LIFE Lifecycle information for eliterature

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The cost of digitisation and preservation The
LIFE Project
Richard DaviesLIFE2 Project Manager,The British
Library
LIBER Digitisation Conference, Copenhagen
24-26 October 2007
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Overview

• What is the LIFE Project?
• LIFE1 and LIFE2
• LIFE Models
• Burney Case Study
• Benefits
• Further Information

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Lifecycle Information for E-literature

• Project phases
• LIFE1 (12 months)
• LIFE2 (18 months)

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LIFE starts to answer the question

• What is the long term costof preserving digital
  material?

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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

• Literature Review
• Economic Lifecycle Model
• Generic Preservation Model
• Case Studies
• International Conference

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LIFE1 Case Studies
e-Journals Web Archiving Voluntary Deposit
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• 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
Access
Content Preservation
Bit-stream Preservation
Metadata Creation
Ingest
Lifecycle Stage
Access Provision
Preservation Watch
Repository Admin
Re-use Existing Metadata
Quality Assurance
Lifecycle Elements
Access Control
Preservation Planning
Storage Provision
Metadata Creation
Deposit
User Support
Preservation Action
Refreshment
Metadata Extraction
Holdings Update

Re-ingest
Backup
Reference Linking
Inspection
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LIFE Model v1.1 Non-lifecycle Elements
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Generic LIFE Preservation Model

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

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Generic LIFE Preservation Model
Preservation cost of n objects of a particular
format for the period 0 to t.
e.g. 200000 objects of the GIF format for a
period of 10 years.
Frequency of action
Tech Watch
Preservation action
Preservation

• Monitoring formats and software for obsolescence
• Preservation planning
• Updating metadata

Q/A
Update object and event metadata
Perform preservation action
Cost of Preservation tool

• The number of preservation actions within the
  time period calculated

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Complexity of file formats
Frequency of action
Tech Watch
Preservation action
Preservation

• Size
• Complexity
• Proprietary
• Open
• Standardised

Q/A
Update metadata
Perform preservation action
Cost of Preservation tool
Format Complexity

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LIFE2 Case Studies
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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.
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www.life.ac.uk
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Acknowledgements

• LIFE Team (Paul Ayris, Rory McLeod, Helen
  Shenton Paul Wheatley)
• Special thanks to Ulla Bøgvad Kejser
• Comments questions
• life_at_bl.uk
• www.life.ac.uk