LiFE^2 Case Studies – Q and A

Q: To what extent did the Newspaper case study consider the difference between the very well established workflows/processes with analogue compared to new concepts in digital

A: Definitely something that is focused on in the write-up

Q: What are the ideal and realistic timeframes in which the costings for activities in the LiFE model should be reassessed in an institution (to reassess the overall costs)

A: Neil Beagrie says it is important to revisit very regularly. Neil stressing importance of regular audits of institutional digital data. Stephen Grace suggesting this should be an annual thing to revisit costings.

Q: Where do you draw the line between the ‘creation costs’ and digital preservation costs to be costed by LiFE?

A: No clear answer – but clarification that Royal Holloway costs related to advocacy around acquisitions only included that of staff directly attached to the repository

Q: Note that all the case studies essentially took as a given that they would preserve the material in the format as delivered. Should model be used to predict costs to inform decisions about what to preserve? (Think I got this right – I missed some of the question)

A: A qualified yes basically

Q: Neil mentioned issue of logical format migration. Does anyone have a view on the cost of this?

A: Neil says there is very little in terms of long-term studies of data to give information on this. However, also notes that the more you dig the more you find examples. So far much of the costings around this are based on assumptions of how often we will need to do this, and how much it would cost. In reality there are likely to be large variations between ‘trivial’ transformations – e.g. from one version of s/w to another, and more major ones.

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