Lifecycle information for e-literature 2
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The first phase of Lifecycle Information for e-Literature (LIFE) made a major contribution to understanding the long-term costs of digital preservation; an essential step in helping institutions plan for the future. The LIFE work models the digital lifecycle and calculates the costs of preserving digital information for future years. Organisations can apply this process to understand costs and plan effectively for the preservation of their digital collections. The second phase of the project has refined the LIFE Model adding 3 new exemplar case studies.
The LIFE Methodology gives an outline of the methodology used throughout the project and outlines how to use LIFE and get the most out of both the Model and the Case Study results. The report also details some of the Aims of Digital Preservation Costing. This highlights some of the different approaches that an organisation can take to costing activities and how the LIFE approach fits in with these options.
LIFE Model v1.1 is a working version of the LIFE Model used for the case studies in order to gain feedback on the direction which the model should take. This version was used as a basis for the final model update (v2). LIFE Model v2 outlines a fully-revised lifecycle model taking into account feedback from user groups, the Case Studies and the wider digital preservation community.
Generic Preservation Model (GPM) summarises the update to the preservation model with an accompanying spreadsheet. This model allows institutions to estimate potential digital preservation costs for their collections. The GPM fits into the updated LIFE Model.
An Economic Evaluation of LIFE was written by economist Bo-Christer Björk on the approach used for both the first and second phases of LIFE. This independent review validates the LIFE approach for lifecycle costing.
The SHERPA DP Case Study outlines the mapping of the repository services that CeRch provides to the LIFE Model. The SHERPA-LEAP case study maps three very different HE repositories to the LIFE Model. Goldsmiths University of London, Royal Holloway University of London and UCL (University College London) each provide exemplars of varying collections. Each institution’s repository is at a different stage of development.
The Newspapers case study successfully maps both analogue and digital newspaper collections to the LIFE Model. This success means that LIFE could be developed into a fully-compatible predictive tool across both analogue and digital collections, allowing for comparison both throughout the lifecycles of a collection and across different types of collections.