LIBER Digitisation Conference, Copenhagen

The cost of digitisation and preservation: The LIFE Project

24-26 October 2007

Richard Davies

LIFE2 Project Manager,

The British Library

2

Overview

► What is the LIFE Project?

► LIFE1 and LIFE2

► LIFE Models

► Burney Case Study

► Benefits

► Further Information

3

Lifecycle Information for E-literature

Project phases:

► LIFE1 (12 months)

► LIFE2 (18 months)

4

£LIFE starts to answer the question:

What is the long term costof preserving digital material?

5

Why use lifecycle costing?

►Enables evaluation of all the financial commitments for an item in a collection

►Important for digital collections, where many costs are largely unknown

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Aims

► Better understanding of the digital lifecycle

► Plan and prepare for digital preservation activities

► Evaluate and improve efforts

► Compare analogue and digital

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LIFE1 project

1. Literature Review

2. Economic Lifecycle Model

3. Generic Preservation Model

4. Case Studies

5. International Conference

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LIFE1 Case Studies

e-Journals

Web Archiving

Voluntary Deposit

LIFE1 LIFE2

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Aim of LIFE2

To evaluate, refine and further develop the techniques developed in phase one of LIFE

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LIFE2 deliverables

► Economic Evaluation of LIFE1

► Revision of the LIFE Model Version 1.1 (October 2007) Version 2 (Summer 2008)

► Updated Preservation Model (Summer 2008)

► Final report

► End of project conference

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The LIFE Model v1.1

Inspection

Re-ingest BackupReference

Linking

User Support

Preservation Action

RefreshmentMetadata Extraction

Holdings Update

Access Control

Preservation Planning

Storage Provision

Metadata Creation

Deposit

Access Provision

Preservation Watch

Repository Admin

Re-use Existing

Metadata

Quality Assurance

Life

cy

cle

Ele

me

nts

AccessContent

PreservationBit-stream

PreservationMetadataCreation

Ingest

Check-in

Obtaining

Ordering & Invoicing

IPR & Licensing

Submission Agreement

Selection

Acquisition

....

....

....

....

Creation or

Purchase

Life

cy

cle

S

tag

e

AccessContent

PreservationBit-stream

PreservationMetadataCreation

IngestAcquisitionCreation

or Purchase

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LIFE Model v1.1: Non-lifecycle Elements

No

n-L

ifecycle S

tage

Management and

Administration

Systems / Infrastructure

Economic Adjustments

No

n-L

ifecycle E

lemen

ts

ManagementRepository Software

Inflation

Administration Discounting

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Generic LIFE Preservation Model

The GPM predicted large cost and much activity - the challenge is reducing both.

Preservation Actions:

1. Preservation Tool Cost

2. Preservation Metadata

3. Performing preservation action

4. Quality Assurance

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Generic LIFE Preservation Model

Frequency of action

TechWatch

Preservation action

Preservation cost of n objects of a particular format for the period 0 to t.

Preservation = + *

e.g. 200000 objects of the GIF format for a period of 10 years.

Monitoring formats and software for obsolescence

Preservation planning

Updating metadata

The number of preservation actions within the time period calculated

Q/A

Updateobject and

event metadata

Performpreservation

action

Cost ofPreservation

tool

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Q/AUpdate

metadata

Performpreservation

action

Cost ofPreservation

tool

Complexity of file formats

• Size• Complexity• Proprietary• Open• Standardised

Frequency of action

TechWatch

Preservation actionPreservation = + *

=

Category Complexity Examples

Simple 0.1 ASCII, Unicode

Bitmap 0.2 JPEG, GIF

Mark-up 0.3 XML, HTML

Vector 0.4 EMF, Draw

Multimedia 0.6 MPEG3, WAV

Document 0.8 Word, PDF

Complex 1 Oracle database dump

FormatComplexity

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LIFE2 Case Studies

Institutional Repositories

Primary Data

Digitised Newspapers

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The Burney Collection

► Purchased by the British Library in 1818 for

£13,500

► 1,100 volumes of the earliest known newspapers

► 1,000,000 pages from 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries.

► Re-scanning or re-microfilming is not possible.

► Microfilmed in the 1970s

► Digitisation started in 1995-96 and ran until 2004.

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Questions that arise from Burney

► Comparing digital and analogue lifecycles

► What is the lifecycle cost to an institution of producing digitised surrogates?

► What are the key preservation issues common across digitisation projects of differing scales?

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Benefits of LIFE

► Assess the financial commitment for acquiring or creating new digital materials

► More effective planning for preservation activities

► Comparison of digital lifecycles across collections

► Evaluation and optimisation of existing digital lifecycles

► Predictive future cost of digital preservation

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LIFE Website & Blog

Websitewww.life.ac.uk

LIFE Blogwww.life.ac.uk

/blog

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Thank you.

e richard.davies@bl.ukt +44 (0) 20 7412 7182w www.life.ac.uk

x

01101101010101011001110100110110101010101100111010011011010101010110011101001101101010101011001110100110110101010101100111010110

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Acknowledgements:

► LIFE Team (Paul Ayris, Rory McLeod, Helen Shenton & Paul Wheatley)

► Special thanks to Ulla Bøgvad Kejser

Comments & questions…life@bl.uk www.life.ac.uk