UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Blue Ribbon Task Force on Economically-Sustainable Digital Preservation Dr Paul Ayris Director of UCL Library Services and UCL Copyright Officer

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Contents Background to the Task Force Task Force Report and Recommendations Next Steps Thanks to Brian Lavoie (OCLC) for sharing slides from his forthcoming presentation at the Annual LIBER Conference in Aarhus, Denmark

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Contents Background to the Task Force Task Force Report and Recommendations Next Steps

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES 2007: Amount of digital information created, captured, or replicated exceeded available storage capacity Dealing with the digital universe is not a technical problem alone Perpetuating digital signals Deciding what is preserved Accommodating IPR Matching means to ends Source: The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe IDC Whitepaper, March 2008 Issue

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Task Force Task Force: Supported by NSF, Mellon, Library of Congress, JISC, CLIR, NARA Co-chairs: Brian Lavoie (OCLC), Fran Berman (RPI) Cross-domain, cross-discipline 2 UK members, nominated by JISC Paul Ayris Chris Rusbridge

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Timetable Interim Report Issued in December 2008 Setting a baseline Final Report Issued in February 2010 Coming up with Recommendations

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Launch of Report A National Conversation on the Economic Sustainability of Digital Information Washington, DC April 1, 2010 Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet London, UK May 6, 2010

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Final Report Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Key Message which underlines Report What is key to proposing solutions? … sustainable economics for digital preservation is not just about finding more funds. It is about building an economic activity firmly rooted in a compelling value proposition, clear incentives to act, and well- defined preservation roles and responsibilities.

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Contents Background to the Task Force Task Force Report and Recommendations Next Steps

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Case Studies in 4 Digital Preservation contexts Scholarly Discourse Research Data Commercially-Owned Cultural Content Collectively-produced web content

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Headline principles Articulate a compelling value proposition Provide clear incentives to preserve in the public interest Define roles and responsibilities among stakeholders

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Scholarly Discourse This is a fairly mature field, with well-developed preservation and funding strategies as a legacy of the print world. Disruptions are occurring to longstanding sustainability strategies as a result of digital preservation and distribution. There are particular needs to align preservation incentives among commercial and non-profit providers; ensure handoffs between commercial publishers and stewardship organizations in the interest of long- term preservation of the scholarly record; and address the free- rider problem. Clarification of the long-term value of emerging genres of digital scholarship, such as academic blogs and grey literature, is a high priority. Research and education institutions, professional societies, publishers, libraries, and scholars all have leading roles to play in creating sustainable preservation strategies for the materials that are valuable to them.

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Recommendations for Scholarly Discourse 1.Libraries, scholars, and professional societies should develop selection criteria for emerging genres in scholarly discourse, and prototype preservation and access strategies to support them. 2.Publishers reserving the right to preserve should partner with third-party archives or libraries to ensure long-term preservation. 3.Scholars should consider granting non-exclusive rights to publish and preserve, to enable decentralized and distributed preservation of emerging scholarly discourse. 4.Libraries should create a mechanism to organize and clarify their governance issues and responsibilities to preserve monographs and emerging scholarly discourse along lines similar to those for e-journals. 5. All open access strategies that assume the persistence of information over time must consider provisions for the funding of preservation.

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Research Data There is a remarkable growth of data-intensive research in all knowledge domains. In most fields, there is high recognition of the benefits of preserving research data for various purposes and lengths of time. But there are few robust systems for making decisions about what to preserve; and there is often a lack of coordination of roles, responsibilities, and funding sources among those best positioned to preserve data (researchers) and the preservation infrastructure (curation and archiving services) that should support them. Research and education institutions, professional societies, archives, researchers, and the funding agencies that support data creation all have leading roles to play in creating sustainable preservation strategies.

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Recommendations for Research Data 1.Each domain, through professional societies or other consensus-making bodies, should set priorities for data selection, level of curation, and length of retention. 2.Funders should impose preservation mandates, when appropriate. When mandates are imposed, funders should also specify selection criteria, funds to be used, and responsible organizations to provide archiving. 3.Funding agencies should explicitly recognize data under stewardship as a core indicator of scientific effort and include this information in standard reporting mechanisms. 4.Preservation services should reduce curation and archiving costs by leveraging economies of scale when possible. 5.Agreements with third-party archives

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Challenge to Society Sustainable preservation is a societal concern and transcends the boundaries of any particular content domain. All parts of societynational and international agencies, funders and sponsors of data creation, stakeholder organizations, and individuals have roles in achieving sustainability. Leadership is needed at all levels of society. Report presents a summary of the action agendas for these major stakeholders.

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Actions required Organisational Action developing public-private partnerships ensuring that organizations have access to skilled personnel, from domain experts to legal and business specialists creating and sustaining secure chains of stewardship between organizations over time achieving economies of scale and scope addressing the free-rider problem

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Actions required Technical Action building capacity to support stewardship in all areas lowering the cost of preservation overall determining the optimal level of technical curation needed to operationalize an option strategy for all types of digital material

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Actions required Public Policy modifying copyright laws to enable digital preservation creating incentives and requirements for private entities to preserve on behalf of the public (e.g. financial incentives) sponsoring public-private partnerships clarifying rights issues associated with Web-based materials empowering stewardship organizations to protect digital orphans from unacceptable loss

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Actions required Education and Public Outreach promoting education and training for 21st century digital preservation (domain-specific skills, curatorial best practices, core competencies in relevant science, technology, engineering, and mathematics knowledge) raising awareness of the urgency to take timely preservation actions

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Contents Background to the Task Force Task Force Report and Recommendations Next Steps

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Next Steps The BRTF-SDPA proposed a Grand Challenge recommendation for the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policys submission website to ensure that the knowledge of today is available for use tomorrow. Read the BRTF-SDPA Grand Challenge submission report Strategy for American Innovation.submission websiteStrategy for American Innovation

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Government roles Stimulate R&D and the Development of Necessary Technical Infrastructure Increased bandwidth for efficient, timely backup and delivery Secure storage that survives long periods of benign neglect Distributed networks of data storage and curation centers WEB 3.0 and beyond tools to support data creation, curation, and preservation Foster innovative uses of social networking tools for education and libraries

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Government roles Stimulate the Development of Human Infrastructure Invest in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Maths) and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths) Education to prepare tomorrows workers Create new fellowship programs for cross-disciplinary initiatives in library, archival, museum, and information sciences and related disciplines Extend engineering fellowships to engineers working in digital archives and the arts

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES Government roles Develop Policy Infrastructure Foster adoption of open, well-documented, archives-ready formats Provide incentives or mandates as appropriate for researchers to publish and archive data Develop policies and procedures for data management and stewardship mandates for publicly funded knowledge creation Develop policies and procedures such as mandates for data curation and stewardship in all federally funded research-based activities, from scientific exploration to industrial development of technologies. Match these mandates to development of repositories that can scale to meet data deposit requirements Develop financial incentives for private enterprise to archive valued information in the public good

UCL LIBRARY SERVICES And finally… If you have been… Thanks for listening We hope Task Force Report is a roadmap for future action