How do I make the case for what I want to do?: Difference between revisions

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*How do I  
---How do I Describe What I'm Going to Do--- (Change Page Title)


*How do I make the case for hiring staff?
*How do I make the case for procuring preservation services?
*How do I make the case for starting a preservation project?
*How do I make the case for implementing preservation in my organisation?


*What are you proposing?
*What are you proposing?
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     risk assessment for the tasks (ie what might go wrong); a quality plan (how will you check that it works); and criteria
     risk assessment for the tasks (ie what might go wrong); a quality plan (how will you check that it works); and criteria
     for success (to prove it has worked).
     for success (to prove it has worked).
*What tools and skills do you need?
*What tools and skills do you need?
     This is very specific to your task but there are a few ways you can identify the sorts of tools and skills you need.  For  
     This is very specific to your task but there are a few ways you can identify the sorts of tools and skills you need.  For  

Revision as of 10:21, 1 August 2013

---How do I Describe What I'm Going to Do--- (Change Page Title)

  • How do I make the case for hiring staff?
  • How do I make the case for procuring preservation services?
  • How do I make the case for starting a preservation project?
  • How do I make the case for implementing preservation in my organisation?
  • What are you proposing?
    You need to propose a set activities that are scoped properly and which clearly address the problem that you 
    have identified.  It could be a short, one off task or a longer series of activities which span multiple collections.
    Ask whether this is a 'capital' project - ie one off with a fixed completion point - or a 'revenue' activity which will
    be ongoing and indefinite.  You might illustrate it with a workflow diagram.  It helps to provide three components - a 
    risk assessment for the tasks (ie what might go wrong); a quality plan (how will you check that it works); and criteria
    for success (to prove it has worked).
  • What tools and skills do you need?
    This is very specific to your task but there are a few ways you can identify the sorts of tools and skills you need.  For 
    example, have you done a pilot of the project?  If so you will already know the sorts of tools and skills you need and will be
    able to answer this more confidently.  You can also talk to some of the interested stakeholders, like IT managers or users. 
    Some things you might need to consider:
    Tools for impact assessment- how will we know if the project has been a success/what it's impact has been?
    engagement: is there a need to engage certain stakeholders? What tools could we use to do this?
    measurement: how  do we know if the project is progressing as planned?
    Do we need to develop new tools or are suitable off-the shelf options available?
    What tools will be used to monitor risK? 
    
  • How much metadata do you need?

There are broadly 2 types of metadata you are likely to need - descriptive metadata and preservation metadata. These are related but distinct. There's a good summary about this in the DPC technology watch report on Preservation Metadata ([1]) but here are some simple pointers.

Descriptive metadata contains information about the content of the data you are seeking to preserve. Its primary purpose is to enable your users to discover resources within your collections. Existing descriptive metadata standards include Dublin Core, MARC and EAD.

Preservation metadata is the broad category of data that you need to ensure that a digital object can be rendered coherently by a computer and interpreted sensibly by a user using a technology stack that may be completely different from that on which the system originated. Sometimes this is referred to as representation information. When you think about the amount of data this may require there is a risk the requirements can become absurd, so a useful test is to ask whether the metadata is sufficient for the data set to be understood by the user - or the 'designated community'. PREMIS, the standard for preservation metadata groups metadata into five classes - intellectual entities, agents, rights, events and objects, so it is useful to start your metadata requirements against these five classes.


Metadata requirements will depend on your the existing preservation and resource discovery systems and the metadata standards or schemas in use at your institution. If your organisation does not currently have any arrangements for

    descriptive and preservation metadata for digital objects, you should refer to best practices in place at other institutions.
  • What guidance do you need to provide to the user?
  • What guidance do you need to provide to the depositor?

Depositors should be made aware of the various legal issues surrounding the accessioning of their data into your repository. These include intellectual property rights, protection of personal data, liability for defamatory or illegal content, and freedom of information requests.

Depositors should also be informed about any technical requirements that need to be met for items to be accepted by your repository (e.g. specific file format requirements) and your requirements concerning metadata and documentation that should be supplied with deposits.

  • How do you gather user requirements?

The scale of the task of gathering user requirements scales with the size of the audience: so before you can answer this you really need to know who is going to use the data. If it's a small group, or if the group is homogeneous then the task will be relatively simple. If the group is large or heterogeneous then the job of assessing the user requirements is going to be more arduous. So implicitly it's helpful to have a small and well contained user community, especially if this is an early project.

User requirements can be gathered in a range formal or informal ways depending on your setting. Libraries, archives or museums tend to have some kind of user forum or user tracking so it might be possible to trial a digital preservation project with an audience like that. If that's not practical then you might want to consider setting up a focus group or advisory group of prospective users to work with you during the project. Get them to spell out their requirements at the start, refer to them at appropriate intervals during the project, and test with them towards the end. A really diverse audience might need multiple focus groups, while gathering and meeting the requirements of a really large user community could easily up become a project in its own right.

One consistent problem in preservation is how to 'future proof user requirements' - ie how to know about the needs of users in the future that we can't interrogate directly. This is a familiar problem for archives and museums who have tended to answer this by appointing proxies - experts with professional skills that we can use to model future needs. Typical proxies might include other archivists or peers.

However you capture requirements it is important also to manage users expectations. If you promise too much then you will create a reputation risk to your project if you fail to deliver: if you promise too little then you will seem to lack ambition and may not get funded.

Capturing user requirements is too often overlooked in digital preservation. In fact the extent to which an archive understand the needs of its 'designated community' is a critical measure of whether the archive is fit for purpose. So although gathering requirements can be daunting and frustrating, it is important that this work is carried out and is reported.

  • How do you gather feedback?
    A decent stakeholder analysis should be the starting point for this. Once you havev identified your stakeholders you can work
   out the best ways to gather feedbakc from them. Depending on the type of project you are making the case for you may be
   able to insert ways to gain feedback from the system you will implement.
  • What are the rights issues?
    Here's a useful place to start: http://dx.doi.org/10.7207/twr12-02  - Andrew Charlesworth's technology watch report for 
    the DPC on Intellectual Property Rights and Preservation
  • How will it be reused (policy question)?
  It's important to think about how the implementation of you project might impact the policies in place within you institution.
  If your instituion has a policy in place supporting the reuse of data then identify how your project supports this and how
  existing policies may need to reflect new workflows.