LIFE Project Blog

There have been a number of blog posts about the LIFE Conference we had at the beginning of this week, which I thought might be worth highlighting here.

Patricia Sleeman (ULCC) and Alexandra Eveleigh (West Yorkshire Archive Service) both posted interesting overviews of the day. Michael Jubb (RIN) who took part in the afternoon’s panel session also posted some thoughts.

Owen Stephens (Imperial College) posted a more detailed discussion of each of the day’s presentations, which are individually linked to here:

Welcome and Introduction (Helen Shenton)

Keynote (Paul Courant)

LIFE Model (Paul Wheatley)

LIFE Model Economic Validation (Bo-Christer Björk)

Implementation of the LIFE work (Ulla Bøgvad Kejser, Anders Bo Nielsen and Paul Ayris)

British Library Newspapers Case Study (Richard Davies)

SHERPA-LEAP Case Study (Jacqueline Cooke)

SHERPA-DP Case Study (Stephen Grace)

Research Data Costs (Neil Beagrie)

Q & A for Case Studies

Panel discussion - Costing Digital Preservation: What are the next steps? (chaired by Chris Rusbridge)

Thank you to everyone who spent the time writing about the conference, and if there are any posts that I’ve missed, please do let me know.

We’ll be posting photos from the conference next week, but for now, here’s one of almost everyone involved in Monday’s conference. My thanks to all our speakers, as well as everyone who attended.

The LIFE Conference Speakers (from left to right) - Rory McLeod (BL), Ulla Bøgvad Kejser (Royal Library, Denmark), Richard Davies (BL), Paul Courant (University of Michigan), Anders Bo Nielsen (The National Archives, Denmark), Michael Jubb (RIN), Paul Ayris (UCL), Frances Boyle (DPC), Chris Rusbridge (DCC), Paul Wheatley (BL), Jacqueline Cooke (Goldsmiths), Stephen Grace (CeRch) and Neil Grindley (JISC).

Missing from the photo - Helen Shenton (BL), Sheila Anderson (CeRch) and Bo-Christer Björk (Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration).

The LIFE Team hosted another successful project conference on Monday. We’re hoping to have video as well as powerpoints available sometime next week. In the meantime, I think it’s worth highlighting some comments made by Paul Ayris (Director of Library Services at UCL) in his closing remarks:

The key to sustainable preservation is demand; and demand is prompted by a perception of value. We should not let cost determine what we preserve. These were the messages which I picked up from Paul Courant’s keynote paper

1. Paul Wheatley has shown us a new version of the LIFE model, with further elaborations, which will develop into version 2 of the model in the LIFE 2 Report
2. Bo-Christer Björk has examined the LIFE1 model and found no  flaws; but he does have some suggestions on what to do about issues such as inflation and depreciation
3. We have seen successful implementations of the LIFE model in the Royal Library and National Archives in Denmark, which has led to some significant changes to the presentation of the model in those countries
4. We have been presented with reports from a number of Case Studies in the LIFE2 project with varying results. This seems to suggest  that we are still learning what digital preservation means in practice
5. The final Question and Answer session has been lively:
6. The LIFE Team, and members of the audience, have suggested that we need a predictive LIFE tool; is this LIFE3?
7. There is interest in more case studies - scenario building is critical
8. It would be important, using the LIFE methodology, to establish the cost of digital preservation as a shared service and compare that sum with the cost of undertaking digital preservation at a local level
9. There is interest in the community in a pilot digital preservation service in the UK.  Why does the UK not have something like the Dutch e-Depot in the Netherlands?

Thanks should go to everyone involved in the day from the speakers, through to the 100+ delegates who contributed to the valuable discussions that took place throughout the day.

The programme for the LIFE2 Conference has been recently updated, and is available from the conference page.

The free one-day conference will be held on 23 June at the British Library Conference Centre. If you have not yet registered, and would like to attend, you can register easily here:
http://www.life.ac.uk/2/conf-reg.shtml

Registration will close in a few weeks time, so please make sure you register in time, if you are intending to take part in the conference.