Legal, economic, policy & partnership
Alongside technical and theoretical work, an important strand of activity in the Digital Preservation programme focuses on the legal, economic, policy and partnership aspects of ensuring that digital materials remain sustainable, accessible and useful.
Legal
This covers a range of issues but intellectual property rights (IPR) is a particularly relevant preservation issue.
Relevant work
- The International Copyright Law Study (2008)
Economic
Establishing the costs of preservation and information management is a key issue for organisations wishing to undertake financial and strategic planning.
Relevant work
- The LIFE Project (Three phases 2004 - 2010)
- Keeping Research Data Safe (Two phases 2008 -2009)
- The Blue Ribbon Task Force for the Sustainability of Digital Preservation and Access (2007 - 2010)
Policy
The formulation of effective institutional or programme policy in this area is vital to the long-term success of preservation initiatives and may, in the mid to long-term future, largely define what resources future generations of researchers, teachers and learners have at their disposal to support certain types of work.
Relevant work
This study looks at a number of different resources to suggest a framework for creating digital preservation policies and recommends that preservation policy should be drawn up with reference to other institutional policy imperatives, e.g. research, teaching and learning, records management, staff development etc ...
Partnerships
Some of the major challenges associated with the field of digital preservation will, by and large, be most successfully tackled by national and international collaborative activity as many of the problems that practitioners face are common across institutions, disciplines and geographic regions. Collaborative working will reduce duplication of effort, will allow expertise to be more easily shared, will facilitate economies of scale, will enhance the feeling within the community that shared objectives are being tackled in a methodical and comprehensive way, and that the work of individuals and groups is being effectively disseminated to much wider audiences.
The JISC Digital Preservation Programme aims to support stakeholder communities to gain a more thorough understanding of all Digital Preservation-related issues through engagement with relevant national and international communities. It has, therefore, been responsible for funding (wholly or partially) a number of national and international initiatives, and will continue to seek opportunities to work in mutually beneficial partnerships with all groups, organisations and agencies that share an interest in advancing knowledge about digital preservation-related activity.
Relevant work