JISC

Continuing Access and Digital Preservation strategy for JISC

2002-2005

This is the executive summary. The full strategy is available to download in RTF format from the foot of this page.

Executive summary

The management and preservation of digital materials are of increasing importance for a wide range of activities within UK Further Education, Higher Education and research. A changing legislative environment, new technologies, and the continuing growth of digital resources for teaching, learning and research all have major impacts.

Much of the knowledge base and intellectual assets of institutions and staff are now in digital form. Unless significant effort is put urgently into digital preservation and securing long-term access to these digital resources, uncertainties over archiving will continue to impede the growth and take-up of digital services, e-science, and new working practices. Secondly current investment in digitisation and digital content will also only secure short-term rather than lasting benefits.

The Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils (JISC)' mission is to:

help further and higher education institutions and the research community realise their ambitions in exploiting the opportunities of information and communications technology by exercising vision and leadership, encouraging collaboration and co-operation and by funding and managing national development programmes and services of the highest quality

Digital preservation represents a complex set of challenges, which are exceptionally difficult for institutions to address individually. National action in this field is therefore appropriate to the community and UK wide remit and mission of JISC.

Much has been achieved by JISC and other bodies in digital preservation with relatively modest investment in recent years. However the escalating scale and complexity of digital resources to be curated and the subsequent urgency of developing a critical mass of expertise, shared services and tools, for long-term digital preservation, will require a step change in investment and approaches. Over the next three years a greater emphasis on development of production services and tools will be needed to build on previous research studies and projects.

To achieve this the sector should aim to have the following in place by August 2005:

• a shared vision of how the knowledge and learning produced in digital form by the sector should be appraised, curated, and made accessible
• toolsets to support the migration and emulation of digital objects, management and appraisal of records and collections, and long-term preservation planning
• a set of agreed requirements for digital preservation and long-term repositories for digital materials
• engagement with the issues and requirements across the sector and explicit statements on responsibilities, policy and procedures by organisations at all levels
• an infrastructure of collective and institutional services and repositories
• national strategies and funding streams that address the exponential growth in digital information expected over the next decade and consequent growth in needs for its curation

This strategy suggests the role JISC could play on behalf of the funding councils and institutions, in a national digital preservation programme, which contributes to this step change. In terms of the role JISC could play, there are three major aspects outlined in the strategy:

• JISC as a central resource helping to promote, support and develop the management and preservation of institutional and community digital materials for the benefit of UK HE and FE and research through: JISC national collections and services; preservation risk assessments of JISC services and collections; development of secure long-term repositories for the assets it has developed on behalf of the community; advocacy; strategic advice; dissemination of good practice and transferable experience; supporting tools and training programmes; development of standards, cost and business models.
• JISC as a partner for the Research Councils, Arts and Humanities Research Board, and other bodies, both national and international, in developing services for the sector or cross-sectoral initiatives in digital preservation.
• JISC as an institution and role model ensuring: good practice is followed for materials created or managed by JISC; appropriate grant conditions for JISC-funded creation of digital resources.

The key initiatives in the implementation plan can be summarised as follows:

1. Establishing a Digital Curation Centre to:
   • Provide a central focus of skilled staff and research, with links to a wider network of distributed development activity, researchers, and services for digital preservation;
   • Develop a set of central services, standards, and tools for a range of distributed digital data centres and preservation services, across the Information Environment and Research Grid.

   Digital preservation remains a challenging area in which techniques, costs, and skills are still in development. Implementation therefore will need to be built incrementally over the life of this strategy, utilising feasibility studies, pilot implementations, and large-scale testbeds. This will be accompanied by support for advocacy, dissemination, and training, and by embedding preservation needs as appropriate in parallel JISC funding programmes.

2. Development through RSLG of a national repository for the preservation of e-journals used by the community. Completion of the JISC e-journal archiving feasibility study commenced in April 2002 to support the scoping and implementation of this service.
3. Completion of a web-archiving feasibility study being jointly funded by JCIE and Wellcome Trust and development of web-archiving initiatives including a pilot Archive for JISC Project websites in 2002-2003.
4. Completion of preservation risk and retention criteria assessments for all JISC funded content, during 2002-2003.
5. Future calls in subsequent years to implement their recommendations for services, and integration of preservation activity and standards into repositories funded by JISC.
6. A series of community calls to support records management and digital preservation in institutions. This would focus initially on records management but increasingly focus on digital preservation in subsequent years.
7. Development of the Digital Preservation Coalition as an independent entity with JISC membership and sector activity supported by JISC.
8. JISC Partnership funding. Facility for external organisations to propose joint funding of work of mutual interest in support of this strategy.
9. Continuing development of JISC Digital Preservation Focus activities through the work of the Programme Director and Electronic Records Manager.