In 2008 we examined the activities of the Licensed Internet Associates program (LIA), a business operation within The National Archives (TNA) that licenses TNA’s holdings to commercial entities. Beyond providing direct revenue to TNA in the form of royalty income, the LIA program has played a major role in the rapid digitization of TNA’s documents at an extremely low cost, outsourcing the function to its licensing partners. In the face of a projected 25 percent cut in government funding over the next four years, TNA has sought to generate more revenue through this project than in the past, by using commercial techniques of valuation and actively seeking out new collections of content for the market, as licensing revenue shifts from being an extra bonus to becoming a must have.

 

Sustainability Planning Tool