ENUMERATE Approach. In the ENUMERATE approach, following the advice of the SIG-STATS group, the starting point is not to include qualitative assessments of cultural value (relevant institutions) in deciding on the survey sample. In the ENUMERATE methodology the universe is defined as all memory institutions (archives, AV institutes, museums, libraries or combinations thereof) in each of the 27 member states. SIG-STATS: “Every institution that belongs to this domain, whether publicly or privately funded, whether actively involved with digitisation or not, may contribute to the Study.” As a consequence a much more substantial number of institutions had to be considered: ENUMERATE will start from NUMERIC’s estimate of all institutions in Europe (about 106,000). This increase in volume of the population is partly compensated for by restricting the survey to institutions with a mission for collection care and long term curation. This excludes public and school libraries as a separate category. The sum total of European memory institutions - the population for the ENUMERATE Core Survey - will be between 40,000 and 45,000.8 Public libraries with special collections have still been invited to participate under the category ‘other libraries’.9 4 See: Sheet A ~ Pro-forma Foundation Quota (available at xxxx://xxx.xxxxxxx.xx/, accessed 22/10/2011). 5 “Relevant institutions are considered to be those where digitisation of collections will significantly enhance access to the nation's cultural heritage. These are the main archives, film and broadcasting institutes, libraries and museums. It is a matter of judgement, based on local knowledge, which amongst the country’s institutions fall into this category. “ [NUMERIC Study Report, p.187] 6 NUMERIC Study Report, p.22. 7 Refer to Table 3 - Institutions per country in the guideline and adopted samples - of the NUMERIC Study Report (p.30) for guideline and adopted samples. 8 In the pre- NUMERIC Foundation database the estimate for all public libraries in Europe was 67,996. The 2008 summed up estimate of the national coordinators was 60,587. Subtracting these figures from the estimate of all institutions in Europe leaves a sum total of somewhere between 40,000 and 45,000.
ENUMERATE Approach. The survey is intended to collect high-level statistics on digitisation of cultural heritage in all 27 EU member states. For this reason target numbers of responses from memory institutions in the different countries are required. In the ENUMERATE approach a representative sample across all cultural heritage domains is the starting point, and the weighing mechanism described above will be used to determine the sample per domain per country. After extended deliberations it was decided to make the ENUMERATE Core Survey an open survey. This complicates the task of making the collected data representative. Stakeholders advised against doing a survey based on random sampling, which was the original plan, since this does assume that in all EU member states there is a full overview of all memory institutions (numbers, names and addresses) available in digital format. As was stated earlier this is as yet not the case. Irrespective of the chosen methodology, it is essential that the Core Survey will get the largest possible response rate and for this to happen it is necessary to approach and urge as many institutions as possible. Essentially there are three ways to achieve this:
