Writing a Digital Preservation Business Case (a case study)

Introduction

With support from JISC and a subsequent JISC funded Award from the SPRUCE Project, the Institute of Education implemented a case study examining the process of writing a business case for digital preservation in a library environment. The lessons learned are presented here, and the resulting business case itself will be made available later in 2013.

Overview

Writing a business case for digital preservation was the culmination of a four month project analysing the organisation’s management of digital records in the central administrative department. For this we completed the following activities:

1. Records Surveys – we interviewed 9 members of staff: the Directors’ PAs, the Head of Academic Affairs, the Head of Research and Consultancy Services, the Committees Secretary, the Head of Planning and the Head of Policy.
2. Creation of a retention schedule for the department indicating the format (paper / digital) the records should be managed in.
3. Creation of a preservation metadata schema
4. Creation of guidance for staff on naming conventions and version control

The Institute’s Library currently uses EPrints repository software for the management of its major digital collections (including Official Publications and deposited archive collections). However the organisation has no system in place for the effective management of its digital governance records. Finding a solution for this was therefore our main priority for the business case.

Results

What we did

Business case bibliography

Check list for writing a business case for digital preservation

The business case (available Easter 2013)

What happens next?

The results of this case study will be incorporated into the generic business case building work under development by the SPRUCE Project