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Colleagues may have missed the announcement that The UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority will invest £8 million in plans to create the UKs National Nuclear Archive (NNA) in Caithness, Scotland. The money will be invested over three years and will help get the £20 million project off the ground.

For those interested in the digital preservation issues involved in the NNA, I would refer you to an informative presentation by Simon Tucker Information Manager at NDA. This was a presentation to the ‘Nuclear Information over the Millennia Workshop’ held in November 2006.

The NNA will potentially hold between 20 and 30 million digital, paper and photographic records primarily concerning the history, development and decommissioning of the UKs civil nuclear industry since the 1940s. Around 20 specialist jobs will be created by the project. The archive will take about four years to build and many more to establish as an exemplar in its field. Land near the airport, currently owned by the local authority, has been earmarked as a potential site.

The development will undoubtably be an important one and is a good reminder of the long-term value over centuries of some electronic records and digital preservation issues in key industries.

I’m currently looking closely at various efforts by different organisations to capture and model digital preservation costs as part of our work for JISC on developing a preservation cost model for research data.

As part of desk research for that work I have re-visited the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) Charging Policy now in its 4th edition (November 2007). I remember its first edition 10 years ago and being invited to comment on it when I was at the Arts and Humanities Data Service. It has continued to develop over the last 10 years but lost none of its accessibility and (professional) interest.

In short, it is a very user friendly, concise and informative document aimed at its depositors in the archaeological data community but its treatment of digital preservation costs and the thorny issue of charging are likely to make it of much wider interest hence this blog entry!

Digital Preservation costs are categorised and briefly explained under four headings:

• management and administration
• Ingest
• Dissemination
• Storage and refreshment

The document identifies charges for standard deposits and levels of service and indicates potential variants and additional costs. There is an accompanying webpage on refreshment costs.

Its a fascinating (honest) and short read – highly recommended.

For those following the aftermath of the AHRC decision to stop funding the AHDS the following snippet from the charging policy may also be of interest:
“The ADS currently receives some core funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The AHRC have indicated that the ADS should investigate a move toward a responsive mode funding for archives created by AHRC funded projects in the long term. In the past the ADS has waived deposit charges for researchers based in UK Higher Education Institutions. Due to the change in our core funding arrangements, from 1st January 2008 ALL deposits, whether from projects created within or outwith UK Higher Education will be subject to some level of charge.”

The Wired Blog gives advanced notice that the domain, http://research.google.com, will soon provide a home for terabytes of open-source scientific datasets. The storage will be free to scientists and access to the data will be free for all. The project, known as Palimpsest, missed its original launch date this week, but will debut soon. It is suggested that Palimsest will fill a major need for scientists who want to openly share their data, and will allow public access to an unprecedented amount of data. For example, two planned datasets are all 120 terabytes of Hubble Space Telescope data and the images from the 10th century manuscript the Archimedes Palimpsest.

Those with long memories (hopefully prevalent amongst digital preservationists!) will also remember the Google/ Nasa memorandum of understanding signed in September 2005 that ‘outlines plans for cooperation on a variety of areas, including large-scale data management, massively distributed computing, bio-info-nano convergence, and encouragement of the entrepreneurial space industry’ so perhaps we should expect more major announcements along these lines from Google and NASA in months to come.

I’m pleased to announce on the blog that Charles Beagrie Limited was awarded in December the contract to complete a study of research data preservation costs by JISC. Its an important and topical study as a joint NSF/JISC/Mellon Blue Ribbon Taskforce is about to start its two year assignment to look at sustainable digital preservation and access this month and there are moves to undertake a feasibility study during 2008 for a shared service for preservation of research data in UK universities.

The study has a demanding timescale (we have to report by the end of March) but it will be a pleasure to work with our associate Julia Chruszcz, Brian Lavoie at OCLC and colleagues at the universities of Cambridge, Southampton and King’s College London on this assignment. Work is now well underway.

Very briefly, the JISC is expecting the study should:

1. Investigate the costs (direct and indirect) of preserving research data, from an institution’s point of view
2. Construct a list of issues which universities will need to consider when determining the medium to long-term costs of data preservation
3. Attempt to establish a methodology which will help institutions estimate the cost per unit of research data preserved
4. Compare the costs of each different model of preservation (eg. shared services, institutional repository, discipline focused, centralised)
5. Consider the direct and indirect costs of data preservation in the next 5-10 years and beyond.

I will post further information on the study and draft outcomes at the end of March 2008.

I found the draft Canadian Digital Information Strategy of considerable interest particularly the sections on national digital preservation actions.

The background to the document is as follows: in 2005, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) initiated a dialogue reflecting the range of interests in the digital field, with the goal of framing a Canadian Digital Information Strategy (CDIS). Through a series of meetings, LAC consulted with over 200 stakeholder organizations from a variety of sectors: publishing and media producers, creators, rights bodies, academics, provincial and federal officials, and memory institutions. The consultations culminated in a National Summit in 2006 where a broad consensus on the elements of a national strategy emerged, leading to the development of the Canadian Digital Information Strategy.

It is currently issued in draft form for comment by 23rd November 2007 by any interested person or organization and is available at http://www.collectionscanada.ca/cdis/index-e.html

A chapter is devoted to digital preservation issues and sets a series of national objectives as follows:

2.1 Conduct a national appraisal of digital information priorities for long-term retention and preservation, and accelerate capture accordingly.

2.2 Develop a distributed network of Trusted Digital Repositories (TDRs) with responsibility to capture, manage, preserve and provide access to Canada’s digital information assets

2.3 Foster Canadian R&D that advances the goals of better managing, sustaining and providing access to digital information, and contribute research outcomes to the global effort.

2.4 Develop new workplace skills capacity for digital information management and preservation.

2.5 Raise the public and political profile of digital preservation issues.

Overall an engaging national strategy – I will follow its progress with great interest.

A major new development in the USA. The US National Science Foundation’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI) has released a new call for proposals for “Sustainable Digital Data Preservation and Access Network Partners (DataNet).” The DataNet seeks to foster the development of new types of organizations that “integrate library and archival sciences, cyberinfrastructure, computer and information sciences, and domain science expertise .” Up to $100,000,000 plus indirect costs is available in this program over a five year period, with the possibility of a five year renewal; it is anticipated that there will be around five grantees, with no single award exceeding $20,000,000. Funding is expected to ramp down for each project in successive years, encouraging the development of sustaining strategies. Although U.S. academic and not-for-profit organizations must be the lead submitters, commercial partners are encouraged. Preliminary proposals must be submitted by 7th January 2008 and full proposals by 21st March 2008. Full details of the call are available from here.