LIFE3 and Research Repositories
LIFE3 was presented at a workshop for the KeepIt project in Southampton on the 5th of February, to a group of 16 research and library repository managers from around the UK.
The workshop provided an opportunity to compare the approaches of LIFE and the Keeping Research Data Safe project (KRDS), and was a great opportunity for the LIFE team to get people using and evaluating an early version of the new cost prediction model and tool.
The KRDS project has been tightly focused on the costs and benefits of preserving research data within higher education institutions, while LIFE has a broader focus that also includes libraries, archives, and other institutional repositories, and to date has focused on costs only.
During the afternoon session, the participants were given the current development version of the LIFE predictive tool to experiment with, and the feedback was both extremely positive and constructive. It was especially interesting to see how users from research data repositories approached the tool with different costing scenarios and questions compared to users from libraries for example. This is something we will take into account as development of the tool progresses, and we will continue to collect feedback from the group on future versions.
We would also welcome the involvement of any other institutions or researchers dealing with digital preservation, who would be interested in trialling versions of the tool as it matures. We are actively seeking feedback with the aim of making the tool as useful to the DP community as possible. If you are interested in participating, please contact the LIFE team.
