers) and a literature about some of the influences upon technology-based organiza- tions. But as costs, competition, and consumer needs change (Iansiti et al., 1999; Clegg et al., 1997; Moad, 1994; Suwardy, Ratnatunga, & Sohal, 2003), publishers look to “repur- pose” digital objects by altering workflow or modifying enterprise-wide information systems. To gain the advantages of repurposing, however, is no easy feat. In a wide-ranging survey and case study report, Clegg et al. found 80%–90% of IT investments do not meet their performance objec- tives, and that less than a quarter of new technology projects achieved the integration of technology and business goals. Furthermore, 80%–90% of the issues companies encoun- tered when implementing new IT are organizational, rather than technical. As other researchers made clear, technol- ogy does not exist by itself within an organization, and many other factors contribute to the success or failure of the new technology implementation (Sambamurthey & Zmud, 1999). In these examples, repurposing offers the organization a chance to redeploy its assets and to rethink its market- ing and management strategies. The concept of “user” is JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 62(2):363–374, 2011

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Repurposing Digital Objects: Case Studies Across thePublishing Industry

G. Benoit and Lisa HusseySimmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected];[email protected]

Large, data-rich organizations have tremendously largecollections of digital objects to be “repurposed,” torespond quickly and economically to publishing, market-ing, and information needs. Some management typicallyassume that a content management system, or someother technique such as OWL and RDF, will automaticallyaddress the workflow and technical issues associatedwith this reuse. Four case studies show that the sourcesof some roadblocks to agile repurposing are as muchmanagerial and organizational as they are technical innature. The review concludes with suggestions on howdigital object repurposing can be integrated given theseorganizations’ structures.

Introduction

Between 2008 and 2009, four international publishinghouses retained one of the authors as a metadata and sys-tems expert as part of their enterprise-wide “digital objectrepurposing” campaigns. Each of these groups’ executivesbelieved that the current investment in computerized contentmanagement systems was sufficient to achieve this repurpos-ing. When this did not happened, each group held a seriesof meetings with the author, third-party content managementsystem (CMS) consultants, executives, managers, and staff.This report outlines the technical efforts made to date and howultimately the difficulties more likely lay in organizationalcommunication and competing “information environments”and behaviors.

We review the original technical-oriented approach withnumerous quotes from these meetings. Because there is notheory or construct immediately applicable to framing aresearch question in this situation, we wish first to learnmore about the publishing industry’s concerns before delv-ing more deeply (Yin, 1984; Eisenhardt, 1989). Althoughthe technical issue remains, we consider, too, the knowl-edge of and expectations for technology in “digital object

Received May 11, 2010; revised October 12, 2010; accepted October 13,2010

© 2010 ASIS&T • Published online 6 December 2010 in Wiley OnlineLibrary (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/asi.21465

repurposing.” Casting these meetings as cases we extractstreams of information behavior and weight them againstorganizational communication theories to help us to iden-tify technical, managerial, and staff-based problems andcandidate solutions.

“Digital object repurposing” means recombining quicklythe collection of digital files, representing texts, images, testquestions, shoulder notes, and the like, that are the work prod-ucts of the publishing staff, editors, graphic designers, intonew products, such as building a textbook on-the-fly fromexisting resources. The goal is to publish books, in print orborn-digital formats, quickly and more affordably.

Literature Review

There is no research literature focused solely upon thepublishing industry’s efforts at digital object repurposing,although there is a body of vendor-created expressions ofneed (in the form of white papers) and a literature aboutsome of the influences upon technology-based organiza-tions. But as costs, competition, and consumer needs change(Iansiti et al., 1999; Clegg et al., 1997; Moad, 1994; Suwardy,Ratnatunga, & Sohal, 2003), publishers look to “repur-pose” digital objects by altering workflow or modifyingenterprise-wide information systems. To gain the advantagesof repurposing, however, is no easy feat. In a wide-rangingsurvey and case study report, Clegg et al. found 80%–90%of IT investments do not meet their performance objec-tives, and that less than a quarter of new technology projectsachieved the integration of technology and business goals.Furthermore, 80%–90% of the issues companies encoun-tered when implementing new IT are organizational, ratherthan technical. As other researchers made clear, technol-ogy does not exist by itself within an organization, andmany other factors contribute to the success or failure of thenew technology implementation (Sambamurthey & Zmud,1999).

In these examples, repurposing offers the organizationa chance to redeploy its assets and to rethink its market-ing and management strategies. The concept of “user” is

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 62(2):363–374, 2011

expanded to include interoffice exchanges as well as externalcommunication to clients. Initially all cases assumed a top-down approach would be workable, but such efforts in eachcase failed to achieve the goal because of a lack of under-standing of metadata practices, fear of loss of control overobjects, commitment to large capital investments even whenshown not to be able to achieve the goal, and consider-able resistance to changing existing work behaviors, whichechos McFarlan’s (1984) and Proctor and Doukakis (2003)reports. In-house retraining in metadata standards, especiallyissues associated with interoperability, data conversions, andprobabilistic classification techniques theoretically will alle-viate many concerns, but ineffective management techniques(top-down management imposing poorly understood recom-mendations from outside consultants imposed at the vicepresident level) contribute to resistance (cf. Erdogan et al.,2008; McFarlan, 1984; Ford, Ford, & McNamara 2002;Jarret, 2004).

Of particular interest at the executive level was the poten-tial of probabilistic automatic classification of digital objectsand the need for finer grain descriptive and administrativecontrol over objects. Middle managers’ roles become impor-tant in the implementation process as they not only help thestaff with sensemaking as changes take place (Balogun &Johnson, 2004), but they are also more likely to be able toprovide emotional support while the impact of the technologyis unclear (Huy, 2002).

