4C - Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation

Assessment

4C will establish the most effective current methods for private and public sector organisations to estimate and compare the cost of digital curation, and to identify the most beneficial paths for future development of solutions and services. This will enable stakeholders to more effectively and comprehensively assess the investment of resources that may be required to sustain their digital preservation activities; and allow comparisons of existing and future tools and models with the knowledge that a broad range of criteria: e.g. price, savings, quality, value, risks, benefits, sustainability, etc., are implicit to the comparison.

In addition we will assess and describe the work that has already been done in the area of curation cost modelling (to understand whether the current needs and requirements of stakeholders can be met with existing solutions and services); and we will create a template for the submission of requirements, actions and data into a shared knowledge-base that will help the broader community to better understand the economics of digital curation. To achieve this we will promote a cost specific terminology that will enhance standardisation and communication

Critical to the success of this work will be its capability of routing inputs from the user community, the other work packages and the needs and gap analysis report into a generic specification that can be used in developing a roadmap, by the user community (Curation Costs Exchange Framework) and ultimately by future research projects.