Jaye Weatherburn1, Dr Lyle Winton1, Paul Wheatley2
1The University Of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia, 2Digital Preservation Coalition , International, UK
Background:
Understanding the many and varied costs of long-term (10 years to “forever”) digital preservation repositories and institutional data repositories is essential for increasing operational efficiency, for seeking sustainable funding, and ultimately for ensuring access to digital materials over long periods of time. Both skilled workforce and technological costs must be taken into consideration from planning stages through to business-as-usual operations. It can be difficult to quantify the costs involved depending on organisational context, as many digital preservation activities merge and blur the lines between collection management, digital asset management, and access activities.
Many models and case studies have been developed by the digital preservation community for determining the “cost of forever”, including the jointly funded LIFE (Lifecycle Information For E-Literature) and 4C (Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation) projects, however many such models and case studies originate and focus on UK and European organisations, and have not seen significant uptake by the community.
Actions and Results:
Through various projects the digital preservation team at the University of Melbourne iteratively developed a cost model for digital preservation planning and repository operations. Significant benefits from undertaking the Melbourne activity included advocacy, awareness, relationship building across teams and increasing trust within the institution. Former cross-institutional efforts will also be presented, comparing the actual outcomes against the range of initial expectations.
Conclusion:
The presenters seek to gauge the interest in further sharing, or potentially related collaborative action across institutions.
Biography:
Jaye Weatherburn is the Program Manager, Digital Preservation at the University of Melbourne, coordinating the implementation of the university’s ten-year digital preservation strategy. Jaye coordinates collaborative community building initiatives including the Australasia Preserves community of practice, and a partnership with the international Digital Preservation Coalition.
Dr Lyle Winton has 20 years infrastructure experience in universities, state, national, and international initiatives. Lyle’s research background in large-scale scientific collaborations, big data and computing. Lyle is the manager of the Digital Stewardship Research team (Scholarly Services) who focus on advanced data management, data publishing and digital preservation.
Paul has over 20 years of experience working in digital preservation, including the Cedars Project in the 1990s, leading the Digital Preservation Team at the British Library, and steering community-driven approaches to curation through the Spruce Project. He currently supports members of the Digital Preservation Coalition as the Head of Research and Practice.