A National Agenda Bibliography for Digital Asset Sustainability and Preservation Cost Modeling by Butch Lazorchak.
From the post:
The 2014 National Digital Stewardship Agenda, released in July 2013, is still a must-read (have you read it yet?). It integrates the perspective of dozens of experts to provide funders and decision-makers with insight into emerging technological trends, gaps in digital stewardship capacity and key areas for development.
The Agenda suggests a number of important research areas for the digital stewardship community to consider, but the need for more coordinated applied research in cost modeling and sustainability is high on the list of areas prime for research and scholarship.
The section in the Agenda on “Applied Research for Cost Modeling and Audit Modeling” suggests some areas for exploration:
“Currently there are limited models for cost estimation for ongoing storage of digital content; cost estimation models need to be robust and flexible. Furthermore, as discussed below…there are virtually no models available to systematically and reliably predict the future value of preserved content. Different approaches to cost estimation should be explored and compared to existing models with emphasis on reproducibility of results. The development of a cost calculator would benefit organizations in making estimates of the long‐term storage costs for their digital content.”
In June of 2012 I put together a bibliography of resources touching on the economic sustainability of digital resources. I’m pleasantly surprised as all the new work that’s been done in the meantime, but as the Agenda suggests, there’s more room for directed research in this area. Or perhaps, as Paul Wheatley suggests in this blog post, what’s really needed are coordinated responses to sustainability challenges that build directly on this rich body of work, and that effectively communicate the results out to a wide audience.
I’ve updated the bibliography, hoping that researchers and funders will explore the existing body of projects, approaches and research, note the gaps in coverage suggested by the Agenda and make efforts to address the gaps in the near future through new research or funding.
I count some seventy-one (71) items in this bibliography.
Digital preservation is an area where topic maps can help maintain access over changing customs and vocabularies, but just like migrating from one form of media to another, it doesn’t happen by itself.
Nor is there any “free lunch,” because the data is culturally important, rare, etc. Someone has to pay the bill for it being preserved.
Having the cost of semantic access included in digital preservation would not hurt the cause of topic maps.
Yes?