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Digital Preservation has been tipped as an emerging technology to watch by a leading IT magazine.

Yesterday’s ComputerWeekly has an  article in its IT Management section on How to beat the recession using underutilised technology by Michael Pincher. It focuses on how IT vendors can look at emerging technologies and customer requirements to innovate and begin to buck the recession.

Its an interesting article looking at overlooked areas of corporate innovation, key markets, “hype cycles”, and emerging technologies.

The emerging technologies section particularly caught my eye mentioning that digital preservation is a growth area in data management. In addition related issues such as regulatory compliance technologies, content management and repositories, infrastructure protection, storage management, and risk management are highlighted.

The list of emerging technologies is provided to give food for thought and help advise on business and innovation potential in the marketplace. The content of the article however should be of interest to a much wider readership and I highly recommend reading it.

Readers of the blog may be interested in the article Digital Archivists in Demand which appeared in the Fresh Starts column of business section of the New York Times on Saturday in both print and online editions. This is a monthly column covering emerging jobs and job trends.

The piece focusses on careers for digital asset managers, digital archivists and digital preservation officers and how demand for them is expanding. It features Jacob Nadal, the preservation officer at the University of California, Los Angeles and Victoria McCargar, a preservation consultant in Los Angeles and a lecturer at U.C.L.A. and San José State University.

Vicky McCargar estimates that 20,000 people work in the field today — plus others in related areas — and she expects that to triple over the next decade, assuming that economic conditions stabilise before long.

US rates of pay for Digital Archivists are also cited in the article. Digital asset managers at public facilities would do well to make $70,000 a year. Salaries for their corporate counterparts are generally higher. Consultants who can make recommendations on systems can make $150 an hour.Those who manage them in the commercial sector once they’re up and running make from the $70,000’s up to $100,000 a year.

Despite the higher pay in the corporate world Jacob Nadal outlines the case for working in the public sector: “Public-sector institutions just strike me as far, far cooler. They have better collections, obviously, and they are innovative, connected and challenging in ways that seem more substantial to me.”

It is good to see that mainstream newspapers are beginning to see digital archiving as an emerging career path. I have given short seminars on digital preservation and curation to students on the Information Studies courses at UCL over the last couple of years. I always emphasis to them that not only is it intellectually challenging field but a very good career option for those with a traditional archive or library training and an interest in electronic information.

JSTOR and Ithaka have recently announced the merger of their organisations. The new combined enterprise will be called Ithaka and will be dedicated to helping the academic community use digital technologies to advance scholarship and teaching and to reducing systemwide costs through collective action.

JSTOR was founded in 1995 by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as a shared digital library to help academic institutions save costs associated with the storage of library materials and to vastly improve access to scholarship. Today, more than 5,200 academic institutions and 600 scholarly publishers and content owners participate in JSTOR.

Ithaka was started in 2003 with funding from the Mellon Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation. It is probably best known for incubating and hosting Portico its digital preservation service for e-journals and e-books. Ithaka is also the organisational home to NITLE, a suite of services supporting the use of technology in liberal arts education and has produced a number of influential reports including the 2007 “University Publishing in A Digital Age” and the 2008 “Sustainability and Revenue Models for Online Academic Resources.”

The merger makes sense in containing expenses at a time when endowments are under severe pressure. JSTOR and Ithaka already work closely together (for example over the Portico service) and share a common history, values, and a fundamental purpose. During 2008, the Ithaka-incubated resource Aluka was integrated into JSTOR as an initial step, further strengthening ties between the organisations. JSTOR will now join Portico and NITLE as a coordinated set of offerings made available under the Ithaka organisational name. In addition to JSTOR, Portico, and NITLE, Ithakas existing research and strategic services groups will be important parts of the enterprise.

Kevin Guthrie will remain President of Ithaka and Michael Spinella from JSTOR will become Executive Vice-President. The board will be composed of Ithaka and JSTOR Trustees, with Henry Bienen, President of Northwestern University, serving as Chairman and Paul Brest, President of the Hewlett Foundation as Vice Chairman.

I have previously blogged (see Research Data Canada) on work by The Canadian Research Data Strategy Working Group.

Its report “Stewardship of Research Data in Canada: A Gap Analysis” is now available. Using the data lifecycle as a framework, the report examines Canada’s current state versus an ‘ideal state’ based on existing international best practices across 10 indicators. The indicators include: policies, funding, roles and responsibilities, standards, data repositories, skills and training, accessibility, and preservation.

The analysis reveals significant barriers to the access and preservation of research data ’” barriers that could have a serious impact on the future of Canadian research and innovation if not addressed. For example, large amounts of data are being lost because of the woefully inadequate number of trusted data repositories in Canada.

