New Perspectives on Economic Modeling for Digital Curation

Society is increasingly dependent on the availability of digital information assets however the resources that are available for managing the assets over time (curating) are limited. As such, it is increasingly vital that organizations are able to judge the effectiveness of their investments into curation activities. For those responsible for digital curation, it is an ongoing challenge to ensure that the assets remain valuable in a sustainable manner. Digital curation and preservation practices are still evolving and they are not well aligned across different organizations and different sectors. The lack of clear definitions and standardization makes it difficult to compare the costs and benefits of multiple curation processes, which again impedes identification of good practice. This paper introduces a new perspective on modeling the economics of curation. It describes a framework of interrelated models that represent different aspects of the economic lifecycle based around curation. The framework includes a sustainability model, a cost and benefit model, a business model, and a cost model. The framework provides a common vocabulary and clarifies the roles and responsibilities of managers with a demand for curation of digital assets and suppliers of curation services and solutions. Further, the framework reflects the context in which managers operate and how this context influences their decisionmaking. This should enable managers to think through different scenarios around the economics of curation and to analyze the impact of different decisions to support strategic planning. The framework is intended to serve as a basis for developing tools to help managers analyze the costs and benefits associated with curation. The models are being developed and refined as part of the EU project 4C “Collaboration to Clarify the Cost of Curation”, which is bringing together and bridging existing knowledge, models and tools to create a better understanding of the economics of curation.