Retreating from work levels to an inclusive organization-wide view, other streams of research also apply. Davenport(1999), writing on the management side, emphasizes theneed to consider the impact on nontechnical groups’ moralewhen systems are imposed from outside the group. Similarly,Gratton and Erickson (2009) include building from within,using “‘signature’ relationships to bind staff to enterprise”goals. In Collaboration across silos, Gulati (2009) notes thatexecutives and managers should consider incentives and newperformance metrics that encourage and reward collaboratingon new projects. In library, archives, and information science,

TABLE 1. The organizational structure and data sources for the cases.

Case Structure Data sources

Publishing house (K-12) Vice presidents [CIO, marketing] Interviews, observation systemsManagers analysis trainingEditorsStaff

Publishing house (college) Vice presidents [CIO, marketing] Interviews, observation, trainingManagersEditorsStaff

Publishing house (K-20) Vice presidents [CIO, marketing] Interviews, observation, trainingManagersEditorsStaff

Publishing house Vice presidents [production] Interviews, observation, trainingManagersEditorsStaff

collaborations crossing traditional work domains is gainingpopularity, and they, too, integrate technical and work issues(PEM, 2010).

Finally, there is a literature on the theory of identity andthe diffusion of innovation. Orlikowski (2000), Schwartzand Watson (2005), Zuboff (1984), Bradford and Florin(2003), and Fichman and Kemerer (1997) discuss howtechnology is “not socially neutral.” As Zuboff notes, theintroduction of a new technology, or in these cases differ-ent technologies, “imposes and produces new patterns ofinformation and social relations . . .,” but the affects of “theinformation technologies are not fully recognized.” Lamband Davidson (2002), Sveningsson and Larsson (2009), andCastells (1999) especially note the dependency of identityupon work roles. Nach and Lejeune (2009) state:

People construct their identities from a wide area of inter-dependent social resources such as ethnicity, workplace, andeducation. These resources shape their selves and convey asense of who they are. Identities play a role of orientation andprovide the framework within which things have meaning forus. They are stronger sources of meaning than roles becausethey involve a process of self-construction and individua-tion. Identities organize the meaning while roles organize thefunctions. (p. 3).

These literatures suggest that digital object repurposingis a more complex activity than the executives’ originalassumption.

The Cases

Although nondisclosure agreements severely restrict whatwe may report about the organizations (Table 1), which limitsour freedom to consider differences between the groups, wewere still able to create a profile from their commonalities.All of the four sites are in the Boston, Massachusetts area,where employees are classified into one of three roles: staff,editor, and manager. Executives were located in New York.

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A total of 28 people participated in these various discussions.All managers and editors are women and three staff mem-bers are male. The four executives, all male, in all casesare located in New York but they attended meetings in theirBoston offices. Note that each executive had recently hireda new chief information office (CIO), but the CIOs did notattend any of the nine meetings.

Within each organization, the staff, editors, and managersare collected into topic groups: history and social sciences,language studies, mathematics, and chemistry. Staffs arecharged with creating the digital objects, entering text, mak-ing corrections, and keeping track of these objects. Above thestaff, editors are divided into those who solicit manuscripts,who are not included here, and those in charge of production.A manager oversees the staff and editors and reports directlyto the executives. The staff comprises the youngest people inthe group; managers also tend to be young, often directingolder editors.

In each of the cases, we consistently observed that thestaff and editors communicated face-to-face and often col-laborated when trying to locate files. Managers usuallycommunicated with editors through e-mail and face-to-facemeetings, which were usually casual discussions in the halls,rather than reserving a conference room. Executives, whowere housed in a different city, communicated exclusivelyby e-mail or phone with managers, usually to ask aboutproduction schedules.

Although the original proposal—to determine how to“repurpose digital objects”—is accurate, each of the organi-zations, and at the different levels in the organizations, tookindependent steps to model how to reuse objects: a rangeof reactions from the production staff included creating MSAccess records, labeling computer folders by project, andlooking for recognizable names when trying to repurposea file. For example, we asked to be walked through howresources are located and shared, and, in one case, the pro-cess began when the manager contacted the editor. She, inturn, gathered her staff and they determined the appropriatedate of production or when the materials were shipped to thegraphic designer in New York, who completed production.Then someone called the designers and asked them to lookfor files created around that date.

These independent steps were not revealed untilorganization-wide meetings were held, because the organi-zations reached a crisis point, which was precipitated by theexecutives’ purchase or commitment to purchase or reviseexisting applications, and the consequential change in expec-tations, workflow, and loss of investment in the work alreadycompleted at the staff level. Below are some examples of thetypes of questions and steps taken before holding meetingsto determine why the CMS was not supporting digital objectrepurposing as proposed:

• In one case, the vice president committed the organization toan entirely new data model, Topic Maps, by hiring a CIO fromAustralia. The Topic Maps model is an ISO standard for rep-resenting and exchanging knowledge representations usingconcepts, hypergraph associations, and specific occurrences

in the form of topic-based resources, but it is not widely usedin the United States.

• The vice president of the largest organization had heard of“OWL” and “RDF” and wanted to pursue this line. OWL,or Web Ontology Language, is a W3C recommendation for“applications that need to process the content of informationinstead of just presenting information to humans. OWL facil-itates greater machine interpretability of Web content thanthat supported by XML” and other formats (W3C Consor-tium, 2004a). Resource Description Framework (RDF) is afamily of specifications that is similar to entity-relationshipsfound in relational databases and is intended to help describeWeb-based resources using XML (W3C Consortium, 2004b).

• One organization had contracted with a librarian to create aset of subject descriptors based on Library of Congress Sub-ject Headings (LCSH) and purchased a software applicationto help build subject tracings. This application was run onone computer (with a rather unsophisticated interface and isrestricted to MS Windows), while the editors used a secondcomputer to access the CMS’s records.

