The European Information Landscape
Blue Ribbon Task Force on Economically-Sustainable Digital Preservation
LIBER and APARSEN
LIFE project on digital preservation costing
European Infrastructures
1. Digital Preservation Activity:
Issues for the creation of a digital
Europe
Dr Paul Ayris
Director of UCL Library Services and UCL Copyright Officer
President of LIBER (Association of European Research Libraries)
p.ayris@ucl.ac.uk
2. Contents
1. The European Information Landscape
2. Blue Ribbon Task Force on Economically-Sustainable
Digital Preservation
3. LIBER and APARSEN
4. LIFE project on digital preservation costing
5. Next Steps
European Infrastructures
6. Conclusions
3. Contents
1. The European Information Landscape
2. Blue Ribbon Task Force on Economically-Sustainable
Digital Preservation
3. LIBER and APARSEN
4. LIFE project on digital preservation costing
5. Next Steps
European Infrastructures
6. Conclusions
4. Local
VRE/VLE/ Student/UCL Library Prescribed core readings holdings
local web systems and textbooks Paper and e-
Research collaborations; Pay fees; book residences;
Books/Journals/
Primary data; Group pay fines; see course and Core textbooks (STM);
AV/Digital Collections
project work; Learning exam marks; see loans Digital readings (AHSS)
and Archives
interface information
E-Journals, E-Books,
YouTube, FaceBook, Flickr Global resources - free
mass digitisation
Digital
Preservation
Google interface to External content
Social networking tools
Internet subscribed and free
5. Contents
1. The European Information Landscape
2. Blue Ribbon Task Force on Economically-Sustainable
Digital Preservation
3. LIBER and APARSEN
4. LIFE project on digital preservation costing
5. Next Steps
European Infrastructures
6. Conclusions
6. Digital Preservation
US-UK Blue Ribbon Task Force on Economically-Sustainable Digital
Preservation laid out the conditions that should prevail in order for
the scholarly outputs of researchers to be digitally preserved for the
long term
See http://www.jisc.ac.uk/brtf
A number of scenarios looked at the level of preparation of various
communities to undertake digital preservation
Scholarly Discourse
Research Data
Commercially-owned Cultural Content
Collectively-produced Web Content
7. Digital Preservation
Academic libraries were amongst the best prepared of
the stakeholders surveyed
US Film Industry, by contrast, was not
Jon Landau, the producer of Avatar, was honest in saying that no
arrangements had been made for the digital preservation of his
film
Not clear whose responsibility to undertake that work it was
8. Digital Preservation
Economically-sustainable digital preservation requires:
Recognition of the benefits of digital preservation on the part of
key decision-makers
Incentives for the decision-makers to act in the public interest
A process for selecting digital materials for long-term
preservation
Mechanisms to secure an ongoing, efficient allocation of
resources to digital preservation activities
Appropriate governance of digital preservation activities
9. Digital Preservation
Scenarios: Scholarly Discourse
Recommendation 1
Libraries, scholars and professional societies should develop
selection criteria for emerging digital genres in scholarly
discourse, and prototype preservation and access strategies to
support them
Recommendation 2
Publishers reserving the right to preserve should party with third-
party archives or libraries to ensure long-term digital preservation
10. Digital Preservation
Recommendation 3
Scholars should consider granting non-exclusive rights to publish
and preserve, to enable decentralized and distributed
preservation of emerging scholarly discourse
Recommendation 4
Libraries should create a mechanism to organise and clarify their
governance issues and responsibilities to preserve monographs
and emerging scholarly discourse along lines similar to those for
e-journals
11. Digital Preservation
Recommendation 5
All open-access strategies that assume the persistence of
information over time must consider provisions for the funding of
preservation
12. Digital Preservation
Scenarios: Research Data
Recommendation 1
Each domain, through professional societies or other
consensus-making bodies, should set priorities for data
selection, level of curation and length of retention
Recommendation 2
Funders should impose preservation mandates, when
appropriate. When mandates are imposed, funders should
also specify selection criteria, funds to be used, and
responsible organizations to provide archiving
13. Digital Preservation
Scenarios: Research Data
Recommendation 3
Funding agencies should explicitly recognize ‘data under
stewardship’ as a core indicator of scientific effort and
include this information in the standard reporting
mechanisms
Recommendation 4
Preservation services should reduce preservation and
archiving costs by leveraging economies of scale where
possible
14. Digital Preservation
Scenarios: Research Data
Recommendation 5
Agreements with third-party archives should stipulate
processes, outcomes, retention periods, and handoff triggers
15. Contents
1. The European Information Landscape
2. Blue Ribbon Task Force on Economically-Sustainable
Digital Preservation
3. LIBER and APARSEN
4. LIFE project on digital preservation costing
5. Next Steps
European Infrastructures
6. Conclusions
16. APARSEN
30 partners, led by the Science and Technology Facilities Council
Envisaged Outcomes
Integration of the majority of the research activities in digital preservation
within a common vision, terminology and evidence standard
Common agreement of the services needed for preservation, access and
most importantly re-use of data holdings over the whole lifecycle
Embedding of legal and economic issues, including costs, governance
issues and digital rights in digital preservation
Discipline of data curators with appropriate qualifications recognised
across Europe, and well defined support services
17. LIBER and APARSEN
