The world is all grown digital.... How shall a man persuade management what to do in such times?

Understanding and communicating the cost and value of digital curation activities has now been recognised by a number of projects and initiatives as a very important factor in ensuring the longterm survival of digital assets. A number of projects have developed costing models for digital preservation but there remains a major problem with information assets (digital or otherwise) in that their value is difficult to express in terms that are readily understood by all the stakeholders, especially those who might fund their preservation. This paper introduces a range of issues concerning information value and business models for sustained funding of digital preservation, with particular reference to the espida Project recently completed at the University of Glasgow. This project has developed a model of information value that builds on the Balanced Scorecard approach to business performance developed by Kaplan and Norton. This model casts information curation as an investment where current and ongoing expenditure is incurred in order to produce future returns, benefiting a range of stakeholders. In this formulation, value is seen as multifaceted and, from the point of view of the individual or organisation funding the curation, explicitly related to the funder’s strategic goals. It also recognises that benefits may only accrue over the long term and that there is a risk that information that is preserved may fail to deliver any return. Examples discussed in the paper concern the establishment of an institutional repository and the establishment of an e-thesis service for an educational institution. It concludes that a deconstruction of benefits of this kind can be more quickly and fully understood even by stakeholders not necessarily expert in the curation field. This facilitates the production of a well-constructed case that clearly articulates information value and the benefit that accrues from its curation, which in turn allows senior management or other funders to make funding decisions based on understandable information: the basic premise of good practice in management. This is a commonly understood idea and one that the espida methodology helps fulfil

"Challenge Current Practice and Assumptions! Make waves!!” : What Works Scotland Collaborative Learning Event 23 & 24 February 2016 Queens Hotel, Perth

No abstract available

Reviewing your drug and alcohol policy: a toolkit for schools.

This toolkit aims to facilitate the process of developing or revising a school‟s drug policy, making it an effective tool to safeguard the health and safety of pupils and others within school, and helping children and young people to be confident in making healthy choices outside school. The toolkit aims to be comprehensive but is not intended to be prescriptive: schools can choose to use only the parts which they find most useful, and are encouraged to adapt the materials to match their needs

Digital Preservation as an Albatross

‘Digital Preservation’ as a concept is an albatross. The complex and somewhat arcane nature of the practice has kept it from being embraced by those that perhaps need it most. Changes in terminology, misunderstandings of meanings and a lack of direct business planning have brought about a state of affairs that has the digital preservation community fighting the problem of technological obsolescence without sustained support from organisations that supposedly need it most. Organisations care about ensuring their continued existence and profitability. Investment is only undertaken after reflection on business cases. In creating a business case most people focus primarily on cost, but there must be a counter-veiling focus on value. There is no point in making an investment unless it has worth to the investor. A good business case will display a strong understanding of the value of information objects that organisations create. Information professionals must ensure that their desire to ensure longevity of information is tied coherently and explicitly to that of the organisation’s future and detail why the digital materials are of value to it. Exploring value in this way allows engagement with senior management as it wraps the need for action in the terminology of their strategic vision and allows for a strong and successful business case to be made

Cost-effectiveness analysis in R using a multi-state modelling survival analysis framework: a tutorial

This tutorial provides a step-by-step guide to performing cost-effectiveness analysis using a multi-state modelling approach. Alongside the tutorial we provide easy-to-use functions in the statistics package R. We argue this multi-state modelling approach using a package such as R has advantages over approaches where models are built in a spreadsheet package. In particular, using a syntax-based approach means there is a written record of what was done and the calculations are transparent. Reproducing the analysis is straightforward as the syntax just needs to be run again. The approach can be thought of as an alternative way to build a Markov decision analytic model, which also has the option to use a state-arrival extended approach if the Markov property does not hold. In the state-arrival extended multi-state model a covariate that represents patients’ history is included allowing the Markov property to be tested. We illustrate the building of multi-state survival models, making predictions from the models and assessing fits. We then proceed to perform a cost-effectiveness analysis including deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses. Finally, we show how to create two common methods of visualising the results, namely cost-effectiveness planes and cost-effectiveness acceptability curves. The analysis is implemented entirely within R. It is based on adaptions to functions in the existing R package mstate, to accommodate parametric multi-state modelling which facilitates extrapolation of survival curves

Associations between anthropometric characteristics and physical performance in male law enforcement officers: A retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: Police officers are often required to undertake physically demanding tasks, like lifting, dragging and pursuing a suspect. Therefore, physical performance is a key requirement. METHODS: Retrospective data for 76 male police officers (mean age = 39.42 ± 8.41 years; mean weight = 84.21 ± 12.91 kg) was obtained. Data included anthropometric (skinfolds, estimated percentage body fat, lean body mass and fat mass) and physical performance (1 Repetition Maximum Bench Press, 1–min sit-ups, 1-min push-ups, vertical jump, 300 m run, 1.5 mile run) measures and correlations between anthropometric measurement and fitness score were obtained. RESULTS: Estimated percentage body fat was significantly (p ≤ .001) and negatively correlated with all performance measures, except sit-ups and 300 m and 1.5 mile run performance. Estimated lean body mass was significantly and positively (p ≤ .001) correlated with push-ups, bench press and vertical jump measures, while increasing estimated fat mass was significantly (p ≤ .001) associated with reduced performance on sit-up, vertical jump, 1.5 mile run and estimated maximal voluntary oxygen uptake. CONCLUSIONS: A targeted approach, going beyond just decreasing percentage body fat to also selectively increasing lean mass, should be applied for optimal improvement in physical fitness performance