• In all cases, the executives wanted to discuss and create“ontologies”, which were actually controlled vocabularies(CVs). Behind this, it appeared they expected an enter-prise data model—they expressed using XML—that would“automatically” support interoperability.

• In all cases, the executives wanted the staff from variousoffices and different units to be able to locate full texts of chap-ters, shoulder notes, test banks related to particular chapters,image comments, and metadata about specific needs (suchas learning outcomes and professional or educational stan-dards). For example, editors, and ultimately external clients,would be able to select and build texts. A common examplewas to create a language lesson module from the appropri-ate learning level and school level and then choose imagesfrom published history and art history texts for illustration.For instance, a chapter in an introductory high school Frenchlanguage textbook would be mapped to a specific educationalstandard (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Lan-guages) and an historical picture of Charles De Gaulle or theEiffel Tower.

Thus, the technique in all organizations was to rely onpersonal knowledge: A staff member or editor would haveto remember the folder names, the name of a given project,or who worked on the project, and then search hard drivesuntil familiar materials were found. Such a highly per-sonal and idiosyncratic approach meant that e-mail, phonecalls, and chatting in the halls were the primary channels ofcommunication among the staff.

Meetings at a Crisis Point

When the executives called for meetings it was becausethey had determined the need to improve efficiency, pur-chased software, or hired a CIO who committed the orga-nization to a particular approach. The managers and editorswere informed by memo or in person at the meetings, wherethe CMS was announced and the first steps at understandingworkflow, work needs, and actual issues of production werepresented.

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The staff’s techniques of finding and reusing objects, asmentioned above, were based on e-mails, face-to-face discus-sions, phone calls to the designers, and by what they termed“raiding” others’computers to find files based on the file mod-ification date of when they thought was the approximate timeof a particular project. This approach was not workable, andthrough staff-member initiative, several department-specificdigital object management techniques emerged, resulting inidiosyncratic information systems. The managers and staffsexhibited a strong reluctance to change their systems.

For example, the mathematics publishing unit of one com-pany hired a young man to copy edit math texts. In the firstsession of one case, attended by the vice president, the man-ager, an CMS consultant, and other managers, the math editorstopped the meeting to fetch the young man:

I think “Jason” should be here. He created the system and cananswer questions about it. . . . And he invested a lot of time indeveloping this and I don’t think we should just abandon it.

One history and social studies editor described how herstaff identified objects in her unit:

A staff member goes through the table of contents of the book,pulling out page numbers and topics to make a list. We wantto use the list to know what things we have.

Responding to this issue, another editor (literally) scoffed:“Those topics didn’t happen in European history, so wewouldn’t know about them in the U.S. history texts.”

The specificity of the topics varied (e.g., “Civil War,” “Ageof Colonialism,” “Latin America”) and naturally could not beapplied to all types of history (European, American, WesternCivilization, etc.), so lists are created for each textbook andthen the lists are compared to create a list for the topic.

However, it seemed that because the editors were visiblyuncomfortable around executives, they felt the need to justifytheir own management skills:

Editor: We’ve made all these lists of topics and we all knowthem.

Investigator: How do you identify the parts of chapters,illustrations, and so on?

Editor: Our job is to copyedit and prepare documents forNewYork. They design the book and have all the illustrations.

When the discussion turned to technology, the executiveswere more engaged. Executives in each of the four cases hadrecently hired a new CIO. Each of these CIOs had their ownpreferences about technology, to which the executives alwaysdeferred, truly believing that adding or completing existingcomputer technology would somehow automatically achievethe goals. To the executives, “digital object repurposing”meant being able to identify whole chapters, shoulder notes,other explanatory notes, illustrations, and test questions thatcould be assembled quickly into a new text. However, theexecutives rarely understood the process involved in technol-ogy, the existing workflow, or the time and effort that was

needed to successfully incorporate any new system. Theyusually defaulted to their CIO or to the CMS consultant. Onetextbook vice president described the idea:

Vice president: I want to be able to pull a picture from onetext and use it in another, and grab appropriate chapters andparts of chapters that can be used to make a new text onthe fly. The idea is to be flexible: to make a new text thatthe customer can build on his own, but we want to map thetext to our quiz bank service (an additional online serviceavailable at an extra fee) and we want to map these to statemandated learning outcomes.

Investigator: Okay. Typically, we think of searching for mate-rials and then, through the interface, make it possible for theuser to select and order the resources. For example, you couldadd some kind of drag-and-drop interface. How are theserecords catalogued, that is, how are these resources identified?

Vice president: The computer will do it.

Investigator: Yes, but usually a human has added descriptors,some term that identifies the digital resource, like a librarycataloguing record.

Vice president: Absolutely no human involvement. The com-puter will do it.

In another case asking the same question, the presidenthad a slightly different take:

President: I hired this guy I know from Australia. He knowsall about Topic Maps and OWL.

Investigator: How do you think Topic Maps will help?

President: Steve (the CIO) knows all about it.

Having explained the difference between browsing andsearching and using controlled vocabularies, the president’scomments are worth reporting fully:

President: Ontologies. We have ontologies for this. But I don’tsee how something used in a French textbook is going to beused in a history book. I have a picture of Charles de Gaulleor the Eiffel Tower in a French book but I want to use thede Gaulle picture for the liberation of Paris. I don’t see howthat’s possible.

Investigator: Let’s say the history department adds a term tothe database from the ontology (read “controlled vocabulary”)that identifies the picture as something related to modernFrench history. The language arts unit also adds a term fromthe ontology, something referring to Paris or French cultureor whatever they think is appropriate.

President: I still don’t see it. How can the history people getthe picture?

Investigator: Okay, well, someone enters a search term, aquery, that is used to match by the search engine or databaseto find a record that matches. Since this image has descriptorsfor history and for, say, French culture, the query will match it.

