News

Index of News Headlines

New preservation project

SHERPA's preservation work has been extended and expanded with the launch of a new project. This project is called SHERPA Digital Preservation - or SHERPA DP - and will run from January 1st to the end of December 2006.

SHERPA DP will be doing detailed work in looking at a practical model for preservation activities, based on content from repositories. To quote from the bid:
"This project will create a collaborative, shared preservation environment for the SHERPA institutional repositories project, framed around the Open Archiving Information Systems (OAIS) Reference Model. It will bring together the SHERPA institutional repository systems with the preservation repository established by the Arts and Humanities Data Service to create an environment that fully addresses all the requirements of the different phases within the life cycle of digital information. The collaborative model proposed will take advantage of the skills and expertise developed by the SHERPA development partners which includes the preservation expertise of the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS). By extending this collaboration into a full preservation service the project removes from each individual institutional repository the burden of adding a preservation layer to their repository, and the need for them to seek to employ scarce preservation management skills and expertise. The project will investigate the business case for this model and seek to establish an economic cost model that could be used to ensure its long-term sustainability."

The project will be led by the AHDS, with overall management, like SHERPA itself, under the direction of the existing SHERPA Management Group. Further information is available from the JISC website.