Transcript Blue Ribbon Task Force on the economic sustainability of

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES
Blue Ribbon Task Force on the economic
sustainability of digital preservation
Dr Paul Ayris
Director of UCL Library Services and UCL Copyright Officer
e-mail: [email protected]
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Contents
1. Why is digital preservation important?
2. Implications – UK exemplars
3. Blue Ribbon Task Force
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Contents
1. Why is digital preservation important?
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Library Strategy
2005-10
 10 over-arching goals
 E-Strategy a priority for:
 Teaching and Learning
 Research
 Student experience
 Partnership working
See http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Library/libstrat_may05.shtml
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VRE/VLE/
local web
Student/UCL Library
systems
Research collaborations;
Primary data; Group
project work; Learning
interface
Pay fees; book residences;
pay fines; see course and
exam marks; see loans
information
Prescribed core readings
and textbooks
Core textbooks (STM);
Digital readings (AHSS)
Local UCL
holdings
Paper and e-
Books/Journals/
AV/Digital Collections
and Archives
Institutional portal?
YouTube, FaceBook, Flickr
Social networking tools
Global resources - free
E-Journals, E-Books,
mass digitisation
Google interface to
Internet
External content
subscribed and free
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Key Strategic Questions
 British Museum Reading Room is traditional model
 Library pulls readers into library space
 In a networked and global environment, library is just one content provider
 In UCL, STM researchers hardly ever set foot into a physical library space
 Digital material is pushed to them electronically at their desktop
 Should the Library push stuff out to where the student is (e.g. Facebook)?
 Is an institutional portal helpful in providing a one-stop shop for the user to
navigate both local and remote content and services?
 Thanks to Lorcan Dempsey for this metaphor and discussion
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Implications
2. Implications – UK exemplars
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Digital Preservation – Key Questions for
Higher Education
 In the new information landscape, long-term digital
preservation of assets is essential
 It is irresponsible to steer users towards the use of digital
resources and not to curate those materials digitally for the
long-term
 Several scenarios for long-term preservation of digital
content:
 Big Science: UK Research Data Service
 Small Science: Institutional, third-party/commercial services
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UK Research Data Service
UKRDS
 RLUK (Research Libraries UK – formerly CURL) and RUGIT (Russell
Group IT Directors) have issued an Invitation to Tender
 £200,000 from HEFCE for a Feasibility Study into the development of
a shared digital research data service for UK Higher Education
Institutions
 Locally, there is uncertainty about the costs involved in managing large
data volumes and the availability of a suitably skilled workforce to
manage the new challenges posed by data curation
 Feasibility Study will address the need not just for storage capacity but
for active management of the creation, selection, ingest, storage,
retrieval and preservation of research data - the data lifecycle
identified in the LIFE models
 See http://www.ukrds.ac.uk/
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Other options
 What other options does a UK University Library have?
 National services which work for the academic community
E-Depot in The Hague is a national Dutch exemplar
Archiving e-journal copy from commercial publishers
– Digital archiving policy at http://conference.ub.unibielefeld.de/2006/proceedings/oltmans_vanwijngaarde
n_final_web.pdf
Does it have a European role, if it embraces the RAND
Corporation recommendations at its review?
– http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2007/RAND
_TR510.pdf
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Other options
 Commercial services
 Portico for e-journal content – over 7,000,000 preserved articles
 See http://www.portico.org/
 Local digital curation services
 UCL Library Services has established such a service
Covers long-term digital curation (including preservation) of
library content
E.g. output of library digitisation projects, e-prints in UCL
repository
Looking at primary data produced by academic researchers
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Task Force
3. Blue Ribbon Task Force
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See http://blueribbontaskforce.sdsc.edu/
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Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable
Digital Preservation and Access
 BRTF-SDPA
 Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in partnership with the
Library of Congress, the JISC (UK), the Council on Library
and Information Resources (CLIR), and the National
Archives and Records Administration (NARA – US)
 Created in late 2007 to run for 2 years
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Key Questions being addressed
 How will we ensure the long-term preservation and access
to our digital information, growing exponentially with each
passing day?
 How will we successfully migrate data as technology
moves from one preservation medium to the next?
 Who should determine which digital data should be saved,
and what criteria will be used to make those decisions?
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Economic Sustainability
 Economic sustainability
 What is the cost to preserve valuable data and who will
pay for it?
 Broadly speaking, economically-sustainable digital
preservation will require
 new models for channeling resources to preservation activities
 efficient organization that will make these efforts affordable
 recognition by key decision makers of the need to preserve, with
appropriate incentives to spur action
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Economic Sustainability in a Digital
Preservation Context
 The set of business, social, technological, and policy mechanisms:
 Encourage the gathering of important information assets into digital
preservation systems
 Support the indefinite persistence of digital preservation systems, thus
securing access to and use of information assets into the long-term future
 Economically-sustainable digital preservation requires:
 Recognition of the benefits of preservation by key decision makers, as part
of a process of selecting digital materials for long-term retention
 Appropriate incentives to induce decision makers to act in public interest
 Mechanisms to secure an ongoing allocation of resources, both within and
across organizations, to digital preservation activities
 Efficient use of limited preservation resources
 Appropriate organization and governance of digital preservation activities
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Outputs
 BRTF-SDPA
 Has taken Charlie as the starting point for the discussion
 Task Force needs to understand what Charlie will need…
 Not just to be a student or researcher
 Our Reports should be ground-breaking in identifying roles,
responsibilities, mechanisms and models for economically-sustainable
digital preservation
 With the goal of making Charlie an empowered, global citizen,
using digital resources and services which are sustainable
 First Report due to be signed off at the July meeting of the Task Force
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Because…
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Charlie is not simply an individual…
He is each one of us…
Task Force has to meet Charlie’s needs
and to empower him/her to achieve and
contribute to Society…
I hope, and believe, we are up to the
challenge…
If you have been, thanks for listening…