President: (getting angry) No, I still don’t see it. If the pic-ture is in the history ontology, it can’t be in the language artsontology!

366 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—February 2011DOI: 10.1002/asi

Investigator: Well, someone could assign ontology terms tothe digital objects . . .

President: No human involvement.

Investigator: No, no, the editors could add terms only whenan object is used and over time the ontology could be applied.We could grow the database slowly through use.

President: No, that would take too long. And we already havea catalog system.

Investigator: Well, we could take a random sample from somecollection, large enough to be useful, say, 10,000 objects,and using other metadata, try to classify automatically thedocuments. Decide on what kind of error rate, say 10%, ofmisclassified records is acceptable and then we could tryautomatically classifying everything else.

President: That seems feasible.

When the executives were present, the manager was askedto explain one of the locally created systems. In the math unitexample, the editor asked “Jason” to explain how his systemworks:

Jason: First, I ask a question of each document. Is it aboutreal numbers or imaginary numbers? If it is a real number, Iask if it’s discrete or continuous . . . and so on. Then I knowwhat folder (in which to store the file.)

Investigator: That sounds pretty complex. How do peopleuse it?

Jason: They ask me to find it.

Investigator: What if you’re not available?

Jason: Any mathematician can figure it out! If someone elsewants something they can wait ‘til I get back.

Here, the editor spoke up, defending Jason’s system:

Editor: Jason worked very hard on this and it works for us.I don’t want his work to be wasted. Can you make recordswork with any new system?

Vice president: According to (content management com-pany), they use XML. (Turning to the CMS consultant) Youcan import records, right? XML is supported?

CMS consultant: Oh, yes.

The humanities/social sciences unit of another site describestheir work process:

Investigator: Okay, when someone asks for documents, whatdo you do? For example, you said you wanted to get docu-ments used in (textbook 1) and use it in (textbook 2). How doyou do that now?

Editor: Well, it depends. Usually someone here worked onthe book and we think about when. Like, “Jane” workingon (textbook). We raid her computer, look at the date on thefolder ‘cause once a job’s done, we move on so the date isprobably the last time we used it before sending it to theprinter. Then we call New York (the graphic designer) andtell him the date and he looks around for his stuff about thetime we sent him the files.

Investigator: Do the files have some kind of unique name toidentify the topic?

Editor: Oh, no. That depends on who made them. “Sophia”always makes names that are kind of understandable orincludes the date in the name, but other people (the graphicdesigner) just name ‘em whatever they want.

Investigator: So, you rely on personal knowledge to findmaterials? What if someone leaves?

Editor: Well, we don’t get paid much but people in publishingseem to stay put for years or they leave right away.

Having already considered introducing CVs, the man-agers and editors all were concerned about their departmentsystems.

In this example, an editor discusses the CVs:

Editor: We know what we mean if we talk about history. Thetopics come right from the textbooks themselves. We canalways just get one (of the textbooks) and look at it. Andthese ontologies are way too complicated . . . And we don’twant to waste what we’ve already done!

Consultant: Well, we’ll try to incorporate your records,mixing your own descriptors with the new ones.

Editor: The new ones are too complicated.

Consultant: We don’t have to apply all of it but just be consis-tent. For instance, let’s copy how libraries do it. (Distributesan introductory note and training manual about cataloguing.)Consider adding subjects that describe the genre, period, andgeographic region.

After discussing cataloguing practice, the editor was stillanxious, and the group collectively settled on the idea of the“Rule of Three,” which is to add three subject tracings withthree components (genre, period, and region). The editorialstaff was relieved that they could maintain their way of work-ing and preserve their computerized records. At a subsequentgroup meeting with the vice president, the editor, looking forsupport from her manager, said:

Editor: Oh, this will work with the new system . . . We havea rule of three, right?

Vice President: Won’t that take a lot of time?

Editor: No, I don’t think so. We’ll use the records we alreadyhave.

Consultant: There’s a little training manual that . . .

Vice President: No training.

A few months after the conclusion of the meetings, onephoto specialist, one manager, and three staff members werelaid off.

Discussion

Originally, the executives expected the CMS to achievedigital object repurposing, and the staff defended their locallycreated techniques before trying to see how their recordscould be integrated into the new system. In the end, execu-tives decided they wanted to standardize the descriptors (their

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TABLE 2. Responses to issues by executives, managers, editors, and staff members.

Group Issue Response

Executive Resists human classification Sampling of objects to model automatic classificationWants to adopt OWLWants to use Topic Maps or RDFConcerned with preserving earlier capital investment in

software for cataloguingWants drag-and-drop interfaces for developing in-house

“just in time” publishingConcerned with integration of CMS with enterprise workflows

Management Wants to preserve department-created recordsHopes to integrate department-created records with

enterprise-mandated systemsSimplified rules for classification “Rule of three”—concept of three access points with

up to three descriptorsConcerned that the changes would upset current workflowConcerned with the need to set time aside for training

Editors Fears the interruption of workflowEvades the need to learn new systemsDenigration of their work from editorial to production

Staff Fear of loss of work on department-created digital object systemsResist retrainingResisted external consultants

“ontologies”) as the first step towards repurposing. The variedexpectations led to different issues and responses, dependingon the person’s role in the organization (Table 2).

Broad, Shared Concerns. The managers seemed distraughtabout (a) having the weaknesses of their staff’s systemsexposed, (b) having to support their staff members, (c) hav-ing to avoid being seen as poor managers, or (d) being seenas ignorant regarding their staff’s work. When consideringthe CVs, they were confused about the level of granularity ofthe descriptors because their current technique—haphazard,at times, and extremely detailed or overly broad, at othertimes—was tightly associated with their work product, thetextbooks. Consequently, the third issue of being able toshare descriptors was broached, but it quickly devolved intoissues concerning ownership and priority of use. All levels—executives, managers, and staff—were paralyzed by the ideaof having to adjust to a more flexible but complicated andshareable system, because it meant greater possible riskof error and an entire shift in the offices’ workflows andcommunication flows.

