The LIFE Model v1.1

Extract: This document draws together feedback, discussion and review of the LIFE Model from a number of sources: 1. The LIFE and LIFE2 Project Teams, and the staff of their institutions 2. Feedback from review by independent economics expert 3. The LIFE Project Conference 4. Early adopters of the Life Model (particularly the Royal Danish Library, State Archives and the State and University Library, Denmark) The result is a revision of the LIFE Model which was first published in 2006 by the LIFE Project . In line with the objectives of the LIFE2 Project, this revision aims to: 1. fix outstanding anomalies or omissions in the Model 2. scope and define the Model and its components more precisely 3. facilitate useful and repeatable mapping and costing of digital lifecycles

Lifecycle information for E-literature: an introduction to the second phase of the LIFE project

Introduction: The first phase of LIFE (Lifecycle Information For E-Literature) made a major contribution to understanding the long-term costs of digital preservation; an essential step in helping institutions plan for the future. The LIFE work models the digital lifecycle and calculates the costs of preserving digital information for future years. Organisations can apply this process in order to understand costs and plan effectively for the preservation of their digital collections The second phase of the LIFE Project, LIFE2, has refined the LIFE Model adding three new exemplar Case Studies to further build upon LIFE1. LIFE2 is an 18-month JISC-funded project between UCL (University College London) and The British Library (BL), supported by the LIBER Access and Preservation Divisions. LIFE1 was completed in April 2006. LIFE2 started in March 2007, and was completed in August 2008. This summary aims to give an overview of the LIFE Project, summarising some of the key outputs. There are four main areas discussed: 1 From LIFE1 to LIFE2 outlines some of the key findings from the first phase of the project as well as summarising the motivation behind this second phase. 2 The LIFE Model describes the current version of the model (version 2) which has been thoroughly updated from the first phase. 3 LIFE2 Case Studies describes the three new Case Studies for LIFE2. It does not include the results from the Case Studies (these are available in the overall LIFE2 Report), but offers some background on each of the studies as well as discussion of why they were chosen. 4 Findings and Conclusions outlines all of the findings and outputs from the entire project

The LIFE2 final project report

Executive summary: The first phase of LIFE (Lifecycle Information For E-Literature) made a major contribution to understanding the long-term costs of digital preservation; an essential step in helping institutions plan for the future. The LIFE work models the digital lifecycle and calculates the costs of preserving digital information for future years. Organisations can apply this process in order to understand costs and plan effectively for the preservation of their digital collections The second phase of the LIFE Project, LIFE2, has refined the LIFE Model adding three new exemplar Case Studies to further build upon LIFE1. LIFE2 is an 18-month JISC-funded project between UCL (University College London) and The British Library (BL), supported by the LIBER Access and Preservation Divisions. LIFE2 began in March 2007, and completed in August 2008. The LIFE approach has been validated by a full independent economic review and has successfully produced an updated lifecycle costing model (LIFE Model v2) and digital preservation costing model (GPM v1.1). The LIFE Model has been tested with three further Case Studies including institutional repositories (SHERPA-LEAP), digital preservation services (SHERPA DP) and a comparison of analogue and digital collections (British Library Newspapers). These Case Studies were useful for scenario building and have fed back into both the LIFE Model and the LIFE Methodology. The experiences of implementing the Case Studies indicated that enhancements made to the LIFE Methodology, Model and associated tools have simplified the costing process. Mapping a specific lifecycle to the LIFE Model isn’t always a straightforward process. The revised and more detailed Model has reduced ambiguity. The costing templates, which were refined throughout the process of developing the Case Studies, ensure clear articulation of both working and cost figures, and facilitate comparative analysis between different lifecycles. The LIFE work has been successfully disseminated throughout the digital preservation and HE communities. Early adopters of the work include the Royal Danish Library, State Archives and the State and University Library, Denmark as well as the LIFE2 Project partners. Furthermore, interest in the LIFE work has not been limited to these sectors, with interest in LIFE expressed by local government, records offices, and private industry. LIFE has also provided input into the LC-JISC Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Economic Sustainability of Digital Preservation. Moving forward our ability to cost the digital preservation lifecycle will require further investment in costing tools and models. Developments in estimative models will be needed to support planning activities, both at a collection management level and at a later preservation planning level once a collection has been acquired. In order to support these developments a greater volume of raw cost data will be required to inform and test new cost models. This volume of data cannot be supported via the Case Study approach, and the LIFE team would suggest that a software tool would provide the volume of costing data necessary to provide a truly accurate predictive model

How much does it cost? The LIFE Project - costing models for digital curation and preservation

Digital preservation is concerned with the long-term safekeeping of electronic resources. How can we be confident of their permanence, if we do not know the cost of preservation? The LIFE (Lifecycle Information for E-Literature) Project has made a major step forward in understanding the long-term costs in this complex area. The LIFE Project has developed a methodology to model the digital lifecycle and to calculate the costs of preserving digital information for the next 5, 10 or 100 years. National and higher education (HE) libraries can now apply this process and plan effectively for the preservation of their digital collections. Based on previous work undertaken on the lifecycles of paper-based materials, the LIFE Project created a lifecycle model and applied it to real-life digital collections across a diverse subject range. Three case studies examined the everyday operations, processes and costs involved in their respective activities. The results were then used to calculate the direct costs for each element of the digital lifecycle. The Project has made major advances in costing preservation activities, as well as making detailed costs of real digital preservation activities available. The second phase of LIFE (LIFE2), which recently started, aims to refine the lifecycle methodology and to add a greater range and breadth to the project with additional exemplar case studies

Strong dust processing in circumstellar discs around 6 RV Tauri stars. Are dusty RV Tauri stars all binaries?

