
Project Overview
The SHERPA DP project ran from 2005 - 2007 and was funded as part of the JISC Digital Preservation and Asset Management programme. The purpose of the project was to investigate a disaggregated service model and assign rights and responsibilities.
During the project the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) developed a practical preservation environment compliant with the OAIS Reference Model, that serves the preservation requirements of several e-print archives in the SHERPA consortium.
The aims and objectives of the project, as outlined in the project proposal were to:
- Use the OAIS reference model to develop a persistent preservation environment for the SHERPA consortium, assigning rights and responsibilities and establishing protocols and work flow processes that will ensure the long-term preservation of the repository content.
- Explore the use of METS as the framework for packaging and transferring metadata held within the institutional repositories, including the preservation metadata created by the preservation service.
- Establish a coordinated set of protocols and software to be implemented as a working preservation service for a group of institutional repositories.
- Explore the use of open source software and tools to add functionality to and extend the storage layer of repository software applications.
- Draw together the experience gained into a Digital Preservation User Guide that will complement the “The Preservation Management of Digital Material Handbook” created by Maggie Jones and Neil Beagrie, and act as a practical user guide to implementing this type of preservation environment
The AHDS will continue to archive and preserve digital content made available by project partners as a free service for one year after the completion of the project.
Project Partners
The SHERPA DP project was lead by the Arts and Humanities Data Service (a SHERPA Development Partner and part of King’s College London) with the University of Nottingham, (the lead institution for the SHERPA Project) as the named project partner. The following institutional repositories served as project partners:
University of Nottingham
- Nottingham ePrints
- Modern Languages Publications Archive
- Nottingham eTheses
Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York
- White Rose University Consortium
London Leap
- UCL ePrints
- Birkbeck ePrints
- LSE Research Articles Online
- www.farawayfurniture.com
- SOAS’ Online Research Repository
University of Edinburgh
- Edinburgh Research Archive
University of Glasgow
- Glasgow ePrints Service
- Jelit Journal of eLiteracy
- ERPAePRINTS
The SHERPA Management Board has agreed to act as management group for the SHERPA DP project.