The lack of knowledge about computer technology, theconcept of descriptors, standardization, and the idea ofthe combinations of terms for fuller descriptions consistentlyblocked efforts and confounded all participants. A represen-tative example is the executive staff who could not see howobjects with one subject label (“Charles de Gaulle”), appliedby the language arts group, could be used by another (e.g., asa picture of a war-time general for the history group).

Reactions to Possible Solutions. A proof-of-concept appli-cation as a compromise to demonstrate how a new

repurposing system works was demonstrated. The range ofreactions to the proof-of-concept application was varied. Thefirst reaction came from the consultant who represented theCMS. In each case, the CMS producers had promised that alldigital objects could be retrieved and exported as XML. Eventhough the individual executives had no idea how to use theserecords, it was one of their specifications. In no case was itpossible for data to be exported without the CMS company’srepresentative’s help.

At one publishing site, the executive resurrected what hecalled the “clunky cataloguing system,” which was an unso-phisticated but familiar kind of bibliographic utility. Yet, likethe other cases, he patently refused to entertain the idea ofhuman-created records. All executives assumed literally thatby some means, digital objects could automatically be foundwith no human intervention; they were uncertain how the“ontologies” and the like could be applied. When the con-cept of searching surrogate records was explained, executivesand managers had two responses. The executives held thatrecords had to be somehow automatically indexed. Managersrefused to see their existing (and idiosyncratic) records byabandoned and equally baulked at the idea of two weeks ofstaff retraining.

Executives, in all cases, did not see retraining as an issue;they anticipated this in their purchase or commitments tothe new software. However, their expectations were lim-ited regarding the training needed to learn the new soft-ware/system/application and they did not seem to anticipatethe need for the staff to reframe concepts regarding jobs andworkflow.

There remained, then, the stress between automatic index-ing, human indexing, and the concept of indexing in general.

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Because all of the executives were perplexed by the needfor searchable surrogates and adamantly opposed to humanindexing, we proposed, and they agreed to, the following:select a random sample of digital objects (10% of the entirecollection); catalogue entirely by human indexers; and thenautomatically classify the rest of the collection by somefacet of the human-catalogued collection. All the executivesbelieved that at least one access point, which was accuratefor 90% of the collection, was an acceptable level.

Determining the facets for automatic classification were,naturally enough, difficult and troubling. In many productionsituations, the only shared property was the modification dateof a record, and in others, the name of the book in which anitem appeared. The actual projects for sampling, however,were not realized.

These discussions lead us to believe that a lack of tech-nology knowledge, in particular, a lack of understandingabout descriptive standards (OWL, Topic Maps, relationaldatabase design and use, XML, semantic interoperability),and the referral of technical issues to CIOs, who were neverpresent at any session, encouraged the thinking of digitalobject repurposing as a purely technical concern. But thestaffs’behavior, at all levels, towards computing, the changesit might have on their workflow, and, mostly, the changesit might have on the relationships between individuals andgroups suggest more strongly that the technical issues aresymptoms of a different disease: organizational managementand culture, specifically communication—both throughoutthe normal practices of the organization and during a changeprocess—and organizational identity of both the staff and themanagers.

Organizational Communication. Although focused on tech-nology and introducing new uses for existing technologicalobjects, the cases identified several important issues relatedto introducing and managing change in organizations, regard-less of the type of change. The problems that surfacedhighlighted several common problems: the roles of com-munication and organizational identity, which includes boththe individual and the organization, and the level of under-standing of organizational process and workflows. Eachorganization attempted to introduce a new use or purposeto existing materials (the digital objects), which had a sig-nificant impact on the organizational processes, expectationsof the products, and individual job responsibilities. Althoughthe changes were expected to be positive for the organization,they were introduced without establishing a strong changemanagement plan, which resulted in poor communication,strong resistance to the changes, and eventual suspension orfailure of the original goals.

In each case, there was no evidence of a communicationplan for change processes or throughout the organization.As mentioned in the description of the sites, off-site execu-tives determined to introduce new software applications toapply digital objects in novel, potentially profitable ways,yet they failed to communicate the expectations and securethe participation of the staff; their failings were made clear

in the challenges when faced with attempting to implementthe changes. The staff immediately questioned the choices,argued over steps to take, and effectively prevented any signif-icant change to the storage or sharing of digital objects. Giventhe geographical separation and limited modes of communi-cation, it is likely that the in-house communication betweenthe staff and the administration was already defective. In theuse of digital material, there was little consideration of endusers beyond the staff, which was highlighted in the purpo-sive exclusion of the graphic artists and a photo archivist fromthe discussions.

Communication behaviors highlight another issue: thelack of understanding of the organizational processes andworkflow. The initiatives were introduced with no inputfrom those who will implement the process and seem-ingly with no understanding of the current, idiosyncraticworkflows and practices, as well as how the departmentscommunicated. Consequently, the differing levels of tech-nological knowledge, expectations of use, and communi-cation patterns negatively affected the use of the currentCMS and discussions of how to affect work changes withthe a CMS.

All of this provides an interesting insight into organiza-tional culture. Each case site shared similar problems withcommunication, organization, and actions, which impliesperhaps the existence of a restricted organizational culturein that industry, one where collaboration and communicationamong departments are not encouraged. That the adminis-tration did not solicit input before introducing the changeand that key players were not included in the discussionpoints to a vertical communication system, which reflectsa strong focus on the top-down method of communication.This is illustrated in the lack of communication betweendepartments, the inability of departments to collaborate, thehoarding of information, and creating work processes uniqueto each department. In other words, each department becomesa silo, a self-contained unit, with limited external interactions.As “Jason” and others’ behaviors suggest, their individ-ual knowledge alone enables the in-house approaches towork at all.