LIBER will look at the level of preparation in Europe to adopt the Blue
Ribbon Task Force’s recommendations
Work package led by Austrian National Library / University of Patras
LIBER will survey key stakeholders with an interest in digital
preservation 4 stakeholder categories
Research Data
Scholarly Discourse
Collectively-created Content
Commercially-owned Cultural Content
The National and International agencies category of stakeholders
identified by the Blue Ribbon report will also be contacted
Result will be a comprehensive Report on the situation in Europe
18. Contents
1. The European Information Landscape
2. Blue Ribbon Task Force on Economically-Sustainable
Digital Preservation
3. LIBER and APARSEN
4. LIFE project on digital preservation costing
5. Next Steps
European Infrastructures
6. Conclusions
19. LIFE
Collaboration between British Library and UCL
Developed a generic lifecycle costing formula (v2)
See http://www.life.ac.uk/
21. Case Study 1: Burney Newspapers
Curation costs for the British Library’s Burney
newspapers
Burney Digital Collection and Legal Deposit Newspaper
Collection were used to obtain digital and analogue costs
22. Case Study 1: Burney Newspapers
Headline conclusion
Same lifecycle model can be used to cost analogue AND digital
preservation
Too simplistic to say that digital preservation is cheaper
that analogue preservation
More Studies needed
23. Case Study 2:
SHERPA-LEAP Open Access repositories
SHERPA-LEAP is a consortium of Open Access
repositories in London
Year 1 Repository Lifecycle costs per entity
24. Case Study 2:
SHERPA-LEAP Open Access repositories
Variations in costings can be attributed to a number of
factors
Staff on different staffing grades
Goldsmiths manages a large number of complex digital materials
and this raises the handling costs per object
After Year 1, main costs are associated with Preservation
25. Case Study 3: SHERPA-DP
Distributed Repository Environment For Digital
Preservation of Content
See http://www.sherpadp.org.uk/
Headline conclusion
Costs of Digital Preservation do not vary significantly according to
quantities
as automated processes have been established
Largest cost area was in Bit Stream preservation
Included staff elements for system administration and technology
monitoring, as well as for storage provision
26. Case Study 3: SHERPA-DP
Summary of total costs from SHERPA-DP Case Study
27. Headline Repository Findings
SHERPA-DP Case Study shows that cost-effective 3rd
party digital preservation solution is possible for the UK
Costing figures are not yet robust enough to allow generic
conclusions to be reached
Most libraries/repositories find it a challenge to undertake
lifecycle costings
Digital Preservation is not yet embedded in the Higher
Education community
28. Contents
1. The European Information Landscape
2. Blue Ribbon Task Force on Economically-Sustainable
Digital Preservation
3. LIBER and APARSEN
4. LIFE project on digital preservation costing
5. Next Steps
European Infrastructures
6. Conclusions
29. EU Infrastructures
EU Consultation on Access to, and Preservation of, Scientific
Information took place in Luxembourg on 31 May 2011
LIBER’s Statement is available at http://www.libereurope.eu/news/llber-
statement-at-the-public-hearing-on-access-to-and-preservation-of-
scientific-information-l
Statement covers:
Open Access
Copyright reform
Digital Preservation
Fair dealing exemptions should also cover format shifting to allow
libraries and memory institutions to preserve digitally for the long
term the digital content that European researchers use and need
EU will be consulting further with a view to issuing an EU Directive
30. EU Infrastructures
European research needs sustainable infrastructures for long-term
access to digital materials
Key Questions to be addressed
Roles and Responsibilities
Does everyone need to undertake digital preservation, or can it be left to
a chosen few?
What infrastructure is needed to deliver long-term access?
Who will pay?
How much will it cost?
How does copyright legislation at the EU and Member State level need to
change?
31. EU Infrastructures
LIBER wishes to undertake a Study to
Identify what provision currently exists for the digital preservation
of commercial e-journals, e-books and European cultural content
Propose a solution for the creation of a sustainable digital
preservation service to solve these issues for European
researchers, including the high-level technical requirements of
such a service
Evaluate possible technical solutions, based either on a single
platform/service provider or on a series of networked, inter-linked
platforms around Europe
32. EU Infrastructures
Define the licence models and legal framework in which such a
service would operate
Identify whether such a service would best be run by one or more
European institutions or be put out to contract to a commercial
supplier
Identify the costs of developing such a solution for European
researchers and the economic sustainability of such a service
Identify the roles and responsibilities of all relevant stakeholders
for the provision of the service, including governance structures
33. E-Depot UK curation German curation Other curation
Netherlands Node(s) Node(s) Node(s)
Registry 1 Registry 2 Registry 3 Registry etc.
Consolidated Registry from
Partners
Users
Ideal European architecture for Digital Preservation infrastructure
34. Conclusions
European Information landscape needs to be underpinned by long-
term access to its resources
Blue Ribbon Task Force has defined what needs to be in place for
economically-sustainable digital preservation to exist and has made
recommendations
To be tested in Europe by LIBER in APARSEN
Projects such as LIBER’s LIFE project have identified tools and costs
for digital preservation
Infrastructure to deliver sustainable digital pan-European
preservation services is now required
35. If you have been…
Thanks for listening
Happy to discuss further