The report summarises gaps for Canadian research data across the data lifecycle as follows:

Data Production

• Priority is on immediate use, rather than potential for long-term exploitation.
• Limited funding mechanisms to prepare data appropriately for later use.
• Few research institutions require data management plans.
• No national organization that can advise and assist with application of data standards.

Data Dissemination

• Lack of policies governing the standards applied to ensure data dissemination.
• Researchers unwilling to share data, because of lack of time and expertise required.
• Some policies require certain types of data be destroyed after a research project is over.

Long-term Management of Data

• Lack of coverage and capacity of data repositories.
• Preservation activities in repositories are not comprehensive.
• Limited funding for data repositories in Canada.
• Few incentives for researchers to deposit data into archives.

Discovery and Repurposing

• Most data rests on the hard drives of researchers and is inaccessible by others.
• Per per view and licensed access mechanisms are common where data are available.
• Many researchers are reluctant to enable access to their data because they feel it is their intellectual property.

The gap analysis will be extremely familar to many – reflecting difficulties recognised and responded to in many different countries such as the USA (Datanets), Australia (ANDS), and the UK (UKRDS feasibility study). It is pleasing to see the report cite the UK and USA as two countries that are seen internationally to be leading responses to these challenges.

It is reported that in the last several months, the Canadian Research Data Strategy Working Group has also made progress on a number of other fronts. Three Task Groups have been established to support efforts in addressing the gaps identified in the analysis. The Task Groups are:

1. Policies, funding and research;

2. Infrastructure and services; and

3. Capacity (skills, training, and reward systems). The Capacity Task Group is currently developing a workshop on data management for researchers, which it hopes to begin offering in 2009.

The next steps for the Working Group are to develop an action plan and an engagement strategy to involve senior leaders from the various institutions represented on the Working Group.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has just received the annual grant letter on higher education funding for 2009-10 from the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills.

HEFCE Chair, Tim Melville-Ross, said on the HEFCE website:

“‘This represents a continuing substantial investment in higher education during a period of severe economic challenges. We shall be considering the implications of the letter at the Board meetings on 22 January and 26 February in preparation for the announcement of the recurrent grant to universities and colleges on 5 March.”

The grant letter sets out funding allocations and priorities the Government has for English universities (all bar one of whom are public rather than privatly funded institutions). The broad priority areas are:

• Supporting the economy through recession and wider engagement with business [no surprises there];
• Widening participation and fair access;
• Quality and oversight;
• Promoting excellence in research, science and innovation;
• Tackling climate change;
• Student numbers and finance.

A couple of things caught my eye in the grant letter given our company’s interests and work in the sector and my own involvement with University Schools of Information Studies:

• a strong emphasis on promotion of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics);
• implications for RAE 2008 and HEFCE ‘s distribution of £1.5 billion research funding to universities;
• the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and work between academia and the private sector;
• and “value for money”.

To quote from the grant letter to illustrate these points:

Promotion of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)

“I would like you to work with the sector as it finds innovative ways to support business. Promotion of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines should be a factor in all of your activities, since these are subjects that employers consistently tell us they will need in the long term…”

RAE 2008 and Research Funding distribution

“The coming academic year is the first in which research funding will be allocated by reference to the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. In allocating your research funding, I expect you to continue to recognise and respond to the high cost and national importance of STEM subjects. I also expect the Council to continue to recognise and reward the highest levels of research excellence wherever it is found. I know that you will need to maintain high levels of funding for those institutions with the largest volumes of world-class research whilst rewarding and nurturing pockets of excellence elsewhere. It is also important that you seek to remove barriers to research partnerships between universities and both charities and businesses.”

and “Looking further into the future, I would ask you to work with the sector to explore ways to encourage collaboration between institutions with the largest volumes of world-class research and those with smaller pockets of excellence…”

Research Excellence Framework (REF) and work between academia and the private/public service sectors

“The Council is already working on the Research Excellence Framework, and has initiated the pilots exercise for bibliometric indicators of excellence. This should reduce the burden on institutions and take better account of the impact research makes on the economy and society. The REF should continue to incentivise research excellence, but also reflect the quality of researchers contribution to public policy making and to public engagement, and not create disincentives to researchers moving between academia and the private sector. You are also considering wider aspects of assessment, including user-focused research and subjects where bibliometrics have not yet been fully developed. I look forward to seeing your proposals on the REF by summer 2009.”