History of change initiative. These cases bring up questionsregarding previous experience with change initiatives in eachorganization. Have previous attempts to introduce new workprocesses resulted in job changes, the diminishing of pro-fessional standing, or even job losses? The organization’shistory of implementing change has a significant affect onhow the staff reacts to any initiative, even those who commu-nicate and plan well. Part of any change process is tensionand conflict, both of which need to be addressed as part ofany initiative. Asking employees to alter their work process,relinquish responsibilities, and share knowledge should bewell communicated and introduced carefully.

To understand some of the resistance and challenges tochange, it is also necessary to consider the role of iden-tity, particularly individual professional identity in relation tothe organization. Staff members built their own professional

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identity based on their understanding of their individualidentity and their professional identity, including responsi-bilities and expectations, as well as interactions with otherswithin and outside of the organization (Smith & Berg, 1998).This identity is central to how staff members view their work,contributions, and roles in the organization. Changes to jobexpectations and responsibilities threaten this identity, whichoften results in a strong “push back” or resistance to change.This resistance is not always overt and is almost alwaysdestructive to the entire process. This is illustrated in theways that management and the staff argued with the execu-tives and the investigator over the unique needs of their worktype and investment in existing systems.

Location of Power and Organizational Knowledge. Relatedto issues of identity are the role of “official” and “unofficial”loci of power and operational knowledge in the organiza-tion. Official power is authority granted by the organization,whereas unofficial power stems from casual, on-the-job con-trol of information and knowledge. This control manifests invarious ways, such as construction of barriers—both physi-cal and symbolic— to prevent collaboration and the use ofage and seniority as a justification for opposition. Changesto workflows and expectations of use create opportunitiesfor acquiring and losing power, which, in turn, affects iden-tity. Opposition and challenge are normal reactions to thesethreats.

In the cases, issues related to power stemmed from both theaccess to information and the use of institutional knowledgeto block change initiatives. For example, many of the staffsthat handled and stored the various digital objects had a cer-tain amount of power because they controlled access to theseobjects. They were the ones who understood how the digitalobjects were organized unofficially and acted as the gate-keepers. Three managers claimed at first that they did notwant to “lose their data.“ When they were told that the dataare just going to be copied and used in the proof-of-conceptapplication, they claimed that their systems or work wereunique and could not be shared. Introducing new, large-scaletechnical systems and the lack of knowledge about multipleformats (such as XML) consciously intended by executives toshare objects, resulted, too, in potential changes to workflow,organizational communication, multiple technical systemsand unexpected contingency costs that prompted the callsfor additional consultants.

We found it especially interesting to note the reactions ofyounger managers to older, more experienced staffs in lightof power and identity. In a few of the cases, there was a distinctgenerational division between the staff and the managers.This created several layers of conflict between the youngerand older staff based on formal authority of the younger man-agers and the institutional knowledge and know-how of theolder staffs. One older staff member (the photo specialist)commented, when the manager had left the meeting, “Noone listens to me anyway, I’ll be out of here shortly.” And, infact, his position was made redundant. The younger managersmay have been trying to establish or maintain the image of

their authority, while the older staff members were trying tomaintain their identities and power and value of their knowl-edge within the organization. Whatever the source, the senseof preserving role, power, and value meant that neither sidewas willing to compromise or surrender power. As a result,the change initiatives failed because of poor communicationand a lack of understanding of each one’s role and potentialcontribution to the organization.

Organizational Behavior Issues. The emphasis on repur-posing was originally conceived as merely applying newcomputer technology, but the technical concerns brought tothe fore some unexpected organizational behavior and com-munications issues. Although the organizations in the studyare dealing with resource repurposing projects, the problemthey have appears to be caused by the systems that are putin place to repurpose the digital objects. Can the repurposingprojects be seen as introducing new systems into the organi-zations and therefore organizational innovations? A glance atthe literature of organizational innovation, or “the adoptionof an idea or behavior that is new to the organization adopt-ing it” (Daft, 1978, p.197), is informative. Following that lineof thought, the proof-of-concept program qualifies as Swan-son’s Type III innovation: an innovation that “integrates ISproducts and services with core business technology, and typ-ically impacts upon general business administration” (1994,p. 1077). If this seems a legitimate path, then technology-based expectations of change may be cast as behavioralissues.

It is not that the hierarchical structure of these organi-zations is necessarily a hindrance, but rather the behavior;when faced with change, these organizations reacted withrigidity, creating or increasing alienation and low commit-ment of workers. In these cases, managers encouraged thelowest-level staff members and valued their individual initia-tives (Perrow, 1972; Adler, 1999), advancing to the nexus ofmanagement. Executives, however, saw individual spontane-ity and creativity as not conforming to the current amorphousinformation flow. Some researchers argue that when mem-bers of an organization are given some sense of control,they become more ego-involved and thus more integratedinto the organization and into the organization’s variousinnovation efforts (Tannenbaum, 1962). Similarly, Hansenand van Oetinger (2009) and Adler argued for an enablingbureaucracy, which serves two purposes: (a) coercion andcompliance and (b) enablement. The second purpose, enable-ment, is realized when the hierarchy is structured according toexpertise instead of positional power and when the differentlevels in that hierarchy collaborate. Only an enabling bureau-cracy would involve employees, encourage improvements,and create a collaborative environment within the organi-zation. The repurposing projects may present the organiza-tions with an opportunity to reexamine their organizationalstructures and problematic areas (such as communicationchannels).

