Productivity Gains Subject to Administrative Control

The comparative costs of selecting images and preparing them for instructional use in both the photographic and digital environments are set out in the four tables that follow. These tables are built from a cost model of more than three dozen facts, estimates, and assumptions about Professor Scully's course and the library support it requires.^[16] The appendix presents the model, with some information obscured to protect confidentiality. I do not explain the details of the cost model here^[17] but focus instead on what it tells us. One cautionary word is in order. The cost model generates the numbers given in the tables (rounded to the nearest dollar, producing minor summing errors), but these numbers are probably meaningful only to the nearest $500. In the discussion that follows, I round the numbers accordingly.

Table 4.1 compares the cost of library support for Professor Scully's course in its former dependence on photos exhibited in the study gallery and in its present dependence on digital images delivered in a Web site.^[18]

Before the Scully Project, the university incurred about $7,000 in academic support costs for Professor Scully's course in the year it was taught. These costs over a six-year period, during which the course would be taught three times, are estimated at $22,000. As deployed in the fall of 1996, Web-site support for Professor Scully's course cost an estimated $21,000, or $34,000 over a six-year period. The result is a $12,500 balance arguing against digital provision of images in Professor Scully's course, or a 36% productivity loss in the use of university resources. However, a longer amortization period clearly works in favor of digital provision. The cost model suggests that the break-even point on the productive use of university resources comes in about 16 rather than 6 years.^[19] This gradual improvement happens for the following reasons:

• The higher absolute cost of the digital images results from one-time staff and vendor cost of converting analog images to digital format. While there is some incremental growth in these costs over six years, staff costs for providing analog images grows linearly. The long-term structure of these costs favors digital provision.

• The cost of the "real" space of bricks and mortar needed to house the photo collection is substantial and grows every year. Similarly, the operation and maintenance of physical space carries the relative high increases of costs for staff and energy. By contrast, the "virtual" space of digital media is relatively inexpensive to begin with, and its unit cost is falling rapidly. Again, the longterm structure of costs favors digital provision.

Along with the amortization period, the number of images digitized is another major variable that can be used to lower the total cost of digital provision and so move toward a productive use of resources. For years, it has been possible to mount no more than 400 photos in the study gallery. As Table 4.2 shows, if the Scully Web site had contained 400 digital images rather than 1,250 images, conversion costs

(italicized to isolate the changes from Table 4.1) would drop significantly, and the six-year cost of digital provision ($20,500) would be just under the cost of analog provision ($22,000). There is a 6% productivity gain over six years favoring digital provision.

The choice between 400 and 1,250 images has a dramatic impact on costs and productivity. That being so, one must ask what motivates the choice and what impact it has on student learning. Further consideration of this "what if" case is best deferred to the discussion of student productivity.

Speculation about another "what if" case is worthwhile. Professor Scully and his Teaching Fellows made no use of the Web site in the lecture hall or discussion sessions.^[20] What if they had been able to depend on the Web site instead of traditional slides for their face-to-face teaching? There is of course a warm debate on whether digital images can match film images in quality or ease of classroom use. The question posed here speculatively assumes no technological reason to favor either analog or digital media and focuses solely on what happens to costs when classroom teaching is factored in.

Two changes are identified (in italics) in Table 4.3. They are (I) the cost savings when Teaching Fellows no longer need to assemble slides for the three classroom discussion sessions that each conducts during the term and (2) the added cost of equipping a classroom for digital instruction.

This "what if" modeling of the Scully Project shows an $11,000 negative balance, or a 34% loss in productivity. While digital provision in this scenario is not productive within six years, the significant comparison is with the 36% loss in productivity without using digital images in the classroom (Table 4.1). The conclusion is that substituting digital technology for the labor of selecting slides is itself productive and moves the overall results of digital provision modestly toward a productive use of university resources. This conclusion is strongly reinforced if one considers a variant "what if" condition in which the Teaching Fellows teach not just 3 of these discussion sessions in a classroom but all 14 of them, and in which each Fellow selects his or her own slides instead of depending in considerable measure on slides selected by the head Teaching Fellow. This scenario is modeled in Table 4.4. As a comparison of Tables 4.3 and 4.4 indicates, the weekly cost of selecting slides in this new scenario increases 12-fold, while the use of the electronic classroom increases fivefold. That the classroom costs are absolutely the lower number to begin with also helps drive this scenario to the highly favorable result of a 44% increase in productivity.

It is important to emphasize that these scenarios all assume that funds for Teaching Fellows are fungible in the same way that the library's operating and capital budgets are assumed to be fungible. Faculty and graduate students are most unlikely to make that assumption. Graduate education is one of the core products of a research university. The funds that support it will not be traded about in the way one imagines trades between the operating and capital funds being made for a unit, like the library, that supports education but does not constitute its core product.