Value for money

“I am grateful for the savings the Council is helping HEIs to achieve across this CSR period, in areas including shared services, procurement, and from rationalising some special funding streams. The Council and the sector have improved value for money (VFM) in recent years and over the CSR07 period, including in areas covered by the Governments Operational Efficiency Programme (OEP). In the coming years all agencies in the public sector will need to achieve the greatest possible VFM. So I would like you, working with the sector, to examine further options and develop plans to deliver additional improvements in VFM in 2010-11 and beyond with a particular focus on those areas identified by the OEP.”

Most of these quotes are self-explanatory in terms of partnerships and shared services etc. However it may be useful for some to see the discussion on research funding (made before the funding letter was available) in The Times Higher Education Supplement this week and the related stories it cites from previous editions for the broader context and implications of HEFCE research funding, RAE 2008 and REF.

Early in 2008 there was a lot of excitement around the announcement that Google was about to launch a free service for hosting research datasets as noted in our blog posting Google to host research datasets twelve months ago.

Less widely reported so far – and I had missed it until I saw it in the Open Access News – was the report by Wired that Google has withdrawn the proposed service first known as Palimpsest (and later re-named Google Research Datasets).

Unfortunately the proposed service seems to have fallen prey to the credit crunch. The issue of sustainable funding for long-term services for datasets and the challenges of doing this in the current commercial environment are thrown into stark relief. For further information and comment see the Wired blog Google shutters its Science Data Service.

We have been very pleased to add three new senior associates to the company over the Autumn who can help support the range of work Charles Beagrie can undertake in the library, archive, and higher education sectors. I am delighted to welcome Mary Auckland, Terry Morrow, and Duncan Simpson as associates and look forward to working with them on future projects.

Their profiles are as follows:

Mary Auckland is an acknowledged expert in library and information work and has been an independent consultant and trainer since 2005. This follows her long career in academic and research libraries, as Director of Library and Learning Resources at the University of the Arts London; Librarian at SOAS; and senior posts at the University of Southampton and LSE libraries. Mary has served on various strategic advisory bodies including the JISC’s Committee for Electronic Information, and she was the Chair of its Content Working Group. She also served on the Library Association Council for nine years and was its Chair for three. In 2003, Mary was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to libraries and awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.

Terry Morrow is an established consultant who has extensive experience of academic computing, and electronic journals and bibliographic services. He has worked for the Regional Computer Centres based at the Universities of Manchester and Bath, and was part of the team that launched the successful JISC BIDS database service in the early 1990’s to provide bibliographic database services to the UK academic community. Following the transfer of BIDS in 1998 to the start-up company Ingenta, Terry was appointed Director of the BIDS Service. In 2003 Terry left Ingenta to become an independent consultant.

Duncan Simpson is a consultant with extensive senior management experience in archives, records management, and access to information. Until 2002 he was a Director of Government Services at the UK National Archives and led the introduction of the framework for electronic records management in government. He was a founder Director of the Digital Preservation Coalition and is an honorary senior research fellow at UCL specializing in the records management aspects of access to information and information management. He is particularly interested in access to information in local government and has also recently advised on the design of a National Records Centre for Tanzania.

I came back from another DCC international conference in Edinburgh (1-3 December) and almost immediately succumbed with flu – so this is a late post. Fortunately others including Kevin Ashley in the ulcc da blog and Chris Rusbridge in the digital curation blog have given quite detailed reports of many of the excellent sessions and presentations.

I just wanted to pick up on one aspect which struck me from the keynote Genomic Medicine in the Digital Age by Prof David Porteous and which has also been picked up and commented on by Mags McGeever’s post Healthy Consent on the DCC Blawg, namely ethical consent and research data.

Prof Porteous’ talk focussed on his work in Generation Scotland , and ethical issues around the process of “open consent” (an interesting long-term variant of informed consent) formed part of this. A particular bone of contention was the stance taken by the chairman of the National Information Governance Board for Health and Social Care on research data -see the Guardian report of his views.

Prof. Porteous is the most recent speaker voicing a concern which I’ve heard expressed now by many different researchers – someone really should arrange that offer to the chairman of a “cup of tea and a wee chat” to put across the long-term damage to health research which is the reverse side of this argument.

I was pleased to see that the International Blue Ribbon Task Force has issued its Interim Report on the economic issues for digital preservation brought on by the data deluge in the Information Age and the use that the interim report makes of the research undertaken by the LIFE and Keeping Research Data Safe studies.

The following press release appears on the UC San Diego website:

A blue ribbon task force, commissioned late last year to identify sustainable economic models to provide access to the ever-growing amount of digital information in the public interest, has issued its interim report. The report calls the current situation urgent, and details systemic pitfalls in developing economic models for sustainable access to digital data.

There is no time to waste, according to the new report from the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access, launched by the National Science Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in partnership with the Library of Congress, the Joint Information Systems Committee of the United Kingdom, the Council on Library and Information Resources, and the National Archives and Records Administration.

A recent study by the International Data Corporation (IDC) said that in 2007, the amount of digital data began to exceed the amount of storage to retain it, and will continue to grow faster than storage capacity from here on. The IDC study predicts that by 2011, our ‘digital universe’: consisting of digitally-based text, video, images, music, etc.: will be 10 times the size it was in 2006.

Although not all of this data should be preserved, digital data within the public interest: digital official and historical documents, research data sets, YouTube videos of presidential addresses, etc.: must be retained to maintain an accurate and complete ‘digital record’ of our society. Such digital information is now part of what is known as cyberinfrastructure, an organized aggregate of computers, networks, data, storage, software systems, and the experts who run them that is vital to our life and work in the Information Age.

‘NSF and other organizations, both national and international, are funding research programs to address these technical and cyberinfrastructure issues,’ said Lucy Nowell, Program Director for the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation. ‘This is the only group I know of that is chartered to help us understand the economic issues surrounding sustainable repositories and identify candidate solutions.’

While storage and technological issues have been at the forefront of the discussion on digital information, relatively little focus has been on the economic aspect of preserving vast amounts of digital data fundamental to the modern world.

‘The long-term accessibility and use of valuable digital materials requires digital preservation activities that are economically sustainable: in other words, provisioned with sufficient funding and other resources on an ongoing basis to achieve their long-term goals,’ said Brian Lavoie, a co-chair of the task force and a research scientist with OCLC, an international library service and research organization headquartered in Dublin, Ohio. ‘Economically sustainable digital preservation is a necessary condition for securing the long-term future of our scholarly and cultural record.’

‘Access to data tomorrow requires decisions concerning preservation today,’ said Fran Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California San Diego, and also a co-chair on the task force. ‘The Blue Ribbon Task Forces interim report represents a year of testimony and investigation into the economic models supporting current practice in digital preservation and access across sectors.’

The interim report traces the contours of economically sustainable digital preservation, and identifies and explains the necessary conditions for achieving economic sustainability. The report also synthesizes current thinking on this topic, including testimony from 16 leading experts in digital preservation representing a variety of domains. In reviewing this synthesis, the task force identified a series of systemic challenges that create barriers to long-term, economically viable solutions. Some of these challenges include:

• Inadequacy of funding models to address long-term access and preservation needs. Funding models for efforts that incorporate digital access and preservation are often not persistent: they may be ‘one time’ efforts subsequently abandoned as more critical short-term priorities emerge.
• Confusion and/or lack of alignment between stakeholders, roles, and responsibilities with respect to digital access and preservation. Often, those who create and use digital information are not responsible for serving as stewards to support preservation and access. Consequently, the costs may not be shared, which can lead to inadequate economic models for sustainability.
• Inadequate institutional, enterprise, and/or community incentives to support the collaboration needed to reinforce sustainable economic models. Digital preservation and access require long-range planning and support, as well as agreement on formats, standards and use models, and hardware/software compatibility.
• Complacency that current practices are ‘good enough.’ The urgency of developing sustainable economic models for digital information is not uniformly appreciated. There is general agreement that leadership and competitiveness, if not institutional survival, in the Information Age depends on the persistent availability of digital information, making preservation of that information an urgent priority.
• Fear that digital access and preservation is too big to take on. There is general agreement that in its entirety, digital preservation is a big problem, incorporating technical, economic, regulatory, policy, social, and other aspects. But it is not insurmountable. Digital access and preservation may be as manageable as including a ‘data bill’ as an explicit and fixed part of an institutions business model. Successes depend on making sustainable digital access and preservation a persistent ‘line item’ on the part of stakeholders.

Continuing its work for a second and final year, the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access will issue its final report in late 2009 proposing practical recommendations for sustainable economic models to support access and preservation for digital data in the public interest.

To view the complete BRTF-SDPA Interim Report, click here.

For a complete list of BRTF-SDPA members, click here.

The results and analysis of the outcomes of the 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise are published in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) today and make fascinating reading. The online version of the THES has a general overview of the outcomes for universities, an institutional ranking table and commentary, a subject rankings table, a lead editorial, and a commentary by David Eastwood (Chief Executive of HEFCE – the Higher Education Funding Council for England).

In Library and Information Management, the subject I have closest links to, I was pleased to see the THES rankings as (1) Sheffield University (2) King’s College London (digital humanities), and (3) University College London (SLAIS) – all excellent results – congratulations to all.