Organizational behavior combined with information tech-nology adoption provides some predictors of success. Jeyaraj,

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Rottman, and Lacity (2006), for instance, surveyed this liter-ature and concluded that the best predictors of the success ofIT adoption by organizations were as follows:

• External pressure• Professionalism of IS unit• External information sources• Top management support

Other promising predictors are as follows:

• Environmental instability• Top management characteristics• System quality• User training• Career ladder• Middle management support• Customer support

Considering these predictors, these issues in these casesare noted but not viewed in a positive light. Execu-tives felt commercial and professional pressures and wereable to establish links among other executives to supportthe enterprise-wide digital object management. However, theCIOs’ lack of communication, the third-party CMS vendors’failure to deliver on product behavior, the lack of usertraining, multiple system interfaces, and the sense of riskto advancement all meant that middle management wasuncertain about how to support their staffs’ initiatives, thoughcomputationally inefficient and short-sighted system design,while preserving their roles if comfortable, but inefficientworkflows, were altered by corporate-imposed behaviorswith no stable and recognizable measures.

Summary of Issues and Action Items

Several vital issues have emerged from this study (Table 3).Very few, if any, of the participants understood, or acknowl-edged, a “big picture” view of the organization. Eachgroup focused on its own goals and expectations, and theywere uncertain and fearful how these affected the orga-nization as a whole. This is a bit counter-intuitive, asexecutives expected their top-level decision to affect the

TABLE 3. Summary of issues and checks for planning and integrating digital object repurposing.

Issue Check

Change process management Emphasize communication during analyses phase

Position security Clarify how new technology and workflows positively affect work;a tool to help achieve department goals

History of change Emphasize that this change is a new effort for and between groups (silos)

Capital investments based on data New and revised computer systems will focus on the semantic interoperabilityof the data, that exploration with the data will not lead to data loss

Investment in lower level technical skills, Emphasize data commonalities, not training in specific applicationsemphasizing data, not applications

Competing goals Align executive, management, and staffs goals by demonstrating work vertically and horizontally;demonstrate how specific goals at each level are achieved and mutually dependent

Attitudes Encourage experimenting; understand that during change, failure is an option to learn and improve

organization positively. When the concept began to fail,the emphasis shifted to focusing on the individual staffmembers or departments, and there was very little demon-strated discussion of how this worked back up towardsthe full organization. Communication within and betweendepartments may have helped to minimize this, as would adialogue about the change. Administration expected staffsto accept changes without considering their expectations,previous efforts, and understanding of the organization.And the staffs expected to be able to maintain their statusand power, without allowing for the larger organizationalgoals.

The recommendations from these cases is that large-scale technical organizations of heterogeneous digital objectsestablish a checklist of communication, technical, and behav-ioral skills, expectations, and workflow analyses.

Although technology was part of the issue, manage-ment and communication contributed to the failure of theinitiatives. In-house retraining in metadata standards andespecially issues associated with interoperability, data con-versions, and probabilistic classification techniques wouldhave theoretically alleviated many concerns. But manage-ment techniques (top-down management that imposed poorlyunderstood recommendations from outside consultants, whowere imposed at the vice president level) contributed to resis-tance (cf. Erdogan et al. 2008; McFarlan, 1984; Erodgan2008; Ford et al., 2002; Jarret, 2004).

Recommendations

A partial analysis of the case studies brought severalrecommendations. Attempts to integrate the candidate solu-tions magnified the key problems and brought to the foreweaknesses in each organization, especially at the exec-utive, middle management, and technical services levels.Ultimately in all cases, a proof-of-concept technical solutionwas required, which demonstrated support for capital invest-ment, staffs’ emotions, interoperability across heterogeneousdata models, and current workflow, while dramatically alter-ing and updating storage and retrieval of digital objects andhuman-computer interactions to integrate the objects into

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TABLE 4. Summary of issues and follow-up actions.

Summary of issues by group Conclusion and follow-up action

TechnicalExcluding the CIO’s office, in general and at all levels,there was no baseline knowledge of data nor what’s possible other thanwhat in-house personal knowledge provided in locating resources orthrough vendor consultant help

1. Production staff lack file-sharing knowledge2. Concept of interoperability is not understood3. Lack of in-house, broad-based knowledge of SQL and XML4. Lack of understanding of retrieval models and retrieval sets’ creation

Lack of understanding how elements from sets can be useful in new layoutsor transformations

1. Training (in-house or online) on file formats and interoperability(not specific applications); “document representations”

2. Training in basic data models (how data are stored in differentformats and systems); “collection representations”

3. Concept of query formation and how queries are mapped tocollection representations; “matching functions”

4. Information architecture exercises to create wire frames and identifygroups that provide the content

OrganizationalHierarchical, silo-based approaches based on traditional products(collecting resources for domain-specific areas, e.g., humanities, maths)and external product design

1. Introduce new but focused activities that integrate levels in sharedactivities, specifically, JAD, for the repurposed digital objects

2. Indicate the contributions of each group in the object

Middle management/editors• Fear of errors and disappointment with small-scale resolutions

(the department-specific databases and other techniques) emphasizelowering costs in work, production, and changing management styles

• Personality-driven and “unofficial” skills as the real system of productionversus official workflows lead to defense of staff but conflict withexecutives

1. Emphasize that this change is a new effort for and between groups (silos)and use JAD to demonstrate unofficial skills

2. Allow for learning from mistakes through JAD exercises3. Emphasize new product designs (the repurposed objects) success4. Use the repurposed objects as tools for more clearly expressed goals

that are understood better and, if possible, agreed to5. Clearer, visual-based demonstration of the shared goal integrates the

unofficial private knowledge more successfully

staff workflow, among other issues. Of particular interest atthe executive level was the potential of probabilistic auto-matic classification of digital objects and the need for finergrain descriptive and administrative control over objects.Middle managers’ roles become more valuable as emotionalsupport for staff when the impact of new technologies onwork environments is unclear (Huy, 2002).

The recommendations from these cases are, on the onehand, not new because organizations naturally evolve andtry to maintain earlier capital investments. When a systemis not effective, there is resistance to invest in retraining aswell as a resistance to implement a complete, open analysisthat is needed to see how technological changes affect workbehaviors “on the ground” while achieving corporate goals.

In these cases, staffs probably would have supported thechanges if they could have participated in some aspect ofthe work with visible value, such as joint application develop-ment sessions, where new digital products could be designedand the contributions of each group identified.

On the other hand, where an analysis was performed, itseemed to be designed to provide evidence for an organizationto follow other industry practices and it did not consider therapidly changing, low-level technical knowledge of the staffs.

Primarily, in all cases and at all levels, demonstrationapplications that represent how the technology-driven workchanges highlight the contributions of various groups; inother words, they recognize the inclusion of work identityas part of the digital objects’ repurposing and could providea project-centered communication model. Without focus-ing on the technical specifics of any particular system orapplication, introducing the concepts that are fundamental

to information storage and retrieval (e.g., Baeza-Yates &Ribierto-Neto, 1998, chap. 1) help all participants understandthe ways new combinations are possible. The primary activitythat addresses successful digital object repurposing is seeinghow the objects can be reused through a designing system ina collaborative way, integrating feedback from both technicaland user groups, such as Joint Application Design sessions.Second, but also vital to the success, is the need to provide abaseline skill set for understanding fundamental concepts ofstorage and retrieval, not specifics of using particular softwareapplications. Arguably, these skills, along with other pointsdetailed in Table 4, will alter the staffs’ and middle manage-ment’s problem-solving behaviors at official and unofficiallevels and provide a recognized opportunity for personal con-tributions in the familiar, everyday production-oriented work.

These predictors touched upon some of the problem areasthat were seen in these case studies. For example, becausetop management mostly spearheads the repurposing projects,these projects get full support from the top management.However, for a project to succeed, it also requires appropri-ate top-management characteristics, managerial training, andmiddle management support. Also, although external infor-mation sources, i.e., external consultants, were brought in,the imparted information needs to be internalized and users,as defined by the organizations, need to be trained.

Conclusions

Each site saw the promise of information technology as acatalyst for change by enabling all employees to interact with

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other departments. The current practices of using informa-tion objects would be transformed, at first internally and thendirectly to the customer or patron base. Such an evolutionwould dramatically alter each industry, essentially cuttingout the intermediary between data and the consumer of thedata. It was expected by executives that changing informationsystems for the entire organization would remove data redun-dancy, emphasize information provisioning, and become apermanent solution. The view was that a centrally adminis-tered and imposed CMS would create a common informationsolution, building for an entire organization without referenceto particular work functions or groups.

In short, there was an emphasis on the hardware and not,as Davenport describes it, “on the soft science of how peo-ple actually share information” (1999, p. 9). Rather, digitalobject repurposing brought out several issues regarding basicbehaviors, attitudes, values, management expectations, andincentives regarding information (Gulati, 2009).

There are certainly benefits to integrating and sharing dig-ital objects, and concerns about the staffs’ contributions andvalues were felt acutely when there was a clash between“information cultures.” Rather than look for opportunitiesin the tension between the globalism of organizational infor-mation and the particularism of individual and departmentinformation, each organization tended to retreat to a cen-tral definition, which made it less likely for employees tounderstand and agree to new technology behaviors. Althoughthe central technology approach might have been more effi-cient for some goals, there was no consideration of howthese staff members made sense of, and used, the resources.The staff work processes were primarily oral: face to face, par-ticularly in the creation or use of local, quirky departmentalinformation systems.

Staffs and managers used information systems, CMS, andother computing equipment onsite. These systems have along history of internal use, such as the bibliographic ones,or external use by peer groups, which is a form of profes-sional certainty and emotional support. Executives did notseem to prepare the way for innovation. Before introducingchange, interdepartment communication behaviors amongthe staff were casual and domain-based, distinct and elec-tronic between layers. Executives communicate by e-mailto offsite managers and came to meetings only at a crisispoint. As a result, staffs were to adhere to an uncertain andrisky endeavor, resisting adopting behaviors that were differ-ent from the ones that developed with their participation orby those they trust.

Executives could have prepared the way by demonstratingconfidence in staff innovation and the concept that infor-mation does not have to be enterprise-wide, and that anelement of flexibility and disorder might be useful. Moreover,because trust, face-to-face communication, and group cohe-sion were strongly evident, staff teams could be used to stressthe enterprise-wide benefits rather than the particulars of agiven technology. Such heritage relationships among the staffcould become mentoring activities across and within groupsto define the roles they would play in the new systems, leaving

the various tasks ambiguous, so they could develop informa-tion behaviors that integrate the technologies into their own,new information environments.

Most important, and least surprising, is the need to alterthe expectations of technology. A broader view of infor-mation use and how people share it as a dynamic phe-nomenon underscore the transience of solutions, letting theinformation environment develop until the desired behavioremerges. It may be necessary to adjust resources, e.g., todevelop interactive interfaces that let users search, manipu-late, store, and describe resources suited to their environment,letting the CMS map between the CVs and user-createddescriptors.

Finally, the subtleties of identity and workplace and thechallenges to power that affected digital object repurposingmight be recast as a team-building exercise, as if no technol-ogy were involved: Managers would be role models and bothstaffs and managers would be trained in relationship skills,such as conflict resolution and communication, because cur-rent work practices are planted firmly therein. Attempteddigital repurposing efforts that ignore the person in the modelwill be met only with resistance.

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