Brian Lavoie

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The Economics ofSustaining Digital Information
NDIIPP Partners Meeting
Washington, DC July 22, 2010

• Brian Lavoie
• Research Scientist
• OCLC
• lavoie_at_oclc.org

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Sustainable resources
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Sustainability
Secure digital collections as part of enduring
scholarly cultural record Sustainable
digital preservation
Technical
Social
Economic
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Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital
Preservation and Access
BRTF

• Task Force
• Support NSF, Mellon, Library of Congress, JISC,
  CLIR, NARA
• Membership cross-domain, cross-discipline
• http//brtf.sdsc.edu/
• Frame digital preservation as sustainable
  economic activity
• Understand problem space
• Interim Report (December 2008)
• Provide recommendations guidelines
• Final Report (February 2010)

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Task Force Final Report (February 2010)
Sustainable Economics for a Digital Planet
http//brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Final_Report.pdf
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Key message

• 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.

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Digital preservation contexts
Research Data
Scholarly Discourse
Commercially-Owned Cultural Content
Collectively-Produced Web Content
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Sustainability principles actions

• Dynamics Preservation is a series of decisions
• Anticipate and make contingency plans for
  economic risks
• Secure mechanisms to transfer preservation
  responsibilities
• Benefits Manage demand-side of preservation
• Aggregate dispersed demand across space time
• Use option strategies where future value is
  highly uncertain
• Selection Scarce resources prioritization
• Prioritize on basis of projected future use
• Revisit decisions de-selection as important as
  selection

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Sustainability principles actions (continued)

• Incentives Strengthen, align, create
• Impose and enforce preservation mandates where
  appropriate
• Create private incentives to preserve in the
  public interest
• Diffuse right to preserve to encourage
  third-party archiving
• Organization Coordinate preservation interests
• Governance responsibilities, outcomes,
  strategies, accountability
• Formalize/document governance in policy, SLAs,
  MOUs
• Resources Gather sufficient resources use
  efficiently
• Ensure resource flows are flexible in face of
  disruptions
• Leverage economies of scale scope to reduce
  costs

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Priorities for near-term action

• Organizational
• Create preservation-capable organizations and
  relationships
• Technical
• Invest in building digital preservation capacity
• Public policy
• Create policy environment that facilitates
  encourages digital preservation
• Education and public outreach
• Encourage culture of preservation

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More information

• Task Force reports resources
  http//brtf.sdsc.edu/
• Questions/comments lavoie_at_oclc.org