...helping to bring digital preservation to LIFE
Proposed Project Plan
LIFE: Life Cycle Information for E-literature
Phase 1: Mapping the Landscape
The first task of the project will be staff recruitment and induction into UCL and BL.
The main activity of the first phase of the project will be an extensive literature review of existing published and grey literature on life cycle management in both paper and digital environments.
The outcome of Phase 1 will be a secure understanding, grounded in the literature, of the existing corpus of knowledge and information on life cycle management. Outputs from Phase 1 will be a published review of the literature and published case histories.
Phase 2: Selecting the Materials
In the context of collection management at UCL and the British Library the project staff will select the electronic materials to be included in the scope of the project. From UCL’s perspective specific collections or packages of electronic journals will be selected; these titles will be mapped to digital collections at the British Library.
The intellectual property rights will be cleared and the permissions documented.
The next step in Phase 2 will be to identify the life cycle model to be used in the study, building on the outcome of the literature review in Phase 1.
Phase 2 will propose a methodology for use in LIFE. The methodology may be one already advocated by an existing champion, a hybrid methodology combining two or more existing approaches or an entirely novel framework.
Phase 3: Application and analysis
Phase 3 of LIFE is concerned with the application of the chosen life cycle model and associated management information and an analysis of the results of these activities.
The outcome of this phase of activity will be to produce tangible data, in a UK HE/FE context, on the effect of using a trusted life cycle model to determine acquisition, format, retention and possible disposal of titles in both paper and e-formats, where such collections are of high importance to HE/FE research, learning and teaching. Exemplars for costing the creation of different qualities of preservation metadata will be a particular output of this phase.
The application of the life cycle model to the chosen material will be an iterative process, as both the model and the collections may need to be augmented in this real-life environment. The selected e-journal titles have to test the full range of attributes required in the selected life cycle model. A review of process during the application of the model onto selected e-journal titles will take place to identify if there is a need to develop either the model or the collections.
LIFE will also build on the British Library’s ‘Risk Analysis of Digital Material’ (a component of the Digital Object Management Programme), which documents the vulnerability of all its digital collections in order to highlight the most urgent preservation priorities.
Phase 3 will also introduce of management information from both institutions into the study. This information will be mined from the financial systems of UCL and The British Library.
There is a risk that not all the desired management information will be able to be obtained from the available information systems, for administrative or legal reasons. This in itself would form a key finding of the project and will be highlighted, to inform future work in this area.
Phase 4: Evaluation
The final phase will be an evaluation of all the outcomes and outputs of the Phases to date, with the findings of the project analysed with a summative evaluation. The output from this activity will be a formal project Report, which addresses the Key Questions outlined in the Project Description above.
The evaluation phase incorporates the critically important dissemination activities. These will include presentations at seminars throughout the project, the first International Conference held specifically on this topic, and the Report being made available on the project website.
for enquiries contact life@bl.uk
LIFE (Life Cycle Information for E-Literature) is a funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Research Information Network (RIN) and is a collaboration between University College London (UCL) and the British Library