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The Open Repositories conference (OR2008) repository is available at http://pubs.or08.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ as a permanent record of the conference activities.

The repository contains papers, presentations and poster artwork for 144 different conference contributions from the main conference sessions (Interoperability, Legal, Models, Architectures & Frameworks, National Perspectives, Scientific Repositories, Social Networking, Sustainability, Usage, Web 2.0), the Poster session, User Group sessions (DSpace, EPrints, Fedora), Birds of a Feather sessions, the Repository Managers session and the ORE Information day.

My powerpoint presentation from the Plenary keynote for the Fedora International Users’ Meeting is also available there. Titled “Keeping alert: issues to know today for long-term digital preservation with repositories” it focussed on research data and sustainability. It drew heavily from the forthcoming JISC Research Data Preservation Costs study and the draft final report titled ‘Keeping Research Data Safe: A Cost Model and Guidance for UK Universities’. It concludes by outlining tentative findings and implications for repositories from that report.

There is an excellent supplement on academic libraries today in the Guardian produced jointly with JISC. I would highly recommend it to international and UK colleagues who want a quick overview of latest developments in UK academic libraries.

You can also read the supplement online.

The supplement includes articles and overviews under the headings:

• Colleges, universities and the digital challenge
• Learning spaces
• Library 2.0
• New business models
• Digitisation
• The New User
• and last but by no means least [new] Librarians.

I’m pleased to announce on the blog that Charles Beagrie successfully tendered to complete a study on institutional digital preservation policies for JISC. Our consultancy team for the project will be Neil Beagrie (project lead), Najla Rettberg (nee Semple), and Richard Wright. We will start work this month and submit in September.

As many of you will know, the JISC has supported UK Further Education and Higher Education institutions in addressing the challenges of long-term management and preservation of their digital assets through funding of a range of research and development programmes and advisory services. A recent synthesis of its digital preservation and records management programme noted that the costs and benefits of developing a coherent, managed and sustainable approach to institutional preservation of digital assets remain unexplored. Across the sector the development of institutional preservation policies is currently sporadic and digital preservation issues are rarely considered in key strategic plans. The lack of preservation policies and as a result the lack of consideration of digital preservation issues in other institutional strategies is seen as a major stumbling block by the community.

We look forward to helping institutions address this challenge and hope our forthcoming work will be of value to a wide range of different organisations.

I blogged back in January on the JISC Research Data Preservation Costs study and promised an update at the end of March. Well the draft final report titled ‘Keeping Research Data Safe: A Cost Model and Guidance for UK Universities’ is now with JISC and being peer-reviewed.

Its been a significant effort and I think it should be a major contribution to thinking on digital preservation cost models and costs in general: hopefully the final report will be out later this Spring. In short we have produced:

’¢ A cost framework consisting of:

o A list of key cost variables divided into economic adjustments (inflation/deflation, depreciation, and costs of capital), and service adjustments (volume and number of deposits, user services, etc);

o An activity model divided into pre-archive, archive, and support services;

o A resources template including major cost categories in TRAC ( a methodology for Full Economic Costing used by UK universities); and divided into the major phases from our activity model and by duration of activity.

Typically the activity model will help identify resources required or expended, the economic adjustments help spread and maintain these over time, and the service adjustments help identify and adjust resources to specific requirements. The resources template provides a framework to draw these elements together so that they can be implemented in a TRAC-based cost model. Normally the cost model will implement these as a spreadsheet, populated with data and adjustments agreed by the institution.

The three parts of the cost framework can be used in this way to develop and apply local cost models. The exact application may depend on the purpose of the costing which might include: identifying current costs; identifying former or future costs; or comparing costs across different collections and institutions which have used different variables. These are progressively more difficult. The model may also be used to develop a charging policy or appropriate archiving costs to be charged to projects.

In addition to the cost framework there are:

’¢ A series of case studies from Cambridge University, Kings College London, Southampton University, and the Archaeology Data Service at York University, illustrating different aspects of costs for research data within HEIs;

’¢ A cost spreadsheet based on the study developed by the Centre for e-Research Kings College London for its own forward planning and provided as a confidential supplement to its case study in the report;

’¢ Recommendations for future work and use/adaptation of software costing tools to assist implementation.

Watch this space (well blog) for a future announcement of the final report and url for the download.

Im pleased to announce on the blog that Tee EM Consulting (Terry Morrow) and Charles Beagrie Limited successfully bid in February for the contract to complete a study of e-Journal Archiving Solutions. It will be great to work with Terry on this study. The consultants from Charles Beagrie Limited will be myself and Maggie Jones. I’ve worked a lot with Maggie in the past and am really looking forward to working with her again on this study and e-journal archiving issues.

The aims of the investigation into e-journal archiving solutions are:

a. To provide UK institutions with real-world scenarios that will enable them to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the various archiving solutions. Different archiving solutions may suit some types of content more than others and depending on their focus, suit some institutions more than others;
b. To build on existing literature in this field, both JISC funded reports and other relevant material;
c. To identify and explore the potential differences across academic disciplines in the use and eventual exploitation of archived e-journal material;
d. To identify and explore the future needs of those working in UK HE/FE institutions, including researchers, teachers, students and librarians, in relation to archived e-journal material;
e. To identify and explore the future needs of a range of different teaching and research-oriented organizations, in relation to archived e-journal material.

Its still quite rare to see research library webpages covering the issues of how to manage and curate contemporary special collections in digital formats so I would like to flag up two particularly good examples here.
The first is the The Wellcome Trust Library’s Digital Curation webpages I came across recently. It is an excellent ‘how to’ guide and sharing of practical experience in dealing with digital special collections built up over the last couple of years at Wellcome. It includes links to the Library Strategy, a ‘Digital Curation Toolbox’, and useful glossary and links.
The second is the Workbook on Digital Private Papers produced by the Paradigm project. The Personal Archives Accessible in Digital Media (paradigm) project funded by JISC involved the research libraries of the Universities of Oxford and Manchester. The workbook captures the projects experience in accessioning and ingesting digital private papers into their digital repositories, and processing these in line with archival and digital preservation requirements.

Both are highly recommended.

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.”

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.

An interesting interview article has recently appeared on the the Video Game Archives at the University of Texas at Austin.

Its an area of comtemporary culture which is beginning to get more attention from the digital preservation community and deserves to be a focus for collection development given its significance. The information school at UT is providing support for digital preservation to the Archive but the initial funding for the Archive only has a two year term which may be its greatest challenge.

Short extract on scope of collection below. For further information see: http://xbox.gamezone.com/news/11_12_07_09_35AM.htm

To ensure an archive of scholarly and cultural interest, the Center will gather and make available for research materials from all sectors of the industry, including developers, publishers, and artists. In addition to the games themselves, archival materials of interest include:

Documents relating to the conception, development, planning, management, marketing, scripting, technology, and design of computer and console games.

Art in the form of drawings, paintings, sketches, diagrams, block diagrams, play charts, environments, and other forms involved in game development projects.

Digital files, including development documents, art, programs, source code, images, e-mail correspondence, planning data, contracts, and business plans.

Physical game platforms including computers, consoles, cartridges, diskettes, controllers, sound boards, speakers, and especially early models that are no longer available for play.

Collateral materials used in marketing or developing games, such as posters, cut-out figures, play weapons, photos, costumes, and vehicles used to convey the sense of the games.

Business documents related to the operation of the game business.

Game player material such as e-mail correspondence, Web sites, and game magazines.

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.