Action session 4: Towards a Cost Spectrum
Aaron Trehub (Auburn University) & Gail McMillan (Virginia Tech)
Uniting Theory & Practice
(This was a slideshow and then discussion of all of the numerous attempts at costing that are out there; I’m sure slides will be available soon)
- Once you’ve decided to create a digital collection, we’ve taken on a preservation obligation
- We’re not saying “cost doesn’t matter”
- Cost & starting up are the two most difficult things
- Work to date on cost modeling: Open PLANETS blog, LIFE project
- Transparency
- The downside of relying on cyclical funding
- Keeping Research Data Safe (Beagrie)
- Cost model for Digital Preservation (Excel Spreadsheet)
- APARSEN (EU Initiative)
- CDL-TCP Total Cost of preservation
- Pay as you go: Continued funding, 4C Project… vs.
- Paid up: Term limited funding, maybe a “fighting chance”?
- Rosenthal: Ingest is about half, preservation 1/3, access 1/6th of cost
- ADPNet: Designed tiered for small institutions to join. Membership + storage fees + equipment.
- Paralysis of Choice. Danger of researching to death. Which doesn’t work any more.
- Low barriers to entry–negligable losses in Tessella pilot program
- DPC Wiki (we need to add the POWRR project!)
- We have empirical evidence of how this (funding) works.
Lynne’s notes: At this point, there was a lively discussion about the importance of integrating digital preservation practices across multiple salary lines/positions in libraries, rather than having it be a single line-item. When it’s part of *everyone*’s job, it is very difficult to cut, as opposed to a single-person or fee-for-service model, which, when funding cuts roll around, are in much more danger of looking tempting. Also, it was pointed out that we don’t necessarily need to know EXACTLY what DP will cost–an approximation in many cases will do just fine for planning purposes, especially with a mostly-sweat-equity model that only has direct expenses for equipment and storage…