We present extended Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) of seven classical RV Tauri stars, using newly obtained submillimetre continuum measurements and Geneva optical photometry supplemented with literature data. The broad-band SEDs show a large IR excess with a black-body slope at long wavelengths in six of the seven stars, R Sct being the noticeable exception. This long wavelength slope is best explained assuming the presence of a dust component of large grains in the circumstellar material. We show that the most likely distribution of the circumstellar dust around the six systems is that the dust resides in a disc. Moreover, very small outflow velocities are needed to explain the presence of dust near the sublimation temperature and we speculate that the discs are Keplerian. The structure and evolution of these compact discs are as yet not understood but a likely prerequisite for their formation is that the dusty RV Tauri stars are binaries.Comment: 10 pages, will be published in A&

Resolving the compact dusty discs around binary post-AGB stars using N-band interferometry

We present the first mid-IR long baseline interferometric observations of the circumstellar matter around binary post-AGB stars. Two objects, SX Cen and HD 52961, were observed using the VLTI/MIDI instrument during Science Demonstration Time. Both objects are known binaries for which a stable circumbinary disc is proposed to explain the SED characteristics. This is corroborated by our N-band spectrum showing a crystallinity fraction of more than 50 % for both objects, pointing to a stable environment where dust processing can occur. Surprisingly, the dust surrounding SX Cen is not resolved in the interferometric observations providing an upper limit of 11 mas (or 18 AU at the distance of this object) on the diameter of the dust emission. This confirms the very compact nature of its circumstellar environment. The dust emission around HD 52961 originates from a very small but resolved region, estimated to be ~ 35 mas at 8 micron and ~ 55 mas at 13 micron. These results confirm the disc interpretation of the SED of both stars. In HD 52961, the dust is not homogeneous in its chemical composition: the crystallinity is clearly concentrated in the hotter inner region. Whether this is a result of the formation process of the disc, or due to annealing during the long storage time in the disc is not clear.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in A &

Bridging the domestic building fabric performance gap

It is recognized that there is often a discrepancy between the measured fabric thermal performance of dwellings as built and the predicted performance of the same dwellings and that the magnitude of this difference in performance can be quite large. This paper presents the results of a number of in-depth building fabric thermal performance tests undertaken on three case study dwellings located on two separate Passivhaus developments in the UK: one masonry cavity and the other two timber-frame. The results from the tests revealed that all the case study dwellings performed very close to that predicted. This is in contrast with other work that has been undertaken regarding the performance of the building fabric, which indicates that a very wide range of performance exists in new-build dwellings in the UK, and that the difference between the measured and predicted fabric performance can be greater than 100%. Despite the small non-random size of the sample, the results suggest that careful design coupled with the implementation of appropriate quality control systems, such as those required to attain Passivhaus Certification, may be conducive to delivering dwellings that begin to ‘bridge the gap’ between measured and predicted fabric performance

Unintended learning in primary school practical science lessons from Polanyi’s perspective of intellectual passion

This study explored, from the perspective of intellectual passion developed by Michael Polanyi, the unintended learning that occurred in primary practical science lessons. We use the term ‘unintended’ learning to distinguish it from ‘intended’ learning that appears in teachers’ learning objectives. Data were collected using video and audio recordings of a sample of twenty-four whole class practical science lessons, taught by five teachers, in Korean primary schools with 10- to 12-year-old students. In addition, video and audio recordings were made for each small group of students working together in order to capture their activities and intra-group discourse. Pre-lesson interviews with the teachers were undertaken and audio-recorded to ascertain their intended learning objectives. Selected key vignettes, including unintended learning, were analysed from the perspective of intellectual passion developed by Polanyi. What we found in this study is that unintended learning could occur when students got interested in something in the first place and could maintain their interest. In addition, students could get conceptual knowledge when they tried to connect their experience to their related prior knowledge. It was also found that the processes of intended learning and of unintended learning were different. Intended learning was characterized by having been planned by the teacher who then sought to generate students’ interest in it. In contrast, unintended learning originated from students’ spontaneous interest and curiosity as a result of unplanned opportunities. Whilst teachers’ persuasive passion comes first in the process of intended learning, students’ heuristic passion comes first in the process of unintended learning. Based on these findings, we argue that teachers need to be more aware that unintended learning, on the part of individual students, can occur during their lesson and to be able to better use this opportunity so that this unintended learning can be shared by the whole class. Furthermore, we argue that teachers’ deliberate action and a more interactive classroom culture are necessary in order to allow students to develop, in addition to heuristic passion, persuasive passion towards their unintended learning